How do you address and overcome survey fatigue and skepticism among employees?

We had instances where we did 4 surveys and 2 surveys in the same week; both external and I dont see people appreciating. One survey at the end of the year is ideal, learn and put the findings as your goals for next year. We are carried away by other companies and tend to do surveys, control yourself and understand the purpose.

Many surveys are a result of legacy satisfaction/engagement programs and are in need of a major overhaul and enhancement. Having an employee listening strategy and roadmap that aligns to the business and workforce strategy overall is critical to deciding the what when and how of listening-including how to leverage innovations in listening, including shorter, more focused surveys that drive expanded KPIs beyond engagement, like well being and inclusion for example. Also adding passive listening from both internal and external sources of unstructured feedback can be leveraged to reduce total reliance on structured feedback and fatigue, yet always be listening to what employees are saying and issues being raised.

In my experience, giving some forethought to combining insights from the survey with other business insights e.g. turnover trends, DEI actions and business results, helps frame the value of this work to leaders and employees. 1 reaction

Fewer, focused surveys and more action on the results! It may help to start with a longer survey to help look for correlations and uncover issues. Then pick the most crucial topics from there for follow up.

I would replace ‘communication & follow up’ with ‘action’. If the results of every survey lead to clear actions, then there will be no survey fatigue. Asking for input from your people requires a clear mandate to 1) truly listen to what they are saying 2) take action to address issues that have been raised

Following-up is key! If employees know the company and their managers will consider and act upon their feedback, they will be more likely to share their thoughts and opinions on a more consistent basis. If no actions are taken or communicated, then employees will be less likely to take surveys in the future.

Agree with previous, but one nuance is in addition to comm and planned actions, be clear what actions will be taken right away/now, next qtr/next, and what will not be changing and rational for why. Not all suggestions will necessarily be implemented in the next budget or cycle and that should be communicated as well. Be real and transparent about how much change can be accomplished.

Yes, beware of emphasizing the completion rate too much. Often it can seem like management values that metric more than the actual feedback submitted. It becomes a celebration of compliance to a leadership initiative which can be disengaging. #HybridRemoteExcellence

When incentivizing employees, it's important to emphasize that the incentive is for employees to take the survey to provide their honest feedback and that the incentive isn't for employees to rate the company higher. Otherwise employees might feel like the survey is a check the box exercise and that management doesn't really care about their feedback as long as the numbers align.

At the design stage its critical to ensure that insights will lead to action at the team level and at the enterprise level. Lack of clear expectations can lead to confusion and inaction.

Recognize as an employer that this years survey will be reflected, in part, during NEXT years survey. Too many people think you do a survey, get your answers change some stuff, and by next Tuesday everyone will be engaged. It doesn't work that way!!! A truly engaged culture in an organization is like a habit built up over months (years) of a company demonstrating a desire to build just such an organization. There is no quick fix super highway to an engaged company culture. We need to build a plan, involve our employees in that planning, and when things get challenging we need to stay the course. Because in my opinion an organization with a truly engaged culture is always more equipped to succeed in good times and bad.