How to make survey result practically effective

[MinhNH]

Which actions should we do when having results from an employee engagement survey?

It has been happening in my workplace that we conduct a survey, get result, show it to employees. Then, no one mention about the survey until end of the next year, when we conduct another yearly survey. We always receive complains from our employees "It make nonsense to answer survey questions. As all stay the same." This results in low responding rate.

I really want to improve it. I look forward to learning from your experience and advice.

Thanks in advance.

[ken scarlett]

We have found that 8 of 10 CEO's are dissatisfied with their return on survey investment. The top 3 reasons are perceived 1) poor quality measurement integrity, 2) poor action planning process and 3) poor accountability for engagement improvement (based on sound metrics). The preponderance of surveys labeled "engagement" are very poor measurement devices-the "results" of which, actually erode employee engagement by sending managers on follow-up errands that disengage long-term. So first,choose wisely.
We have also found that post survey communications are much less important than accountable action planning on the part of every work group manager provided those plans are based on sound engagement metrics and acceptable ranges. By accountability, we mean managers' performance appraisals and go or no-go access to bonus plans and the CEO's direct involvement. We have developed a web-based action planning system that assures engagement improvement and rolls upward in the organization thereby eliminating post-survey communication meetings while assuring accountability. After all, the best value goal of conducting an engagement survey is "to have a reliable and usable statistical measure of group engagement for each manager to use to fully engage employees." After all, that's what managers are paid to do.
Check out our white papers on the subject at http://www.ScarlettSurveys.com.

[David Neilly]

The reason for conducting an employee survey is to measure the workplace so that senior management and local management can continuously improve workplace and employment practices. If senior management does not own the process and see the benefits of higher productivity and performance through a better workplace, then I would suggest you start by revisiting the business rationale with your executive team.

Assuming that your goal is workplace improvement and that senior management is lined up behind this, you need to follow the survey with analysis that will uncover the gaps in the workplace and the impact on business performance. For example...
- Some workplace problems directly affect business performance (e.g. lack of clear goals or poor teamwork betweek departments that need to work together)
- Other workplace problems affect business performance indirectly (e.g. poor management practices erode employee engagement and therefore employee effort/commitment)

Whenever I conduct employee surveys, I always conduct focus groups after the survey has been analyzed in order to gain a better understanding about workplace issues. For example, the survey might tell you that role clarity is poor, but focus groups can help you understand why role clarity is poor. In fact, you might find out that poor role clarity is caused by multiple factors, or that the causes are different across departments. So this is a very important step in my mind.

After you have all the data analyzed, you should have an action planning process with the executive team as a group to plan corporate actions, then with each main division/department to plan local actions. These actions should be selected based on severity of problem, cost/effort of change, impact on business, etc. Actions should be carefully selected to ensure that they can be delivered in a reasonable period of time. Most organizations try to do too much. Better to under-promise and over-deliver than promise a lot and then fall short.

After actions have been developed (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based) and accountability for each action has been assigned to executives/managers, the survey results and actions should be communicated to employees. Then there should be progress updates to employees as actions are completed. In this way, employees will feel encouraged that their investment in the survey was worthwhile and is really driving positive change.

If you do all of the above well, employees will be happy to complete the survey next time.

As an aside, I believe that surveys should be completed every two years and not annually- for a large, complex organization, one year usually does not provide enough time to implement actions from the previous survey.

I hope this is helpful and would be happy to discuss this with you in more detail.

[MinhNH]

Great thanks for your advice. It is getting clearer to me how to make our survey results more effective. Planning and delivering actions is scheduled for the year 2009.

Thank you a lot.

[csk]

Hi,

I, completely agree with you. It happens in my office also. Not a new stuff at all.

CSK



Cash Surveys

[John Kmiec]

Check out Dr. Wilmar B. Schaufeli's personal website. He is at: http://www.schaufeli.com/

On that site, you can find downloads of all the instrument versions, a literature list of engagement studies, a Utrecht Work Engagement Scale test-manual, and other goodies. Since Schaufeli authored the scale, he has tested it in many locations across the globe. In fact, I only quit downloading studies in the literature, because there are so many. While it doesn't appear in the USA studies I've searched, it seems to be very well researched, valid and reliable - check out the manual and the studies loaded on the site. Interestingly, my chair is pretty enthusiastic about me using it... go figure?

Anyway, I initially started to use the Gallup survey, but when I asked for permission, Gallup recommended that I use the UWES for the reasons I've already mentioned. And, the scale is fee to use for educational and research purposes. Not to mention the fact that it takes the engagement pulse directly, as you wrote in your initial post.

While the commercial instruments and constructs I've researched (Blessing White, Gallup, etc.) look great, the UEWS dominates the academic literature, followed by the Malasch Burnout Inventory. If you're working on a dissertation, like me, the answer is, in my opinion, to use one of these (UEWS or Malasch) or write your own.

Good Luck

John