The Next Era of Employee Listening

Employee listening is rapidly expanding beyond traditional engagement and pulse surveys. Organizations are experimenting with new ways to understand the employee experience, including conversational and voice AI, passive and behavioral signals, interviews and qualitative methods, system data, and AI-enabled approaches to synthesizing employee stories at scale. Yet the research needed to guide many of these innovations has not kept pace with practice.

This Research Community Forum will bring together academics and practitioners to explore what the next era of employee listening could look like and the research questions it creates. Participants will examine emerging listening methods, consider how different channels may produce different employee signals, and explore questions of validity, interpretation, context, ethics, and actionability. Through brief case studies, interactive exercises, and facilitated discussion, the Forum will identify gaps in the existing research and create opportunities for research-practice partnerships that can advance the science and practice of employee listening.