1584: Digital Ethnography for Real Employee Engagement with Dean Browell & Rich Salon

Robert Plank 0:00 Hey, we're here, we're back on the show with return guest, Mr. Rich Salon, and new special guest Dean-Browell, who is the founder, co-founder of discoverfeedback.com, who introduced a new way to turn ethnographic research and deep social listening into actionable results. We're talking about analyzing unprompted human behavior across digital environments, and what does all that mean? It means that organizations like yours can uncover meaningful insights that drive smarter decisions, stronger engagement, and improved outcomes across a wide range of industries, like healthcare, higher education, workforce development, and beyond. It's an exciting time to be alive with AI and everything connected together, and so on. So, Mr. Dean and Mr. Rich will educate us about what maybe is at our disposal that we just aren't using yet, and how we can plug some of this into our organization. So, how you guys doing? Doing great.

Rich Salon 1:00 Awesome, thanks for having us, Robert.

Dean Browell 1:01 Thanks for having us. Robert,

Robert Plank 1:03 happy to have you. So, so, mr. Dean, you're the man, the myth of the hour. What are this.. what's Discover Feedback all about, and what did I leave out of this introduction about you?

Dean Browell 1:14 Yeah, no, it was great. I would say, you know, we're a research firm that really relies on one technique, and that's what people say unprompted, and taking that seriously. So, we're using anthropologists to look at online listening, but more than that, I think it's the - it's being the antithesis of what people usually use, right? They're very reliant on surveys, and hopeful, you know, fingers crossed that people are answering them honestly, that even the right people are answering them, for that matter, and instead kind of ignoring all this behavior that's out there that's already being given unprompted, and I think also knowing that that could be affecting other other folks listening and watching as well, and that's where you know Rich and I have done a lot of work and a lot of talking around today's workforce, right, and like the state of employee engagement. Well, it's both that recruitment, that retention standpoint, and the recruitment side, and what prospective employees are seeing too.

Robert Plank 2:13 Very cool. And when I was talking with Rich, I always just have a lot of fun thinking about the nuances of communication, right. And when there's, there's, uh, I need to get to my goal, my objective. I need to ask questions, need to get the answers I'm looking for. But if you're, if you don't put a little bit of thought into it, then, like you said, you're asking the wrong people, or you're asking the questions in the wrong way, and it's, it's a lot of fun to think about, right? Like, can I ask this question in a better way, or can I ask that question first, or can I put this beginning part at the end? It's kind of just, I don't know, it kind of engages the mind somewhat. And you mentioned about, like, anthropology, and I'm thinking, like, man, when you think about that, you're thinking about studying, like, Australopithecus and primates and apes and Jane Goodall, and so when we hear that word, that's where that goes, but can you explain some of this? Just like ethnography and anthropology, like

Dean Browell 3:06 the internet, like the

Robert Plank 3:09 opposite.

Dean Browell 3:10 No, that's a great point, and part of it is taking behavior seriously, and nobody takes behavior more seriously than an anthropologist. So, ethnography, actually, more people probably know about ethnography than they probably know the name. It's basically just means observation, you know? I mean, that's where the secret shoppers of the world came from. The idea was to watch someone buy something and learn about, oh, this is, they picked up this many objects, you know, this is what they went to the register with, you know. The idea of just observing people in their natural habitat, I mean, there still are traditional ethnographers. They'll go to your house and say, you know, watch, where do you keep the vitamins in your kitchen, or do you keep them in the bathroom? The idea is to see somebody in their natural environment. Well, we basically said, why can't we take that and look at how people are talking to one another, resourcing themselves, looking for new jobs, talking about their current jobs online, and take that behavior seriously, and pull out those key themes. You know, what are people saying? What are they talking about? So, you know, it's a lot of big words, but what it really means is taking that, that unprompted behavior. You know, what are people saying in the wild seriously? And just to say it, I think you need both, you need that quant, you know that what people are saying in a survey, but the other thing is you want to know is, hey, that that new employee doesn't see the results of your survey, they see what everyone has been talking about, what it's like to work there, so it's, you know, just taking that behavior seriously, and you know, there's nobody better to do that than an anthropologist who are, who's really going to, you know, follow all the rabbit trails and find out where people are talking and what they're saying,

Robert Plank 4:46 that's fun, so you're taking the, the data, the numbers, but also the stories, the observations, it's like you visit the zoo, you see, see them in a natural environment, and it's fun to think about, because. Because like I used to do like software, and you know, taking out the bugs, that's no fun, but then when you think about like the architecture or the way things are presented, or do I have this menu there, the button there, like that's more fun, and there's been so many times when I've been been even say like on a sales call, right, I'll be on a Zoom, and maybe I'll screen share with someone, like see their screen, and they're even going to my website, and I kind of cringe, and like, oh, well, that link that's over there should have been bigger, or it should have been more obvious that they should go over it, and like scroll down to that, and it's like sometimes we get, we get smacked across the head, don't we, when we like think, oh well, that's perfectly makes perfect sense that my menu's there, or that my cash register is there, but when we see just the average person go through the process, even one time, we're just like, I already see, like, four ways to improve.

