EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
“ Influence stems less from authority and more from a leader’ s ability to empower their teams”
Leena Rinne VP of Leadership, Business and Coaching Solution Skillsoft
workforce. For OneAdvanced Chief People Officer, Katie Obi, data is“ essential as organisations scale”, yet she notes that capacity doesn’ t always allow businesses to talk individually to every person across the company.
“ Data informs us on what is working, what is not and how strongly correlated things may be,” she tells HR Chief Magazine.
“ Listening data, however, is only a signpost. The root cause of any issue is diagnosed through further fact gathering and conversations exploring the topic. This helps differentiate between an opinion and a systemic issue, and action taken on the right things builds trust that things will be acted upon.
Leena agrees with this sentiment, explaining that, to ensure leaders are genuinely listening to their employees, organisations must“ move beyond intent” to“ embed listening into everyday practice”.
To do so, she suggests encouraging open dialogue within teams and creating environments where employees feel comfortable speaking up.
“ Listening must be visible,” she notes.“ Leaders need to demonstrate how employee input informs decisions and outcomes. Establishing clear feedback loops and holding leaders accountable for responding to what they hear helps ensure that listening is not performative but consistent.”
Katie adds:“ The discipline HR readers need to build isn’ t better surveys; it’ s building an organisation that understands how to diagnose root causes and how to have better conversations.”
Organisations that can identify the root causes of miscommunications are a massive step forward. However, even the most sophisticated diagnosis won’ t be accurate if the symptoms are being misreported. In reality, this“ filtering” that happens between levels is often the biggest hurdle to genuine organisational change.“ In my experience, feedback gets watered down when the people passing it up aren’ t fully listening, don’ t understand what they’ re hearing, or fear it will reflect poorly on them,” Katie says.“ None of those are fixed by better channels.
104 June 2026