Did you just get results back from an employee engagement survey and are wondering what the next steps are? Creating and administering your employee engagement surveys is only the beginning. Radio silence after a survey wraps up leaves employees with uncertainty.
If you don't communication with employees around why you're conducting surveys, you leave them wondering whether their responses truly matter.
To make sure you're making the most out of your survey responses, keep reading. In this guide, we'll let you in on the next steps that can allow you to let this data improve your team and company culture.
Show Gratitude for Your Employee's Participation
Your employee engagement surveys are a great tool for improving the overall success of your company.
For this reason, you want to make sure that you give thanks to your employees for their honesty and participation. Thank them for taking the time to provide such helpful feedback so that you can make the workplace the best it can be.
Whether in the form of a handout at a formal meeting, or via email, you also want to provide additional information about the survey and results for your staff. You can include info such as the participation rate, some preliminary finds, or high-level metrics. You can also share with them some of the goals that you had by administering the survey to let your team know what you're working towards and why their feedback matters.
These goals could be to improve your employee's work-life, to make sure you are valuing inclusivity in the workplace, or to make sure your employees are fulfilled at work. Having a communication strategy in place for how you or your HR team will give your employees updates on survey results and how your company is working to improve will help to keep the workplace transparent and honest. Consider sharing a timeline that outlines when you will share certain information, such as your employee engagement scores, the key findings, as well as a plan of action.
Sharing Results
One of the key ways to build an open and honest company structure is to be as transparent as possible with your employees. After you've been able to analyze your survey results, consider hosting a company-wide meeting to discuss them. Do so a week or two after the results are in to show employees that you take their enjoyment at work seriously and that you make it a priority.
Create a presentation where you review participation rates, your company scores, and any common themes you noticed from the survey responses. You can also allow for some context by providing information about previous survey responses and how they compare to the current one. Make sure that you communicate this information honestly to employees.
That means that even if there are less than flattering common themes you've noticed, you should still cover them in the meeting. Rather than avoiding any problems, instead, bring them up and talk about how you can make certain aspects better. You want to strike a balance, sharing information about what your employees seem to love about working for your company, as well as areas in need of some improvement.
You should also discuss any actions you have taken or plan to take to improve certain areas of the employee experience. This keeps both you and your team accountable to keep improving your company.
Review High-Level Findings With Leadership
To put improvements into action, you will need to make sure that more detailed information is shared with leadership. This means sharing necessary information with all managers and department heads as well. Department heads should get a detailed review of how their team is in terms of employee happiness and fulfillment.
You should also discuss how the department has changed from previous surveys, and how the department head feels that they could improve certain areas. When discussing manager satisfaction scores, make sure there is an open dialogue, and that you are covering both negative and positive aspects of the responses. Come to the meeting with some suggestions of how the department structure could be improved.
Get specific with what needs to be improved, and don't leave the meeting with department heads until there is a clear plan of action in place. For example, if you notice that employees in a certain department are having a difficult time know what tasks to prioritize, make a plan of action that allows your managers to be more clear about what their goals are and who is responsible for certain steps to getting there.
You may consider setting up training for your managers and department heads that can help them facilitate and open dialogue with their team regarding the feedback. This allows each specific team to have an open conversation about the results and how certain things could be improved within the department specifically. To do so, managers need to learn how to set up a safe space in which employees know they can be honest and open without repercussions.
Often, it helps to open up these conversations by leading with positive results to warm everyone up before moving on to more constructive feedback.
Plan of Action for Employee Engagement Survey Results
Your employee engagement survey results are nothing if you do not utilize them correctly. To do so, keep the steps in this guide in mind to work towards transparency and honesty across your company. Handling these results carefully will show employees that you care about their experience with your company.
Are you ready to improve your company culture?
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