Dean Browell 5:48 I mean, that you're talking about, like, user experience, and I think that's, you know, even when we talk about whether it's the employee or the consumer, but it's about just understanding what is their actual experience, right? Like, and yeah, you're right, I mean, exactly. How do you design, and one of my favorite things is just like language, you know? When someone's talking about the best thing about you, how do they describe it? Not how you describe it, how would they describe it? What's the path? What's the journey they take to get there? And that's yeah, Rich, Rich, and I've had tons of conversations around that, especially around the sort of the current state of employee engagement, right? Like, and just this idea of, like, where are we at in terms of how we make decisions, you know, on that, and is it.. have we been in a kind of an obtuse box for a long time, partly because of surveys, and partly because we kind of don't pay attention to all this behavior that's sitting right out there to be, to be, you know, chewed on, and can be used to make decisions,

Robert Plank 6:44 and it's kind of magical, isn't it? Like they talk about mirroring people's language back to them, like you see what's the key words or the phrases, or how do they put things in it. It might be way different than the way I think about it, but if I just say, "Hey, I'm I'm speaking their language, it seems like everybody wins that way, right? Because you're talking to them and it's, it's familiar, and it connects, versus you like maybe being a little bit outdated in the way that you speak, but I feel like we're leaving you out of the conversation here, Rich. I feel bad, it's the Robert and Dean show. What are your thoughts on all this

Dean Browell 7:15 word and edgewise with deeds?

Rich Salon 7:18 Typically, Dean and I had these robust conversations that rarely go under 90 minutes because of our passions around employee sentiment, employee engagement. So, the state of employee engagement in 2025 the expert told us that 31% of the United States workforce were actively engaged in their job, so that leaves the other 69 who are just disengaged or actively disengaged, and 31 point percent is alarming. It mirrored the prior year, and but it's only down from a peak of 36% engaged around 2000 However, the number one gage within organizations from an America data point standpoint is this employee opinion surveys, and it's typically a set of, you know, 5060 statements that each team member responds to, and then it rolls up by department, you know, region, company overall, and those in those reads are often 65% so a company says, okay, well, so 65% of our workforce is is actively engaged in work, that's pretty good. Well, you got to go back to third, got to go back to 31 So, how is it that the reality is 31% but companies are getting a 65% rate. Unfortunately, a lot of employees, they don't believe their survey responses are discrete, they don't believe their responses are not being seen by their direct supervisor. So many of them are sugar coated. Many are pencil whipping, because it's the same survey that's done every 12 months or every 18 months. It really gives a false read. The other two venues to get senior leadership feedback is, you know, send employee relations and human resource members out like myself, I've spent 10s of 1000s of hours on my feet talking to team members, supervisors, if it's the warehouse floor or the retail store floor or the receiving dock, spend a lot of time talking to managers, and these are team members at all levels, they may be meeting me for the first time, they may got the chance to maybe on on several occasions over a couple of years, and they're giving me feedback on, you know, what they like and what they wish were were different, but are they, is that information they're providing filtered, you. Yeah, I think typically it is filter again concerned with getting back to their boss, and then lastly given their boss direct feedback about how they feel about their employment experience. How real is that? So, unfortunately, there's a fear of the boss potentially retaliating against them or treating them differently because they offer some constructive feedback, so the information that regional leadership, corporate senior leadership is getting, it's not the, it's not, it's not the best, it's, it's all they have today until I, you know, I've thanks to Dean's help discovered the tool of digital ethnography, which is, which are, you know, employees are speaking their, their mind, they're not, and they're speaking their mind in a digital platform, not in front of their boss, and the in the information that Dean's team collects, it's, it's, it's, it's invisible to the, to the employee, so it doesn't create any distractions, you know, within the organization, it's just frankly, it's, it's far superior data points and information, and it's not just the what, it's the why. So, with the anthropologists and the experts within, within discover feedback, it's absolutely amazing. Because conventional reporting, the boss telling the story, HR telling the story, then server telling the story, you're only getting the what with digital lithography, you're getting the what, and you're getting the why, and the why is critical. So this really has opened up a whole new ball game. It's like, boy, I wish I had this this tool, and I was help building leading companies like Home Depot, Lowe's, Penske Circuit City. Oh, I would have, oh, would have been wonderful. We could have done, we could have done so much better, you know. And helping our position in the, in the, in the marketplace at the same time, because a lack of engagement spells a lack of productivity, which results in a lack of profits, is what it is.

