How to Get More Value Out Of Your Survey

There are some Internet voices out there that claim that employee surveys are on the way out. But a Harvard Business Review article called Employee Surveys Are Still One of the Best Ways to Measure Engagement, by Scott Judd, Eric O’Rourke, and Adam Grant says, “it would be a big mistake to abandon them today.” Many organizations have gained valuable intelligence that has helped them to grow and excel. Here are a few other bonuses in using surveys for both employees and organizations:

• Employees get a chance to be heard
• Organizations learn about some new ideas
• Managers become more aware of concerns and problems
• Employees realize that the organization cares about their work experience
• Organizations can target common interests, concerns, and patterns in business behaviour and experiences
• Organizations can show employees that they’re serious about making their workplace the best it can be, by responding to employees’ needs and taking action

To boost survey participation and get meaningful results that will drive your success, here are a few before and after tips:

Before the survey is shared:

• Describe the benefits of taking the survey to employees
• Describe the outcomes and actions from past surveys to prove that it’s a useful process
• Ensure confidentiality
• Have an outside company with deep industry expertise like TalentMap develop, gather, and record the results of your surveys. This assures employees that their individual responses will remain anonymous
• Let your employees know why you are doing this, what your expectations are, that there are no right or wrong answers, and you welcome all feedback

After the results are in:

• Share the survey results with all of your employees: The good news and the bad news. Be open and honest so that you build and retain employee’s trust. Ideally, managers should meet with employees and go through survey results one- by-one. Employees need to know that their time and effort leads to results in the organization.
• Managers should make employees aware of the organization’s action plan in response to the survey results – quickly, and keep their promises to take action. This is also an opportunity to ask employees for ideas on how to improve the organization.

Taking these steps will pay off in the long run because honest survey results will give you the power to make your organization the best it can be. As noted in an article on Entrepreneur.com, called, “Ignoring Employee Morale Will Cost You. Here’s the Solution,” by David Nilssen, “I found that anonymous employee surveys work best to improve the feedback channel. These anonymous engagement surveys cut through the fear and give leaders the valuable, direct feedback they need to know when problems arise.”