Today's employees are less connected to their employers than ever before. With an increasing number of organizations resorting to recruiting and onboarding employees entirely online, many new hires have yet to meet their colleagues in person. Meanwhile, long-serving employees working from home are at risk of feeling isolated from their co-workers and undervalued by their employers.

The rise in hybrid work has introduced collaboration and communication challenges. At the same time, many employers are bringing talent back to the office without factoring in the inclusivity that a flexible workplace brings, and thus they risk facing a mass exodus of talent.

The organizations that will succeed in the future are those led by caring leaders who prioritize creating cultures of listening that keep people feeling invested in their work and like they belong. True diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at work is only possible when executive decisions take into consideration every employee's unique experience.

That requires leaders at every level to take time to actively listen to those they lead by giving everyone a chance to use their voice and air concerns or share ideas. Creating an inclusive culture of listening in that way requires the courage to step into someone else's shoes, consider their different experiences, and take compassionate action to anticipate and accommodate their needs.

Listening to employees should never be a box-checking exercise for managers. After all, your people need to work in an environment in which they feel assured that their voice has the power to make a difference. That means acknowledging that you don't have all the answers and see value in learning about different perspectives.

As a consultant, I help organizations embed a culture of listening through a series of strategies that unlock valuable employee feedback. I've conducted listening sessions with teams to get to the root causes of what was holding them back from feeling truly engaged and motivated to contribute. Employees have told me, "Thank you so much for listening to us. We finally feel heard." They were hopeful that their organization's leadership would consider their feedback and excited that their voices could improve everything for everyone. I never tire of seeing the energy rise in employees when they realize that what they have to say matters.

In my new book, The Art of Caring Leadership, I share three main approaches organizations can foster to uncover their employees' needs and create more inclusive workplace cultures through listening:

• Leaders schedule and attend consistent one-on-one meetings with each team member inside and outside the performance review process.

• Leaders listen to their entire team in team meetings or roundtables.

• Leaders listen at the organizational level, using surveys, focus groups, culture teams, and interviews.

The following recommendations are intended to help you get the most out of these listening opportunities and create true win-win scenarios for your team and organization.

Build trust through humility

Listening sessions create a powerful opportunity to connect with employees who are struggling to feel like they belong, perhaps because their identity is underrepresented at work or they don't yet feel safe enough to reveal certain hidden aspects of their identity, such as being a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Whenever you're scheduling meetings with teams and individuals, be upfront about your commitment to learning from them. Humility is a key trait of an inclusive leader, and the leader who is vulnerable enough to listen with an open mind to those they lead will more quickly build trust. Doing so creates safe sharing spaces over time in which employees feel protected, even when expressing their true thoughts, ideas, insights, and experiences.

Note that a safe space is not by default a one-on-one meeting with a manager. By bringing in an unbiased third party, you can create a space in which employees can feel like they have permission to more openly share how they feel.

A support partner whom an employer brings in to listen to all levels of the organization, from the front line and up, can then aggregate the employee voices to communicate priorities to the leadership team and enable it to take action.

Commit to what you schedule

Time is the most valuable thing people have, and leaders who commit to scheduling one-on-one meetings and attending them earn trust and respect. All too often, managers plan such meetings with the best of intentions but are quick to cancel them if something more pressing emerges. Being too busy to keep one-on-one sessions sends the wrong message. Not only can it prevent you from listening and learning, but it can also sow resentment among your team members.

Whether you're remote or in an office, keeping your commitments and taking the time to proactively lean into the perspectives of those you lead shows your direct reports that you care about their opinions, value them as people, and believe they can make meaningful contributions. In other words, the payoff is immense.

Ask open-ended questions

Use open-ended queries that lead to a fuller understanding of what people are trying to say. That requires an openness to hearing and handling even the hardest truths and practicing psychologically safe interactions that enable everyone to be transparent about how they feel. When leaders practice active listening by first seeking to understand and repeating back what they hear, people feel heard and valued.

Inclusive listening in groups may entail inviting those more reticent about expressing their opinions to contribute by asking them, "What do you think?" and not allowing them to minimize the importance of their perspective. If you don't allow for all voices within your organization to be heard but only the obvious ones, individuals with countering views won't feel safe, because they will believe that the company is not inclusive of someone like them.

Both the open-ended invitation to speak and the validation make all the difference in helping people feel included and safe to contribute.

Avoid making assumptions

For underrepresented people, their colleagues making assumptions is a massive problem in the workplace. Leaders often default to making assumptions about what employees want because they are not courageous enough to ask. Many leaders are likewise horrified when they learn how those assumptions make their colleagues feel.

Don't make inaccurate assumptions based upon misinformation. Instead, show the person that you're actively listening to what they are telling you by leaning in, nodding your head, and repeating what you heard to demonstrate that you understand their thinking. You may need to ask them to clarify what they said and their reasons for saying it. Then share where you agree with them.

You can avoid assumptions by practicing active listening, being fully present, repeating what you hear, and telling the other person what their words mean to you. Also make sure to include stakeholders, hear every opinion, and be more inclusive throughout the listening process. Slow down—do not rush to the finish line. Team members are not a project to be completed and will know if you're headed down that path.

Reflect, then put together an action plan

Note that listening is only the beginning. Upon gathering invaluable insights from their team members, caring leaders will need to reflect before deciding what action to take next.

