Employee surveys can tell you how your people feel at a point in time. But do they reveal the full picture? And, more importantly, do they provide the insights you need to take meaningful action?
For years, organisations have relied on employee engagement surveys to understand their workforce. While these tools continue to play an important role, organisations are understandably reluctant to overload employees with questions. The result is often a snapshot of employee experience that leaves valuable insights undiscovered.
Today, employee sentiment extends far beyond internal surveys. From employer review platforms and candidate feedback to external conversations and talent intelligence, organisations have access to more information than ever before, and most don’t know what to do about it.
The challenge is no longer simply gathering feedback. It's about connecting the right signals, understanding what they mean and turning insights into decisions that drive real business outcomes.
This was the focus of a recent Welliba webinar, hosted by Alison Ettridge, Founder of AmpliTask, which brought together industry experts to explore what effective employee listening really looks like.
Following the discussion, Alison shared her reflections in an insightful article, Are You REALLY Listening to Your Employees? What I Learned from an Hour with Four Brilliant Minds.
Here, we explore some of the key themes from the conversation and what they mean for HR & People Analytics leaders looking to strengthen their approach to employee listening.
1. Employee Listening Goes Way Beyond Surveys
Traditional engagement surveys provide valuable information, but they have limitations.
They capture employee sentiment at a particular moment, are shaped by the questions organisations choose to ask and rarely provide a complete picture of how an employer compares with its competitors.
Mean while, employees, candidates and former employees are sharing their experiences across thousands of publicly available sources, but how many organisations are really paying attention.
During the webinar, Katarina Coppé, Senior Partner at Welliba, highlighted the importance of understanding these external conversations alongside traditional internal data. By combining both perspectives, organisations can identify blind spots, validate existing assumptions and develop a more comprehensive understanding of employee experience.
The goal isn't necessarily to replace surveys, but to ensure they're not the only source informing your people strategy
2. Context Matters More Than Individual Metrics
An employee engagement score might tell you how your organisation is performing internally. But what does that score mean without understanding the wider market?
These questions highlight the importance of external benchmarking.
During the discussion, Sohyun Sarah Lee from Cushman & Wakefield shared how her team uses Welliba's employee sentiment data to inform research, client conversations and strategic recommendations.
One example involved an organisation who was considering relocating its headquarters because of perceived dissatisfaction with its workplace. However, external employee sentiment suggested something that caused them to think again. The physical workspace was actually viewed positively, while challenges around communication, career progression and organisational culture emerged as more pressing concerns.
The findings helped challenge the original assumptions and redirect attention towards the issues that mattered most.
It's a powerful reminder that the value of people analytics isn't simply in measuring performance, but in identifying where action will have the greatest impact.
3. Employee Experience Is a Business Metric, Not Just an HR Metric
Employee experience is often discussed in the context of engagement, wellbeing and retention. But its influence extends much further.
During the webinar, Katarina shared findings from Welliba's research examining the relationship between employee experience and business performance across major listed companies. The analysis identified a positive association between stronger employee experience and higher total shareholder returns, reinforcing the importance of people and culture in business performance.
For HR leaders, this creates an opportunity to shift the conversation. Rather than focusing solely on engagement scores, organisations can begin exploring how employee experience connects to strategic priorities, including talent retention, organisational performance and competitiveness.
The question becomes less about whether employees are engaged and more about how their experience influences business success.
4. Real Listening Means Connecting the Evidence and Taking Action
Perhaps one of the most important themes from the discussion was that listening and acting are not the same thing - collecting employee feedback is only the beginning.
As Michael M. Moon, Director of People Intelligence at AbbVie, highlighted, meaningful employee listening requires organisations to bring together multiple sources of information, test their assumptions and validate findings through conversations with employees.
Similarly, Laura McKie, Senior Research and Talent Intelligence Specialist at Schneider Electric, emphasised the importance of connecting employee sentiment with wider workforce indicators and business outcomes.
An organisation might see positive employee sentiment but still experience difficulties attracting talent or retaining critical skills. Understanding these apparent contradictions requires a broader view of the evidence. It also requires leaders to respond to what they learn.
When employees share feedback, they need to see that their voices have been heard and that their input is helping to shape decisions. Otherwise, even the most sophisticated listening programme risks becoming another reporting exercise.
5. AI Has Created New Opportunities for Employee Listening
With employee sentiment spread across countless sources, manually gathering, analysing and interpreting the information can be time-consuming and costly. Advances in AI have already changed what is possible.
At Welliba, our EXcelerate solution combines agentic AI with behavioural science to analyse publicly available data and transform external employee sentiment into actionable people and organisational insights.
By applying a scientifically validated employee experience model, EXcelerate helps organisations understand how they are perceived as employers, identify the factors influencing employee experience and benchmark their performance against specific competitors.
These insights can complement existing employee listening programmes, helping HR leaders make faster, more informed decisions without requiring additional employee surveys.
Importantly, the opportunity isn't simply to collect more data. It's to connect the information organisations already have with the perspectives they've been missing.
The Future of Employee Listening: From Insights to Impact
As Alison reflects in her article, understanding employee experience is like completing a jigsaw puzzle. Internal surveys, external sentiment, candidate feedback, talent intelligence and business data each reveal a different part of the picture.
Viewed in isolation, these signals can leave important questions unanswered. Connected thoughtfully, they provide a richer understanding of how people experience work and where organisations should focus their efforts.
For HR leaders, the opportunity is clear. It's time to move beyond simply measuring employee sentiment and towards building a more complete, contextual and actionable understanding of employee experience. Because effective employee listening isn't about gathering more feedback. It's about seeing the full picture and knowing what to do next.
A special thank you to Alison Ettridge, Founder of AmpliTask, for hosting such an engaging discussion and sharing her reflections, and to our expert panellists, Michael M. Moon, Sohyun Sarah Lee, Laura McKie and Katarina Coppé, for contributing their perspectives and experiences.
Continue the Conversation
Read Alison's reflections
Discover Alison's key takeaways and insights from the discussion in her article:
Are You REALLY Listening to Your Employees? What I Learned from an Hour with Four Brilliant Minds
Watch the Webinar Recording
Missed the discussion? Catch up on the full conversation and hear directly from our expert panel.
Discover EXcelerate
Learn how Welliba helps organisations turn publicly available employee sentiment into meaningful insights, competitive intelligence and more confident people decisions.