Receiving feedback from workers: To create unique competitive advantage that no one can replicate

5 min read

There are many effective ways to receive feedback from employees and turn suggestions into simple, non-imposing but highly encouraging actions, helping to improve business efficiency

Source: The LEADER

Putting people at the center

In the context of an increasingly volatile and fiercely competitive global economy, the trend of putting people at the center of human resource management is becoming a key factor in many organizations.

Businesses are not only focusing on profits but also on building a sustainable work environment where employees are encouraged to develop both professionally and personally. This trend reflects a shift from traditional approaches to a management model that values human capital and corporate culture.

Speaking at the Master Class 3 seminar within the framework of the announcement ceremony for the Great Place to Work in Vietnam 2024 rankings, Ms. Uyên Trương, HR Director of Fashion Garments, stated that many businesses are pursuing the philosophy of putting people at the center, with each company having different approaches.

At Fashion Garments, a company under the multinational Hirdaramani Group from Sri Lanka, the difference lies in the mindset of wanting to create breakthroughs, being willing to take risks, and effectively investing in high-quality human resources, including programs that not many corporations invest in.

For example, this company implements retraining or sends all office management staff back to ‘school’ at high costs over a long period. They prioritize training, accepting short-term benefit reductions to aim for long-term gains.

Besides training and retraining activities, Fashion Garments also strives to continuously listen to employees’ opinions through programs such as Town Hall (monthly collective dialogue activities), Employee Forum (activities dedicated to employees for socializing and entertainment), with the participation of leaders, managers, unions, and employees. These activities are adopted by many businesses to help employees and management connect and understand each other better.

‘Placing people at the center is the core philosophy of the Hirdaramani Group, with over 125 years of development and three decades of presence in Vietnam,’ said the HR Director of Fashion Garments, a company recently honored as one of the top great place to work in Vietnam 2024.

Digitizing the process of receiving employee feedback

Ms. Uyên also noted that for listening to truly become a core value, there needs to be a breakthrough in thinking and actions that challenge the status quo.

This is also the basis for Fashion Garments to proactively digitize the process of collecting employee feedback with the initiative ‘We share, We care".

Over the past year, the software has continuously gathered feedback, sharing, exchanges, concerns, and desires from more than 10,000 employees on various issues. Technology allows the company to receive feedback immediately, process information, and respond quickly to employees.

Ms. Uyên stated that within just one year, the company has received much more accurate and relevant information compared to many previous years when only using suggestion boxes, mail, email, or hotlines.

Before this initiative, Fashion Garments had also implemented the KNOW program by Respect Vietnam to bridge the gap in legal knowledge and internal working regulations between individuals and teams in the shortest time, saving costs while effectively improving quality.

Specifically, through lean thinking, systems thinking, and critical thinking training programs, employees can design and digitize internal regulations and international standards using images, characters, and color codes (infographics), making them simple, easy to understand, yet systematic and minimizing errors and misunderstandings that often occur with extensive writing.

As a result, instead of having to read a lot of documents and attend many training classes, workers can quickly and fully understand which regulations are allowed, which are not, and what specific penalties they will face if they violate them. More importantly, whenever needed, they can easily access the website to look up regulations, extract visual information, and exchange and self-study together.

According to a study by Respect Vietnam over a period of 5 years (2012 - 2017) involving more than 100 export processing enterprises with a workforce of 150,000 employees, this effort can help reduce up to 50% of employee feedback on issues related to regulations, processes, and internal production and business quality, mainly including inquiries, questions, and requests for clarification.

This will allow businesses to focus on the remaining 50%, which are systemic issues, unresolved issues, or existing problems that have not been addressed.

This is an important step for Fashion Garments to proactively digitize the process of collecting employee feedback.

Ms. Dang Thi Hai Ha, the founder of Respect Vietnam, noted that although the initiative is good, its success will require very special efforts as it originates from the proactive actions of the business.

In reality, these efforts are only applied when FDI enterprises are required by international customers as one of the mandatory standards or voluntarily but as a basis for social responsibility for the enterprise to meet the conditions for processing and exporting.

Feedback to create an inimitable corporate culture.

In the near future, Ms. Uyên stated that Fashion Garments will implement the initiative ‘We Know, We Grow’ or ‘We Learn, We Earn’ to enhance the effectiveness of feedback reception through the quality of input from the employees within the company.

In this initiative, employees can play a larger role in proposing practical ideas, feasible initiatives, pilot initiatives that may fail, and ultimately, the minimum viable product (MVP) applied within the company.

According to Ms. Hà, receiving feedback originates from the iceberg management model discovered in the 90s. The opinions of the lowest level employees, if used correctly, can provide a significant amount of information and knowledge at the bottom of the iceberg, identifying and addressing risks that, if only viewed from the surface, would be difficult to reflect the internal capabilities before making major decisions often influenced from the outside.

Receiving feedback in Vietnamese culture still occurs but is difficult to put into practice because Vietnamese people often view this issue from a negative perspective.

However, if feedback serves as a solid foundation and basis for individuals and teams to come up with practical ideas and feasible initiatives, it will become a useful product for the business itself.

‘This is an important cultural foundation that can only be replicated internally but cannot be copied outside the business, and it is also a weapon to identify the brand and unique competitive advantage,’ emphasized Ms. Hà.

Efforts to promote the ‘COM’ including Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation from a business perspective will help encourage and promote internal innovation, turning feedback and innovation into important resources. These resources not only serve social responsibility but also are important tools for businesses to turn feedback into direct, simple actions that are not imposing but full of encouragement, helping to improve business efficiency.

“And above all, feedback and creativity will become a repository of knowledge, maintained and developed through many generations, especially for businesses with a long history of operation” said the founder of Respect Vietnam.

After the representative of Fashion Garments shared the story, many business leaders also expressed their desire to join hands to transform industrial zones, factories, and workshops, often labeled as “low working conditions,” into new hubs of innovation.

Source: The LEADER