Robert Plank 12:21 And what does this look like, like, as far as collecting the data? You say things like it's, it's done invisibly, like, how was the data collected?

Dean Browell 12:31 Yeah, that's your question. Yeah, it's so the, the short answer is, and this is one thing that's kind of interesting about it, it's a qualitative research technique. So, so, point is, where we want to know what the stories and the verbatims are, so we're looking at, you know, even something as simple as, like, TikTok, we're not just looking at the video, we're looking at the comments, and so every time we're seeing these comments and someone self-identifies as, you know, whatever we're looking for again with an employee with a consumer, whoever it is, we're coding that data, so we're taking that, you know, that comment. We're saying, okay, this is here's the demographic, and we're coding for demographic or geographic, or if they're talking about a particular facility. And so, even though we're getting that qualitative, you know, that rich qualitative data, we're also, I mean, we start talking about coding 1000s of behaviors, we get quantitative too. So we're literally collecting it ostensibly by hand, right, and like putting it into a database, but then we're able to illustrate, even you know, quantitatively, hey, here's, here's all the themes we're seeing, you know, here's how people are talking about, here's people are unhappy, you know, even basic sentiment, unhappy versus happy, right, like what's their biggest gripes, what's their biggest wins, and things that they love, right? You know, could be made. It's maybe it's your mission, maybe it's because gripe is middle management, but not the administration. Like, we believe them, but we don't believe these folks, and it's.. it can get real, real interesting. But the idea is that we, you know, like Jane Goodall, we don't touch the monkeys. This isn't about prompting anyone. We want to see what are people saying without, without us prompting anything. So, it is just what's publicly available. We're pulling all that in, we're sorting it. We're also accounting for trolls, you know, and bots, you know, people who are just, you know, just posting over and over again, and not so that we can kind of separate the signal from the noise. It's not just about the squeakiest wheels, really getting a great idea of what's the real sentiment out there.

Robert Plank 14:25 You make it sound like so much fun, and it can be, and I think that, especially on.. and I don't know if this.. there's just more of this, or if it's the algorithm showing me more, but lately, the past couple of months, especially, I've seen so many charts and graphs on things they say things like, well, there's this about the economy, or here's this social issue in 1973 compared to today, and it's just, it like engages my brain in ways that, like, reading the boring words don't, and it's, and you have to wonder if, like, because of AI, and you can like. Iterate through all these 1000s of comments and like kind of, you know, assemble the word cloud and figure out the sentiment. It's like it's pretty cool, right? That we can just like take all these mountains of data and like draw conclusions and say, hey, you know, you wouldn't have noticed this looking at like 10 or 50 records, but in the aggregate, because it's sifted through like 10s of 1000s, it's like, hey, you know, here's, here's what Home Depot is doing, right? Or here's, you know, this kind of like you said, like they don't trust the higher ups, so here's some kind of like hidden problem that was only uncovered because we looked at the data so much, and it can be fun just to figure out, like, the surprising conclusions we arrive at, and so I'm curious about some of that, of the discover feedback being used in the field. So, do you have any fun story to share with us about just like some kind of surprise that came about your research?

