Post EE Survey ----- What to do Now?

[Clay Jordan, PHR]

I am in the process of having the EE Survey I have sent out to our base of 200+ employees returned to me through Survey Monkey. I am wanting to find out from some of you guys what you recommend be the best direction of travel after analyzing and digesting the results of this survey.

Do I develop new programs? procedures? I am a rookie at this, so jsut wanting some insight from you engagement professionals.

[Ben Simonton]

Clay,

I am willing to work with you, but the person who needs to be convinced is your CEO or at least one or more line executives.

Contact me if interested. at bensimo at juno dot com

Best regards, Ben
http;www.bensimonton.com/articles.html

[Clay Jordan, PHR]

Ben:
I will contact you in the morning. Thank You for your quick response!

[David Zinger]

Hi Clay,

There are many free ideas to incorporate here. Make use of any of the free e-books for the new one that will be released next Thursday. I suggest bringing employees into the picture ASAP even with the data assessment and analysis. The only way to get people on the same page is by giving them a hand in writing on that page, meaning engage employees in engagement work.

I do believe that disengagement is not a punishable offence, rather fodder for a conversation. If there are some negative results I encourage you to dig deeper and learn more. I think the best answers from your results will be generated by employees and remember the CEO and executive are employees too!

What most annoys me about surveys is the long time delay between the results and the release to everyone. Don't whitewash the results or worry about putting a positive spin on them. And if the results are great than celebrate and see how you build on those strengths.

Employees often appreciate seeing some quick action on what was said. Look for some Kaizen-like small wins to move the engagement meter and help move employees to more engagement.

I will feature your forum in the next newsletter to get more responses

David

[Clay Jordan, PHR]

Great insight David...thank You!!!!

I am slowly but surely having a lot of the Execs buy off on my programs, but it is taking some time b/c of the fact there has never been any sort of Engaging tactics officially conducted in our 40 year old company.

Where can I find some of those free e-books you refer to?

Once again, thank you!!!

[David Zinger]

Clay,
I am glad I featured this today in the email. Some tremendous responses and things for you or anyone in your situation to consider. Thanks to you for posting this and thanks to the various members to take the time to reply. Well done all.
David

[Clay Jordan, PHR]

Definitely a big THANKS to you all....I will complete the survey tomorrow, and then have my "engaging" talk with my Execs next week. Cannot wait to see the outcome of everything.

Thanks for the tremendous help!

[Craig Althof]

You asked about the free e-books.There is so much to look at on the EEN, but you 'll find that good stuff on the front / home page, left and right sidebars.

David hit the high points, I'd like to expand on a couple.

First, don't develop / do anything until you get grass roots interest built. Involvement and ownership is critical. David said "dig deeper" in your understanding-good thing to do for both the strong items (leverage these and do more good stuff) and those in need of improvement. For starters, survey items can be ambiguously worded. Facilitate a few small groups of folks through some definition and prioritizing sessions:
1. Get clarity on what the issues are, what the real meaning behind the data is.
2. Use whatever approach to weighted decision making you have in your back pocket to lead the small groups toward an objective concensus on where to move forward, ONLY after clarification of definitions.

The "small wins" David referenced are critical to achieve as soon as possible (kaizen!)--you've asked the questions now you must respond! The more timely the action, the more the sting of too much time lag David noted can be soothed. And, the small group work can breathe some fresh life into the old data. The small groups can be instrumental in identifying immediate actions, as well as longer term actions. Make sure they understand the difference and the need to go a little more carefully with some of their good ideas.

When the groups brainstorm action items, make double-certain that any parameters are clearly understood ahead of time. Assuming you won't have an open check book for this (but you should--ROI would be there!) one of the best criteria for ideas is low-to-no cost. No capital investments, no significant system changes.

I hate to appear totally hung up on this, maybe I do actually have a personal issue teetering on the edge of paranoia (?) Be very careful with how you position this whole engagement initiative. While engagement may be the target, and a small handful of senior leaders may actually understand "engagement" conceptually, it won't mean squat to Joe Firstline. What you are doing by his perspective is (hopefully) trying to make your company a better place to work-more productivity, more satisfaction, better working relationships, better results.

