What's the best way to act on employee survey results?

The best way to act on employee survey results is to analyze the data thoroughly, identify key themes and concerns, communicate findings transparently to employees, and collaboratively develop actionable plans to address issues. Prioritize initiatives based on impact and feasibility, involve employees in the implementation process, and consistently track progress. Encourage open dialogue and iterate on solutions to foster a culture of continuous improvement and employee engagement.

A point on sharing the ‘negative’ results: There’s a balance to strike here. It’s important to be transparent and to share the challenging stuff. And your leaders should, of course, be open, vulnerable and ready to challenge themselves. But I’ve seen cases where this morphs into a weird power dynamic, whereby it feels like the company is apologising to employees for the fact that things aren’t perfect. My advice is to own the imperfection and get comfortable with the fact that you’re a work in progress and always will be. (So are your employees). And whenever possible, involve your people. If they’ve told you and shown you there’s an issue, embrace it, frame the challenge with them, and ask for their help. Culture is owned by everyone.

HeartCount clients do this: 1?? Create a curated version of the report for the "public". 2?? Give an official interpretation of the results - invite people to contribute/oppose. 3?? Devise the next steps to address the issues identified. Define timeframes for each initiative with measurable improvements they expect. 4?? Create a clear line of command, as in who is responsible for the execution of activities. 5?? Let employees know how they will participate, and be notified of improvements and lines of communication if they want to report something. 6?? Report on changes regularly, including people and their suggestions. 7?? Celebrate results/address publically lack of results after a deadline for the initiative. (Repeat)

Communication will always be important in employee engagement and listening. Sharing the results, and initiating further conversations already send the message that the people are indeed being heard. From my experience, it's not humanly possible to address each and every concern, so have a key message and be transparent about which drivers and themes we can readily influence. Engagement is not an event. It encompasses the employees' entire experience and as such, communication does not end with sharing survey results. Keep the conversation going - provide actions and updates. More importantly, keep the lines of communication open. Ask, listen, act, and then Repeat.

Make sure leaders are front and centre of sharing the findings, so colleagues are confident that their feedback has reached decision makers. What have they heard and understood? How are they planning to respond? What success do they want to recognise?

"Delving deeper into the survey data is the key to understanding the intricacies of our employees' sentiments. Through meticulous analysis employing segmentation, benchmarking, and cross-tabulation, we aim to uncover the root causes, patterns, and correlations within the feedback. This process allows us to draw meaningful insights from various perspectives—be it across departments, locations, or demographics. Identifying gaps between expectations and perceptions, as well as recognizing the drivers and barriers to engagement, paves the way for targeted improvements that resonate with the unique needs of our diverse workforce."

In your analysis work, it's important to look at the unique experiences of employees with intersecting identities. For example, go beyond comparing the experiences of managers and ICs, by looking at how men and women managers each compare to men and women ICs - just as an example. Of course, at the same time, when reporting any of this data, be mindful about anonymity as some employees have more visible and less represented identities.

I believe this should almost be step one - analyse it, create action plans and then communicate it. Think the three need to be rolled together rather than keeping them separate. There are incredible tools you can use for surveys that do so much of the analysis for you. But the human touch to ensure the clear cross section and really working on the free form answers is key.

When analysing the data,I look first a evolutions (vs last survey results) and more than the rating I pay attention to comments. At last make sure of not only focusing on improvement points but also understanding what are our key drivers and strenghts.

Consider both top-down / organisation-wide actions and bottom up. It can take a while to get the right people in the room to properly consider what should be done at the organisational level, but giving line managers access to their results and encouraging them to discuss them with their teams can lead to quick wins and avoid the feeling that nothing is happening (which means that communicating your plans for taking action alongside high level results is important).

Prioritisation is key. Don't try to do too much. You will get far more credit for doing 2 or 3 things well than by attempting and failing to deliver on a longer list of commitments.

