Five top tips for employee survey success!

Employee Voice is one of the four key drivers of employee engagement, which is why an Employee Survey makes a great starting point to understand your engagement baseline.

They are a useful tool to gather data on how engaged your people are and what is and isn’t working so you know where you need to focus your attention for continued business success.

There are a wide range of survey tools available, in fact a new industry has been created around them!  The Best Employers Eastern Region is an established employee survey that is completely free to businesses in the East and if you like an Award, there is also an opportunity to enter the Awards Categories!

Below are my five top tips when implementing a survey!

1. Establish a clear objective– In the early planning stage, ensure you are clear about why you are conducting the survey and how you are going to use the results.  These objectives should be developed by the management team and clearly communicated to employees to demonstrate the importance of the survey.

Ask yourself:What does the business hope to achieve and what are the implications for business performance? What does a successful survey look like?

2. Develop a communication plan - Prepare a comprehensive communication plan to support each stage of the survey. The plan should include an agenda of communication events. It’s critical that you think about how you are going to reach all employees (particularly important if all your employees don’t have an email address).

Ask yourself: Who is going to prepare and implement the communication plan? When should these messages be communicated?  How will you reach all employees?

3. Engage Managers and Team Leaders– It is essential that you have ‘buy-in’ from line managers and that they understand the reasons for the survey, this is so they can act as ambassadors or champions and encourage their teams to complete the survey.  In fact to ensure a high response rate develop a network of champions at all levels of your business to promote the value of the survey.

Ask yourself: What are you going to do to ensure line managers understand the importance and ROI of engaged teams?  How are you going to support your line managers?

4. Ensure a high response – You need a good response rate to ensure tangible data.  Make it a priority that your workforce know the survey is 100% anonymous (make sure it is!). Ensure your people know why you are doing the survey, how you’re going to feedback to them and what’s in it for them.

Ask yourself: How are you going to build trust and communicate the anonymity of the survey?  How are you going to communicate what you will do with the results? 

5. Results –The quickest way to disengage your workforce is by not feeding back the results or taking any action.  Ensure confidence in the survey process by providing swift feedback and by celebrating success and addressing areas of concern.  Take two or three drivers that will impact on employee engagement in your business and create a collaborative action plan with your management team and employee champions.  Make sure this is embedded in to the business and you provide updates at regular intervals. 

Ask yourself: How are you going to feedback? What can you do to ensure your success continues and what can you do to address your challenges?

 By addressing the top tips above, you will engage both managers and employees in the survey process. Done right you will start a powerful journey of employee engagement which embraces ‘Employee Voice’.

Good luck!