You’ve been researching Employer Branding; you’ve put together your plans and taken the first steps to building your employee value proposition. You’ve completed your Employee Engagement Survey and now you’ve got feedback! That’s great. Now what? Where do you go from here?
The survey is just the start. Here are five ways an organization can ensure that the engagement survey becomes the jumping off point for action.
1. Be Transparent.
As Transparency becomes a necessary skill for all leaders, it’s important to consider the question of “How transparent are you?”
If your employees have taken the time to complete the survey and share their feedback, they naturally have an interest in the outcome. It is important to share the findings with them. Don’t worry that the findings are not positive; your employees already know – that’s why they told you – sharing that feedback will not impact morale. Hiding that feedback will.
Employees are looking to the organization to come forward and show how they value the feedback and are motivated to make changes, with the employees’ help. The transparency allows for faster problem identification and resolution, and results in more genuine engagement throughout the organization.
2. Don’t Make Assumptions.
Good questions often leave you with more questions than they do answers. Employee engagement surveys can do the same. Rarely, is additional research NOT required after an employee engagement survey is done.
If scores are low in a certain dimension, for example the feedback is that the performance management process is not fair, this by itself, will not give you enough information to decide how the performance management process should be changed. What it can do is highlight the areas that require further investigation. These areas can be a great way to involve employee stakeholders in workgroups to do the additional fact finding. This brings us nicely to the third principle:
3. Involve your employees in Action Planning.
Employees have a vested interest in improving the work environment. Partner with your employees to devise action plans on the 1-3 initiatives that will make the biggest impact. Give them tools to gather the necessary information and work with the team to flesh out the details. If you come up against more questions that require answers, send the team back to the workforce to gather more information.
4. Keep it Simple.
Keep your findings and your action plans clear, straightforward and easy to understand.
A contributing factor to building trust is following through. Don’t promise results on a large number of initiatives. Research shows that when there are more than 7 options, our brains become overwhelmed – if you have 10 initiatives that you are committed to changing/implementing – it won’t get done.
Stick with the 1 – 3 initiatives that will have the greatest return on investment, and do them well. Build your credibility through tangible results.
5. Communicate
We’ve said it before – and we’ll say it again: communication – in all things – is critical.
Communicate the findings of your survey and the areas of concern identified. Communicate with employees throughout the action planning process. Provide regular updates during key milestones in the projects/initiatives you are working on. Communicate your results.
It is not possible to over-communicate along the way. Your employees will feel that they were heard and that their recommendations have been followed through.