The Workplace Coach

I’ve worked with a number of organisations who regularly conduct employee engagement surveys.  These surveys typically have somewhere between 40 and 90 questions and cover a range of topics including: Employment Conditions, Career Objectives, Conduct and Performance, Manager Capability, Leadership Capability, Communication and Consultation, Development Opportunities, and so on.

The point of these surveys is usually a) for the employer to get a read on employee engagement, and b) to identify any areas where employees might be looking for some improvements to be made.  I think we can all agree that employee engagement is directly linked to a whole range of performance, conduct and culture outcomes.  A highly engaged workforce will generally be more productive and have fewer performance and conduct issues.  The organisation is also likely to have a welcoming and supportive, high performance culture.

High employee engagement really is the secret sauce for organisational performance.  An engaged employee will bring that extra discretionary effort to the table, making all the difference in the world to the bottom line. 

Employee engagement surveys are often conducted by an external agency.  There are a few reasons for this but mostly it’s to provide some assurance to employees that their responses will be confidential, and that they won’t be identified by their employer.  Interesting isn’t it?  We want to build a culture of trust, but we know that without impartial third party involvement our people will be less likely to be open and honest about the issues that concern them.  If your employees fear speaking up or speaking out well… that is an article for another time.

So you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of contracting someone to run your employee engagement survey.  Its been open for two weeks and your HR team are anxiously awaiting the outcomes and watching completion rates as the survey draws to a close. These surveys aren’t all that expensive but that’s not really the point.  What is important is that your whole organisation (or as many as possible) completed the survey and provided their opinions about what is a good about working for you, and what might present as an opportunity for improvement.

Now what are you going to do with these results?   

This will vary from organisation to organisation.  I’ve seen a number of approaches from:

1. ticking the box to say that the survey has been to completed and let’s do this again next year, to
2. spinning the results into a good news story for the Executive and staff, and
3. actually being honest with everyone about what needs fixing, and then developing a plan to get it done before the next survey.  

Unfortunately, many agencies will tend towards b) and treat the whole thing as a marketing and PR exercise.  You have probably seen the meme about “the floggings will continue until morale improves”?

If you are not sure where your organisation sits on the spectrum of ignoring the survey results through to using them to dictate people strategy for the next twelve months, maybe include the following statement on your next survey – “I feel like my organisation listens to and acts on the issues raised by employees in the annual survey” and ask people to indicate their level of agreement.

The short story is this, if you’re going to ask the question AND you really want honest answers, then you have to act (and be seen to act) on the answers you get.  The best thing you can do is publish the results to all staff, celebrate all that is good according to the survey, and hold a series of employee workshops to help develop solutions to address the concerns.

If you would like some help with developing a strategic organisational response to your engagement survey results just shoot us an email to info@theworkplacecoach.com.au .   

The Workplace Coach