That needs to be the public face to all of this. Just my opinion, would love to hear from others. Actually, should be a discussion topic of its own! Good luck sir-keep us posted! We all have lots to learn.

[Lydia Woodroff]

Hear hear: While engagement may be the target, and a small handful of senior leaders may actually understand "engagement" conceptually, it won't mean squat to Joe Firstline. What you are doing by his perspective is (hopefully) trying to make your company a better place to work-more productivity, more satisfaction, better working relationships, better results.

And that has to be all of our aims, to create a workplace that is fantastic, where people want to work and work hard, "engagement" is a useful catch-all term for those in the know, but keeping focused on that end result will be where the results come.

I'll be in the same boat in a couple of months, about to send our survey out. Already taken on board the need for quick dissemination of at least some headline information. Thanks!

[Keith Owen]

You've probably already heard this but if the senior managers don't buy into the process, your survey will likely at best produce no result and at worst can even be damaging, depending on the nature of the employee perceptions of course.

If the senior execs buy into this process, we have been using a qualitative technique called interactive qualitative analysis to get employees maximally involved in interpreting the results, identifying root causes, and suggesting ways to achieve performance impropvement. IQA, as it is referred to, is intense but very focused and it is a way to shift the power to the author of the data (the employee) rather than the reader (the researcher).

This general method is written up in a book by Northcutt entitled Interactive Qualitative Ansalysis; however, if you are interested in this process as we have adapted it to the survey feedback process, I will be happy to share it with you. Just shoot me an e-mail and we'll go from there.

Keith Owen
[e-mail]

[Christina Webb]

Clay,

What we do is take the information and immediately share it with all employees down to the smallest workgroup level the data is reported in. As a part of that we do the following:

1) Share the facts of the result and any verbatim comments that were included
2) Have an open dialogue about (a) what are the positive things that have been happening that they believe supported any increases so those can be maintained as a stregth (b) are they surprised by any of the results and why (c) what has changed that may have cause numbers to slide (d) what are the priority areas to work on
3) Have the employees collaborate to suggest what two primary things they feel should be done to improve the work group as a whole and then have them provide suggestions on what to do in order to build action plans around the areas they identified as a priority. Rules being (a) the choices are not chosen by and dictated by the manager - there is no buy in from employees when this happens (b) all of the suggested actions cannot be assigned to the manager (c) recommendations have to be realistic - i.e., cannot ask for a hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment that they know won't be approved in a tough economy (d) everyone on the team has a part in the action plan and is responsible for their part going forward
4) Meet monthly and have everyone report out on activities that have supported or been implemented to move the action plan forward. Put it on the meeting agenda and in meeting minutes so it becomes tangible for the employees that they are actually part of an improvement. It also helps to fulfill the need of those who must see to believe.
5) Choose another priority area as a team to focus on throughout the year if one has been achieved. However, touch back on the "completed one" every now and then to ensure employees still feel it is working as intended.

The long and the short of this process is that employees who receive the communication consistently, are empowered to be an active part of the solution and see progress automatically have a greater investment in their role within the company and as a result have higher levels of engagement.

I hope this is helpful.

Christina

[Craig Althof]

This is a great discussion-thanks for getting it started, Clay.

Christina, relative to all the above you hit on some very key points:
1. Realistic criteria
2. Ownership and accountability to act
3. A process to ensure follow-up and action

Keith's recommendation to use an apporach like IQA is great-the idea being to provide a tool to reach some sort of non-subjective conclusion. But also, this approach positions the EE touchy-feely stuff as a list of opportunities to improve that need to be prioritized so they can be acted upon. It's not voodoo, not rocket science. Simply continuous improvement.

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

Clay

Good to know about your initiative. Take people along. There are two ways that you can approach the issue. One very popular way is to measure engagement level through different tools, asking employees on different scale and variables. Another way is that you collect the opinion across org, cadres, sector etc in narratives and do content analysis so that we are able to develop a sound conceptual framework for EE. This shall contribute a lot to further the cause of EE and the contribution of David for this.
I personally feel that most important element for EE is communication, it engages, encourages, involves, and inspire an individual to perform his/her best.

Wishes