Tips on Making Employee Survey Initiatives Successful (Part 1 of 5)

Employee surveys can be a powerful way of improving organizational effectiveness and increasing commitment and retention. However, employee survey initiatives are often not as successful as they might be. Over the next five blog posts, we'll explore ways to make employee surveys more successful in terms of an overall feedback-action planning model, and suggestions for each of the steps in a survey project.

Feedback-Action Planning Model

 

The model shown above has been associated with employee survey research for more than 50 years. It is based on the concept that valid data collected on employee perceptions can be fed back to leaders in the business, and used to improve organizational effectiveness and morale/commitment. This embodies the most important tip we can offer on making employee surveys successful: focus the entire initiative around making change happen in the organization - systemic change for broader issues, and actions taken by line managers in their work units. This may seem too obvious a point to emphasize, but often employee surveys don't result in much real change because companies don't follow through on the action planning and implementation phases.

Here are a few other key points about the model:

• Data should be collected on areas related to the employee survey's objectives - usually a combination of organizational effectiveness issues and employee commitment issues - and be tied in with the business' strategies.
• Line managers at all levels in the organization play an active role in identifying and implementing improvement actions. They must be given the resources and support they need (including skills training), and be held accountable. It should be a management-driven, not an HR-driven, process. Most importantly, the employee survey process should not be a consultant-driven process, although consultants can play a facilitation role, and efficiently collect and process the survey data.
• A high degree of employee involvement throughout the initiative will increase the likelihood of positive change occurring, and of the employee survey process itself having positive benefits. The mindset should be one of "we're all in this together and have a shared responsibility for success," versus the employees thinking, "we've told management our views, let's wait and see what they do about them.

In next week's post, we dig more specifically into the steps in conducting a quality employee survey process.