When it comes to DEIB, compassionate action is even more necessary given companies' long history of lip service with no action behind it. Taking time to reflect on any feedback you hear enables you to process it and decide what action to take. Reflect alone or in a team environment.

Responding too quickly can look like you haven't considered the information's validity or alternative paths. On the other hand, taking too long to reflect and respond could cause apathy. People may forget they even provided feedback in the first place, and the impact of any action diminishes the longer you wait to respond. In short, timely, well-thought-out feedback is critical for maintaining and building trust.

When you respond with your plan, don't overpromise. If you do, you'll break down trust, and it will put too much pressure on you to deliver at a level you may not yet be able to. Caveats to any actions you pursue include not trying to act upon everything, being strategic about what you will focus on, and communicating what you cannot act upon.

Finally, connect the dots by closing the loop on feedback. For example, consider this scenario: A team member provides feedback on a process that is somehow biased, and you realize you need to do something. You hop into action while continuing to consult your team. As you uncover the issue and work to fix it, you keep your team in the loop and continue to involve them in the process. The problem gets resolved, and your team member finally feels heard. You thank the team member for their feedback and tell them the actions that have taken place to completely resolve their issue.

I will never forget a meeting I had with a variety of groups across an organization that I thought was going really well as I asked probing questions and genuinely listened to the experiences of every person across all pay grades. But unfortunately, I ended up uncovering a culture that included microaggressions and language that was extremely hurtful to the employees.

That was the moment I spoke of my intention to help them implement the changes they wanted to see. But one individual said, "I want you to know that we're putting everything in your hands. Make sure that what we're saying gets to the leaders at the top and that something gets done." Those words really resonated with me and offered a timely reminder that many employees feel like their words don't carry weight or will be disregarded.

Many leaders are guilty of virtue signaling, which means they only back an idea to look good in others' eyes. They say the right things for the wrong reasons and seldom follow up with actions to back up their words. Building an inclusive culture at work involves every leader taking the responsibility to listen and give everyone on their team a voice and a say.

The ROI of listening initiatives

Leaders and decision makers often struggle to understand the value of caring and inclusive leadership. They assume it is irrelevant to their role or that any changes they make won't have the impact they would like. Thankfully, attitudes toward DEIB have evolved over the years, and a shift to data-driven decision making has made it much easier for leaders to use numbers to get to the truth.

After reviewing more than 20,000 employee survey comments and facilitating over 100 focus groups and culture team meetings, I can easily prove how DEIB increases employee engagement and retention. But the bottom line is that it creates a more profitable organization.

Someone who I feel was way ahead of the curve in this regard is Garry Ridge, chairman and CEO of the WD-40 Company. In 1997, he faced the kind of employee engagement figures that keep CEOs awake at night. As a result, he instinctively knew that it was his responsibility to build a culture of empowered employees where inclusion and belonging were paramount.

Nearly 25 years ago, creating a leadership team focused on developing a people-first organization was somewhat of a rarity. But Ridge followed his vision and distributed listening surveys to staff. He even worked with a management consulting firm to ensure the surveys were available to employees in seven languages. Decades later, the company famous for selling cans of oil credits dramatically improving its employee engagement and reshaping its organizational culture to increasing its market cap from $300 million to $3.2 billion. By being inclusive even in the rollout of its employee listening surveys, the WD-40 Company sent a clear message to every employee that each individual is important and that they all have a voice worth hearing.

There has been no better time for employers to listen and understand how to create inclusive listening cultures that leave room for flexibility and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Companies must evolve with the changing times and ensure everyone is heard and involved in key decision making so that everyone finds themselves on equal footing.

Listening Is One of Five Key Managerial Skills

The Association for Talent Development developed a management framework, the ACCEL model, to identify the five primary skills that contribute to managerial success.

Accountability: Accountability skills refer to performance management and the delegation of responsibility to direct reports. Managers who are adept at creating a culture of accountability encourage team members to be accountable for self-development and meeting their own development goals.

Collaboration: Collaboration is defined as creating an environment and culture of teamwork (in this case, the team comprises the manager and direct reports). Managers who excel in this skill foster trust and relationships between all team members, clarify team roles, and encourage cooperation toward achieving a common goal. By encouraging trust and relationship building between team members, direct reports can share knowledge with and learn from one another.

Communication: Communication is defined as the exchange of information and feedback between managers and their direct reports. Communication also involves a willingness to engage in three types of conversations with employees: disciplinary, coaching, and praise. Managers who are adept at communication foster a transparent, open, and honest team atmosphere. At the individual level, effective communication—including targeted, actionable feedback—can build awareness and action toward better employee performance.

Engagement: Engagement is defined as motivating, inspiring, and involving one's direct reports. Engaged employees understand their specific role and its importance. By engaging team members, managers will have direct reports who are psychologically committed to their work and who make positive contributions to their own development and the company.

Listening and Assessing: Listening and assessing involves the information-gathering, critical-thinking, and processing skills of a manager during interactions with direct reports. Listening and assessing also encompasses emotional intelligence, which entails recognizing one's own and others' emotions and using emotional information to guide one's behavior and assessments. Managers who are skilled at listening and assessing use these abilities to identify areas of strength and improvement in direct reports.

SOURCE: ACCEL: THE SKILLS THAT MAKE A WINNING MANAGER, ATD