6 Tips for a Successful Employee Engagement Survey

6 Tips for a Successful Employee Engagement Survey

September 22, 2015

An employee engagement survey can reveal key information about your organization and how engaged your employees are feeling. Before you jump in, here are six tips for conducting and employee engagement survey in your organization.

1. Listen & Act
   Listen and be prepared to act. This is essential to any kind of employee survey. Anytime you ask for feedback, you must be ready to act on at least a portion of the feedback. It can be harmful to do a survey and not take action; if you are going to ask, you must commit to taking action.
2. Invest in Solutions
   It’s important to invest less in technology and more in solutions. Having a survey with lots of bells and whistles may just point out the problem areas in a more attractive way but does little to actually help provide a solution. While it’s important to have a well run survey, focus your investment on the solution.
3. Create Committees
   In the committee, it’s best to have a mix of leadership and non-leadership employees. Involve all levels of the organization and don’t let the leadership team alone determine priorities.
4. Commit for the Long Term
   Survey results and solutions may take months to have an impact. Be prepared to make this long term commitment.
5. Keep it Simple
   Keeping the survey simple and executing flawlessly is the best way to have a successful survey. Adopt the mantra of under-promise and over-deliver. Solve problems that have the biggest bang early and get people involved. You can’t do it all at once!
6. Follow Up
   Employees want to know what’s happening with their feedback and the progress of solutions. Keep the communication flow going and consider doing a pulse survey to see if the organization has changed.

Employee engagement surveys are a great way to take the pulse of your organization and get data on improvement areas. It’s important to do an engagement survey and not a satisfaction survey. Generally, a satisfaction survey will ask about benefits; engagement surveys focus on work environment, trust in leadership, and recognition and feedback mechanisms.

Click here for a free white paper on the “Do’s and Don’ts of Employee Engagement Surveys!

– John Konselman, VP of Creative Content, @EmplyEngagement @JohnKonsleman