Dean Browell 15:53 Oh, yeah, I mean, I, you know, just a couple quick ones. Number one, that actually ties to something rich that you think about the fact that you do these employee surveys, right? And your survey may be, are you satisfied in your job, you know, or how satisfied are you? And it's like, you know, five pips from very to not very well. If you get, and we had a client with a major hospital, I'll just say in New York State, that we worked with, and they were like, look, our employee surveys have been trending down into not very satisfied for a long time. The problem is, you all you know is that they're not satisfied. You have no idea why you have no color to that at all. All you know is that it's going down. And they were a great example, where they, I mean, I'm flat out what they said, is look, we've been watching this for a couple of years now, and all we know is that there's a fire, we have no idea where in the house the fire is, you know, we have no idea, and so that's where we were able to really bring out, hey, in particular, it's these moves that were done that they're still talking about, you know, that you're messaging this, actually Robert, you made this point earlier that we found the company was messaging past them, you know, they kept using this language that was exactly the language that ticked them off in the very first place. The other one I would say, too, is we did, we did some work for a company where we pointed out, hey, we think it has had to do with pharmacy. We pointed out that pharmacists were incredibly unhappy, and in this particular couple of companies, in particular, we said, look, we think there's going to be a walkout. We sent that report in one year before the largest walkout in that company's history of their pharmacists. CEO was fired a month later. We didn't predict it. All we did was listen to what was already. They planned this whole thing out on Reddit, on you know, on social, but it's a great example of just even just doing a little bit of listening is in, could give you an incredible insight and make it seem like you predicted things, but even more than that, it could prepare you for things that are just happening underneath your nose out loud in public, you know, but if you're just staring at the same thing you're always used to staring at, and I should, you know, something I haven't mentioned, I should definitely point out it's not always bad news, you know. I think there's a, there's a feeling like, well, employees are talking online, it's always negative, that is absolutely not true, but even when they're talking positively, knowing what it is that makes them happy, that's gold, right? Like, if you find we did work for a company in the Midwest, and one of the things we pointed out then was people are talking about the fact that they don't even care that they're making less than they would at your competitor, because when they work for you, they know they're working for this mission they believe in, man, that is like a back of the box of the movie quote, right? Like, and to be able to have those verbatims and show that, and like, in largesse, that's something that probably wouldn't show up, even if you'd know, okay, they're marking satisfied, but to know why, that's huge, right? And that gives you, it gives you some things to hang on, and like be able to actually move on.

Robert Plank 19:01 Yeah, listening is an underrated skill, isn't it? In the micro and the macro sense, that there's like person to person, but there's also what people say about you, and again, you're giving me flashbacks to, like, even, like, you know, I'm a super small business myself, I'm 10 employees, and even when I was just like one employee, and it was just me, when even when I was like a teenager, I'd go on the message boards, because the internet was small enough, where like people would talk about, they didn't call it a personal brand, then, but people would talk about you, and I think someone said that what they liked about me at the time was like the systematizing the template nature, I'm like, cool, I'll lean into that, right? If someone is saying, hey, unprompted, here, here's what I like about Dean Bravo and feedback, then it doesn't always have to be bad. It's like, hey, if people are saying this about me, I hadn't even noticed, and why not amplifier? If I'm doing it well on accident, imagine how well I'll be doing it on purpose.

Dean Browell 19:59 Oh, I mean. You absolutely, I mean, you're 100% correct. And what's funny is, I think for as big as the internet has gotten, it's gotten small again in a way, because now you've got Reddit threads that are just for a small town, you've got Reddit threads that are just about what is it like to work at this place in this facility specifically. So what's funny is it's kind of gotten small again, and people want to hear. I mean, again, think about one thing we haven't talked about is like the prospective employee, right? That's like, hey, I'm thinking about applying there. What's it like to work there? Getting in a discussion with people who work there, man, you should want to know what are people, what are people answering? You know, what questions are people asking, and who's answering? That would tell you an awful lot about how you know what, what you could be doing better, and even more than that, how you're going to retain folks and drag folks.

Robert Plank 20:47 Ooh, and I can see why you kind of matched up with Rich with the human resources aspect, and those Redditors talking about sometimes I'll join many of them just for fun, like what are the all the Starbucks employees have to say, what do all the Amazon Flex drivers have to say? Just because it's like it's my own peek into the world, and some of the craziness that happens, and it's like I'm not sure I'd want to like live that, but just to kind of see what happens. It's fun to hear about the adventures, but then if someone was like pursuing that as a career, it's a fun peeking of that sort of thing, like, you know, you know, these people that they kind of go up through, like, the, like, the hamburger and McDonald's University, for example, and it's like, oh, that's a whole other, like, world, like, I'm, I would be afraid to even know about, but if someone says that's my, my mission, then they can just kind of do all this red editing research, but then if it's all this bad stuff being said, then that is kind of a search engine optimization, so to speak, problem to be solved, right? You see, like, where it, like, your rankings are low, kind of, in a sense, and people are saying bad stuff, so why doesn't your organization clean it up? So when they do go and peek at what do all the Starbucks or McDonald's employees have to say it's all good things for the new hires in the future? What a concept. And so, man, I feel like we could talk about this all day, and I'm starting to understand the Dean and Rich kind of the 90 minute minimum conversation. But since the podcast, we want people to know more. We only have a few minutes left, so in this conversation we're having, do you think there might be a missing question that I could be asking either of you, but I just don't know to ask that question.

