When Listening Becomes Performative

I have seen it too many times. A long term employee leaves and suddenly leadership wants an investigation, as if the reasons were not already sitting in years of exit interviews. HR becomes the messenger no one really wants to hear. What happens next is not listening. It is theatre.

In an act of desperation, I suggested we send out an eNPS. Maybe numbers would make them listen. Maybe seeing it in a chart would finally matter. The VP agreed, then took the four question survey and turned it into a two page masterpiece of redundancy, full of leading questions designed to flatter.

The response rate was lower than they hoped, and exactly what I expected. The findings mirrored every exit interview before them. When I presented the report, with solutions and clear next steps, it landed with a thud. Nods. Deflections. Justifications. The kind of polite dismissal that says, thank you for your effort, now let us never speak of this again.

Inside the walls, the exercise shifted from improvement to optics. A box checked to pacify the board. Proof that something was being done. The real goal was not change. It was containment. The illusion of listening became the strategy itself.

Meetings are postponed. Weeks pass. Employees ask what is being done. I ask for permission to respond. Silence.

Then another year, another survey, and fewer people even care to participate. They ask, why bother. I have no answer left that feels honest.

That is when I realized I was not in HR anymore. I was in performance management of a different kind, managing the performance of caring without the intent to change.

So I left. Not in anger. In grief. Because pretending to listen is worse than not listening at all.

Real listening costs something. Time. Humility. Ego. If you are not willing to pay that price, do not call it engagement.

Why This Still Matters

Employee surveys are not the problem. They are mirrors. The danger lives in how leadership reacts to what they see. When HR is used to soothe a board instead of tell the truth, trust collapses quietly. First among employees. Then among the ones trying hardest to hold the line.

Listening does not mean collecting data. It means being willing to change because of it.