Assess Your Organization's Listening Maturity

After analyzing large organizations and examining more than 60 common practices in employee listening, Perceptyx researchers discovered four factors that lead to more favorable people and business outcomes: diversity of listening channels, the speed at which employees feel changes, agility to adapt the listening strategy to new business questions or problems, and an ability to integrate feedback from various listening events with key business and talent priorities. 

From there, we developed a four-stage maturity model that describes the quality of an organization’s employee listening strategy, plus the steps needed to advance:

Stage 1: Episodic Listening

Stage 2: Topical Listening

Stage 3: Strategic Listening

Stage 4: Continuous Conversations at Scale

Understanding and evolving your organization’s listening maturity level can have a positive impact in several facets of your business and inform how you approach employee listening.

This article walks through:

• What is the Maturity Model Assessment?
• Complete the Maturity Model Assessment
• Maturity Curve Stages
• What Defines the Stages of Maturity:

What is the Maturity Model Assessment?

The Maturity Model Assessment evaluates an organization's employee listening maturity using 13 distinct practices. Based on a study involving over 600 organizations across industries and examining 65 listening practices, we’ve found that organizations at higher levels of listening maturity are: 

• 6X more likely to exceed financial targets

• 6X more likely to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction

• 7X more likely to retain talent

• 8X more likely to adapt well to change

Any organization can complete the Maturity Model Assessment and receive their results. The Assessment is based on 13 practices that differentiate listening maturity across organizations. When the Assessment is completed, participants receive a report which highlights where they fall against benchmark for each of the 13 practices. 

Complete the Maturity Model Assessment

1. Navigate to Employee Listening Maturity Model on our website.

2. Complete the short form in the upper right corner and click Start Your Assessment.

Once submitted, you receive a detailed report outlining your current stage of maturity, and recommending actions you can take to advance along the maturity curve.

3. Review your results and identify areas of opportunity for advancing your listening strategy maturity.

   • What stage of maturity does your organization fall into today?

   • Which step(s) is/are most important for you?

   • What is one thing you can do tomorrow to make progress on this step?

   • What are three things you need to address with your internal team about your current listening strategy?

   • Which key business or talent priority do you want to address with your Insights & Action Strategy?

   • Which quantifiable business outcome measure(s) will you use to determine the success of your Insights & Action Strategy?

We recommend that you assess your organization’s maturity level once a year to track your organization’s progress and identify areas for improvement.

Maturity Curve Stages

There are four stages of listening maturity:

Stage 1: Episodic Listening 

Listening in a single large-scale, or a couple of large-scale, discrete listening events. These are typically the responsibility of HR and there isn’t much connection to the broader business strategy. These organizations know the value of listening and are using listening to change the employee experience, often from a strategic level.

Stage 2: Topical Listening

Listening in multiple discrete events. At this stage, HR is still largely responsible for the listening, but other departments know to come to HR for help with special listening projects such as a DEIB survey or an exit survey. The value of listening is well-established, but results from the multiple listening events aren’t synthesized and findings are still mostly disconnected from business strategy. Action is still largely centered in HR.

Stage 3: Strategic Listening

At this stage, there are typically more than one methodologies being employed for listening. Executives in these organizations use employee feedback in their communications and most leaders in the organization are comfortable with how to act on the feedback they receive.  There is some integration across listening events and leaders often seek employee feedback before making major decisions.

Stage 4: Continuous Conversation at Scale

Listening is a positive, iterative feedback loop. Organizations a matching listening methodology to the business problem they are trying to solve. Leaders at all levels of the organization are making bottom-up changes, while strategic action is taken, and HR is making policy adjustments. Listening and action at this stage feels more like conversation and less like an event. Key business decisions are informed with employee feedback. There is accountability for making changes/actions.

Your Assessment report will indicate your current stage of maturity along with where you compare to other organizations.

What Defines the Stages of Maturity:

Four components define the stages of maturity, and each connects directly to a specific characteristic of a listening strategy and can be matured on its own. 

• Listening Channels
  Are you matching the listening event to the business problems you’re trying to solve?

• Speed

How long does it take for employees to feel the change?

• Agility

How quickly can your listening strategy adapt to new business problems?

• Integration

How do all the listening events in your organization work together to form a listening strategy?

When these components advance together, they allow an organization to mature from episodic listening to continuous conversations at scale.