Rich Salon 22:29 You know what I would say is, what is what is the next big gift from human resources to American businesses, and I'll tell you the last major gift HR, my world gave to American business was the invention of employee engagement. It was around 2002, and at the same time we gave them the opinion survey to help measurement. That's the last greatest thing that the business has gotten, I think, the digital ethnography to understand not only the what, but the why of how your employees are feeling. I think it's, I think it's the next, I think it's the next big thing. I think it's gonna be the next holy grail on what we can give to the to the business. So that's it. My mind,

Dean Browell 23:20 I'd 100% agree, and I would just go one even one step further. Say, you know, if you're especially if you're listening, you're saying, well, but I'm in this industry where I'm all about attracting and retaining fluid engineers, or electrical, you know, some real narrow.. you'd be shocked how there's a.. there's a separate message board just for engine electrical engineers who work on a particular kind of, you know, so it gets super, super narrow, no matter how, whether you're talking about, you know, a hamburger university or a specific kind of engineer. These, these spaces out there, and they're talking and they're talking about what it's like to work somewhere

Robert Plank 23:59 Very cool. And how do we tap into this, like you have this, the software I understand, or this tool, or like, where does your company fit into solving this problem?

Dean Browell 24:09 Yeah, we do projects all the time for folks, and then we also do a lot of ongoing, where, hey, maybe every quarter or once a year, we're updating, you know, we could do a big baseline study of where you and where your competitors are at, and how the employees are talking, and then say, okay, let's, let's keep that fresh, right, and keep watching those trends on a quarterly basis, for example. So, yeah, absolutely, discoverfeedback.com feel free to reach out, we're happy to sketch how we approach something.

Robert Plank 24:35 Very nice, discoverfeedback.com And what are the requirements for this? Like, is there a certain.. like, I know you say there's different industries, but like, should they be a certain company size, certain industry looking to solve a certain problem? How does someone know if they're a right fit?

Dean Browell 24:49 I.. so I wouldn't say there's an industry, as any industry, honestly. I would say from a size perspective, you make.. you'd really, especially if you have multiple sites. Whether that's franchises, whether that's facilities, whatever the words you're nationwide, I'd say the more complexity you're going to get, even more out of it, right? Because you're probably approaching things in a much more inch, inch wide, you know, inch deep, mile wide, so more complexity the better. But there's definitely not an industry, you know, I think any, any, it can apply to any industry, for sure.

Robert Plank 25:24 Very cool, and it's definitely important and timely, isn't it? Because we live in a data world, you hear about how, I mean, Facebook made billions of dollars just because of data. You hear about Amazon and all the data centers, it's time for your company to get caught up, especially if you're still stuck in that 2002 milestone. You say, "Hey, employee engagement is a great place to be, but what do we have next? What's the next step for the modern era? And we can find out more about that by going to discoverfeedback.com. They combine proprietary technology, behavioral research, and expert analysis to show you how audiences make decisions, develop trends, and engage with your brand, so that way you can go beyond surveys and tap into some of the data science innovations of the last couple of decades. What a concept. So, Discover feedback.com is the place to go. Before I let you guys go, I need one last little tidbit, one last little prize, which is to get a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you, so that way we can end by thinking about some next steps. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson from you guys?

Rich Salon 26:36 I'm going to give you two, okay? Because this is the second time on your show, Robert, number one is never settle for pretty good. Settling for pretty good does not cut it. And the other one is, how would your life feel if every day, if every single day felt like a hot date? Go for,

Rich Salon 26:58 go

Rich Salon 26:59 for, don't hold back.

Dean Browell 27:01 Yep, so I would say this is a quote my dad used to always say, is luck favors the prepared mind, but look, I would build on that and say prepared and informed mind,

Robert Plank 27:13 Very cool, it's a lot to think about to help us solve those problems and get to that next step, and we can go to discoverfeedback.com to educate ourselves about how we can solve this problem, and how we can make our business work a heck of a lot better, stay ahead of the competition, and so much more. So, discoverfeedback.com they have solutions built for clarity, no matter the industry. They translate the lived experiences of your audiences into tactical changes, so go out there, get educated, and make some changes. Discover feedback.com, and thanks for the return trip, Mr. Rich. And nice to meet you, Mr. Dean. I'm really glad that you guys stopped by and educated and entertained us. So, thank you.

Dean Browell 27:54 You bet. Thanks so much for having a great beer.

Rich Salon 27:55 Thank you, Robert.

Robert Plank 27:57 Heck yeah.