The basics of successful employee listening
Writing this blog has given me a real opportunity to boil down 25 years of experience in employee engagement and experience measurement into a few key nuggets. I hope these are useful, I have answered the questions I get asked the most.
How should we start planning?
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Well, don’t just survey for survey’s sake. Often surveys are run for their own good rather than linking to HR priorities, or the business strategy. Making a survey strategic doesn’t have to be complicated. It can just be one or two things, for instance, is your strategy about customer impact, innovation or growth? We can ask some simple questions that measure and report on those as concepts.
One of the ways I often help organisations think about planning is to help them start to think about all the stakeholders in the business, from leadership to managers, down to employees, because they'll all have slightly different, or sometimes very different, needs from an employee survey. We explore those needs and build a plan that works for everyone.
How do we get great buy-in?
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
One of the big pitfalls, especially with great survey technology today, where we can survey anybody, about anything, at any time is survey fatigue. By survey fatigue we mean employees being surveyed so much that they lose interest and engagement in the survey process. Particularly where employees can’t see any related action or change as a result of them participating in a survey. I really like to think of this as ‘as lack of action fatigue’, rather than survey fatigue, because people are generally happy to be asked their views, but they are likely to become quite cynical, quite quickly, if they don't see any change.
Where employee surveys work really well is where there is clear action on the survey and ownership around action planning from everyone,and lots of great transparent communication. This leads to great response rates. Businesses get great response rates when employees know that their voice makes a difference, and that the company is listening, and it’s going to take action.
When people believe they are genuinely being heard, this in turn has a ‘virtuous cycle’ effect, in that the survey process actually engages people further. So the more action people see being taken as a result of the surveys, the more engaged they feel, because they know that they're making a difference.
In an effort to drive survey buy-in, try not to target response rates themselves. Rather target actions and conversations as a result of the survey feedback. Driving response rates too hard can lead to unwanted behaviours by managers (i.e. coercing employees to fill in the surveys etc.). Far better to design a trusted process from which response rates naturally flow. If the survey is positioned well internally, mechanisms are in place for survey completion, and employees are confident of change, then it would be very reasonable to expect 65%+ for a solid first response rate. I wouldn’t be surprised ifyou could push that to 75% and further too. With an embedded and trusted programme, some businesses hit 90%+.
What should we ask in our survey?
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Surveys don’t need to be complicated or overly long. With about 30 questions, which might take less than 10 minutes to complete, we can get a really good view of how people feel, levels of engagement and any blind-spots that leaders might have. A good survey will ask about a range of topics, from strategy, to leadership and management, to customers service and diversity and inclusion. A good survey provider will have a proven survey nearly ready to go for you after a few tweaks to make it feel your own.
How often should we survey?
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Just because we can survey all the time, doesn't necessarily mean we should. I was talking to an organisation earlier this week who wanted to survey every day. When we talked it through a bit further, they weren't quite sure whatthey were really going to do with the results. At the end of the day, we agreed that they wanted to make surethat people felt that feel that they had been heard every day. we We had an interesting discussion - if there was no action resulting from that kind of monitoring, would people really feel more engaged and motivated?
How can we make sure the survey leads to change?
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
A really key thing here is around manager enablement and really equipping them to do something with their results. That might be something really simple like guiding them through the results and helping them to understand how to interpret them. It's also about giving them the tools and techniques and best practice to have great conversations with their teams. Some managers will find that really straight forward and others might find it quite difficult. The more we can all make discussion and action of survey results ‘business as usual ’the more useful the data become.
Should we run a survey ourselves or look for support?
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
I do think a bad survey can do damage. If you have a badly designed survey, that's not measuring anything useful, it raises expectations, and if nothing happens, you actually have potential to damage employe engagement. So, if you don't have the internal expertise or resources to do it, I think it's always worth seeking advice from external experts. Even if it's just to design a really good questionnaire that you then run with internally.
All the best for you next survey!
Sam Dawson, co-founder of Feedback Works