Often times an organization will do this without the input of all employees and I caution that this will lead to failure. Offering small focus groups for employees to provide further insight and suggestions around the keys themes found in a survey is a great place to start. If an area of concern from the survey was employee recognition, there should be several focus group sessions offered to employees around that topic. One framework used in these groups could be the completion of a SWOT analysis related to the concern/topic. from this feedback a leader/champion can be selected to help set the goals and shepherd the work being done to implement the action plans.

the goal-setting process, it is advisable to prioritize issues based on their urgency and importance. Focus on addressing issues that have a widespread impact on employees, significantly influence engagement levels, or are closely aligned with the organization's strategic objectives.

In addition to aligning with your strategic objectives, align your action plans and goals back to your core values and mission as an organization. This is a great opportunity to show how leadership is committed to overall values and not just operational objectives.

I think this is really where the magic happens. Workshops, focus groups, working groups and 121s are key to make the most of an engagement survey. Get your people involved with the changes you're going to make as a result of what you've heard. Find the voices who feel strongly about a specific thing and get them to help make the changes needed for improvement.

The worst thing you can do is to do an engagement survey, and then not make things any different. You must implement, or you'll lose trust, and then actually be worse off than you were before!

The implementation phase, diligent tracking of progress and outcomes is crucial. Key performance indicators and metrics related to engagement, such as employee satisfaction, retention rates, performance levels, and productivity, should be consistently measured and reported on. This ongoing monitoring allows for timely adjustments and ensures that the organization stays on course towards its goals.

When I worked in sport, a common phrase we would throw around was "if it's worth doing, it's worth measuring", highlighting the importance of monitoring interventions that are put in place. I think the reverse is just as true, however, in that "if it's worth measuring, it's worth doing". It is pointless gathering streams of data that will never be actioned. This only adds to everyone's workload: someone has to send the survey out and collate the results, and people have to respond! Both of these take time which, if nothing comes of it, is resource that could have been better deployed elsewhere.

Communicate the action plan, say what you will do and then do it. This is where accountability wins, people know they have been heard and valued. If you're not making progress with the action plan leaders need to engage, resources allocated, effort increased.

In coming up with action plans, we must first acknowledge that there are things beyond our realm of influence. There are engagement drivers, such as freedom of opinion and recognition, that managers can easily influence. However, there are also areas that have to be tackled at higher levels, such as reward. Have managers focus their attention on those drivers that they can influence directly. This does not mean that managers cannot affect org-level drivers though. In the case of Strategy or Reward, communication and providing clarity on these can still be influenced by managers.

Always have a review of any new initiative, sentiment is the first feedback, and then outcome of implementation/ use, take a continuous improvement mindset and don't expect anything to be a 'set and forget'.

I think the key words here are 'evaluating and adjusting'. Far too often, I see organisations using each individual survey as creating an entirely new list of critical actions. An employee listening approach should assess initiatives that you have in progress; allowing course correction rather than refreshing the entire every year (or, worse, after every pulse!)

Don't be afraid to showcase the work that's been done. Communicate regularly on the progress you are making in implementing changes as a result of feedback. Make sure you are tying changes/improvements explicitly back to the feedback so team members are reminded that you take their feedback seriously. Also, tackle things you are not going to do head-on. Explain to folks why you won't be acting on a particular piece of feedback. While they might not like it, they will at least feel acknowledged.

Conducting regular pulse surveys to maintain engagement, health, and productivity levels is vital. Pulse surveys are an efficient and straightforward tool to assess how employees cope with workloads and demands. It also allows them to express their opinions about how management meets their needs.

Employee surveys are important, as they enable businesses to make data-driven decisions from staff feedback. Before launching an employee survey, however, ensure that your leadership team has the capacity to act of the survey results in a timely manner. It is important to solicit feedback from your staff regularly but failing to listen to and act on the feedback will decrease participation rates in future and can potentially lead to survey fatigue with your staff.

Make sure you manage expectations upfront. This happens even before you send your engagement survey. It is important for employees to understand who will see what results/comments, will individual feedback be visible or only aggregated, what the timeline for collection, analysis and delivery of results. Include the what and the when in your communication. Lastly, to ensure people participate, follow up. There is nothing worth than the feeling of "we did that survey a while back but nothing happened after that, no actions where taken", so do act upon the feedback gathered.

Be honest about what you will do and what you won't do. If something has been mentioned that you know you don't have the budget for this year then say it, transparency is key