When employees at Garner Health share their opinions, leaders listen

• Key Insight: Discover how high-candor employee feedback directly shapes benefits offerings and professional development.
• Supporting Data: Introducing dependent-care FSA — clear lever for parent retention and ROI.
• Expert Quote: Nadia Uberoi: Personal feedback enables valuable, two-way conversations between employees and leaders.
  Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

At healthcare tech platform Garner Health, employees make it known when they require more from their benefits. 

The company's "high-candor culture" prioritizes giving and receiving respectful, straightforward communication and constructive feedback, says Nadia Uberoi, Garner's head of people. Employees feel good about coming forward with what they need, and benefit decision makers gain valuable insight into the most impactful offerings. 

"[Employees] will proactively share what they think the gaps in our packages are, and it is a two-way dialogue, because they're sending me an email personally saying, 'Hey, I think we really need a wellness benefit,' for example," says Uberoi. "Then I can actually respond to them and have a conversation."  

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Uberoi notes that anonymous feedback through the company's pulse and engagement surveys is also an option, but she finds the personal feedback to be more constructive and likely to lead to tangible suggestions. One such dialogue even inspired the upcoming addition of a dependent care FSA, which can be used to offset the costs of daycare and child care expenses. 

"We were thinking about how to make Garner a more parent-friendly environment," she explains. "It's a high-intensity company, we expect a lot of our employees, and someone said, 'Well, if you don't want to change the work expectations, offer a dependent care FSA.' Things like that are really actionable solutions that we may not have otherwise received." 

How high candor impacts other key areas

Garner's inclusive communication style is modeled by leadership, ensuring that people understand how to do it well, and is present from 1:1 conversations to all-hands meetings, Uberoi says. 

It is also an integral part of the company's bi-annual performance reviews. For these, the company uses a 360-degree-feedback method, which includes input from an employee's manager, as well as their peers. Employees list who they would like to receive feedback from, and those people respond to two questions: What does this person do well, and what can they improve upon? 

"Stakeholders could be at any level across the organization," Uberoi says. "Everyone is also required to complete this upward for their manager, to make sure that the feedback is going in all directions, and managers then factor this information into their downward reviews."

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While formal performance reviews for direct reports are not published, the complimentary and constructive peer feedback is uploaded into a spreadsheet and published to the entire company. The goal is to increase accountability, promote transparency as part of the culture, and model effective professional growth. 

"If someone has feedback in a meeting, they should feel free to give it. Everyone has strengths and opportunity areas, and it's normal to help people grow and to point those out," Uberoi says.  "People tend to learn to give and receive feedback better by watching other people do it. Lastly, it really helps everyone to understand Garner's strengths and opportunity areas across the board."

Employees use the feedback for self improvement, and Uberoi and other leaders review the spreadsheets for clues to where the company can incorporate training and further strengthen the skills of its workforce, including its formal culture and manager training programs.

Normalizing better communication across the organization

When accountability and an open line of communication are always present, employees also feel good about advocating for their personal needs with their direct leaders. Garner has a flexible PTO policy, which Uberoi says works because employees feel like they can use what they need and managers are confident that job duties will not be neglected. 

"You have more transparency on both ends, which leads to less ambiguity and anxiety about what you're missing," she says. 

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The same attitude is present in company-wide meetings, where employees can ask questions and open topics for discussion. 

"People feel very comfortable asking questions in those types of public settings, and they might ask something that a bunch of other people were thinking," Uberoi says. Referencing a recent meeting that included engagement survey results, she cites a discussion that was started around the company's vision for work-life balance. "I think [it's] really cool to be able to have that type of dialogue in a company-wide meeting. It feels interactive, and now I have a better sense of how people are feeling about this topic, versus just seeing it in the survey results."