by Richard Lambert, Morale Solutions Ltd for Customer Experience Magazine

In the first part of Richard’s article published yesterday, we shared the first three elements of his model for making a successful employee engagement survey. In today’s article, we share the rest of them, with the graphic wrap up in the end.

Read the 1st part of the article here

  1. Strategic Analysis
    At the top-level, frequency count analysis of the proportions of people who agree/disagree with questionnaire statements are an excellent starting point. But they should be just that. A starting point.If your survey is only generating hundreds of (albeit nice looking) charts which show percentage scores comparing different parts of the business then you are missing a big trick.

    You need to dig a little deeper and examine the links between the survey items and topics.

    If you’ve defined what “engagement” means in your organisation (through linking it back to your overall business strategy and HR strategy), then you should conduct a key driver analysis to understand which factors in the survey have the biggest positive influence on your measure of engagement.

    This is very powerful (but not necessarily as difficult as some would have you believe). The challenge is finding the right way to explain the ‘story’ to the Board without resorting to using statistics jargon and talking about r2 values and the like.

  2. Authentic Feedback
    Always share the results of the survey with your employees as soon as you possibly can.A bit of pre-planning helps here. If you can tell people BEFORE the survey is even live that they will get to hear the results in week commencing [insert date here], then they will love you for it. They will know you are taking the survey very seriously and are committed to the project.

    So, when you do get in front of them, share the feedback openly, honestly and fully.

    Share good news and bad news. Share everything warts-and-all. Hide nothing.

    Remember, they’ve told you this information in the first place.

    For example, if your survey analysis reveals that just 13% of your organisation are happy with (say) the amount of training they receive, then it’s likely that a similar proportion of the people in the room where this presentation is happening feel this way. If you don’t mention training in your presentation, they are going to wonder why and start to question the validity of the analysis and the value of the results feedback.

    You run the risk of losing the audience and more importantly losing the goodwill of the staff about the survey process.

  3. Meaningful Action
    The value of any employee engagement survey is not in questionnaire design, high response rates, insightful analysis or clear and concise feedback.
    The added value of any survey is from the action which happens as a result of the research.You don’t necessarily have to make sweeping revolutionary changes.
    You could stop doing some things.
    You could start doing other things.
    You could gently change direction with some issues.

    The important thing is to do something. And make some noise about it.

    I am an advocate of the “we are doing this because you told us that…” approach.

    Your strategic action plan should pick up on the key driver analysis and use that to set a prioritised action list – making sure that the issues which get the most attention are the ones which are going to deliver the biggest increase in employee engagement, a clearer ROI on your survey project and help you move close to achieving you HR and organisation goals.

If you can master those 6 steps, your employee engagement survey should be a massive success.

Meaningful Action
Authentic Feedback
Strategic Analysis
Leverage Participation
Open Involvement
Welcome Change

It’s a hierarchy of needs for a successful employee engagement survey. And oh, look, it spells MASLOW.
EES Maslow Hierarchy

Interesting links:

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