Leadership and Management Best Practices to Increase Employee Willingness to Share Views

Increasing employees' willingness to share their views can improve the flow of information to leaders and support informed decisionmaking. We describe insights from our 2016 evaluation that assessed employees' willingness to share their views about large financial institution supervision activities.

We outline root causes that contribute to employees' reticence to speak up, such as the perception that management won't act on their views or the fear of retaliation during the performance management process.

To address the root causes for employee reticence to share, leaders can follow best practices, such as

• soliciting viewpoints regularly
• modeling a willingness to challenge up the chain of command
• recognizing employees who speak up
• explaining the rationale for decisions
• acknowledging their own mistakes

Monitoring progress on these efforts—through employee surveys, for example—can help ensure that they're effective.