Impacting Engagement using Employee Surveys

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek

Employees want to feel like their contributions count and that their opinions and voices are heard.  When employees don’t feel like their contributions count, they’ll seek out an environment where they do. Turnover is expensive so how can you make sure that your people feel like their voice is heard and concerns are addressed?  Research shows most employees appreciate a commitment to frequent communication. Collecting feedback from your team shows them that you’re listening. When done correctly – Employee Engagement Surveys are one of the best opportunities for employees to share their honest feedback and opinions.

Many businesses conduct customer surveys as a way to improve their business – the same should be applied to your employees.  Business success and employee satisfaction are directly related. Engaged employees are more motivated and productive – they take pride in what they are doing. 

Employee Surveys can have a positive impact on:

• Improving your business
• Increasing Employee Engagement
• Boosting Employee Retention
• Promoting a positive work environment 

Whether conducting Annual Employee Surveys or regular Employee Pulse surveys it is important to show your employees that the effort that they put into answering the surveys is appreciated and that the information gathered through the surveys is looked at and acted upon.  Just sending out one survey is not going to give you valuable results.  It’s about creating a “Survey” process so your employees can easily see that you are interested in creating a feedback culture that uses surveys as one of the tools and that you act upon the feedback to motivate employees and create a more positive work environment.  By surveying employees and acting on the feedback given – you can specifically address areas of dissatisfaction for your employees.  Benchmarking this data will allow you to track your progress in these areas that require improvement.

Transparency plays a huge role in this process.  Sharing the survey results is extremely important – the good and the bad along with your action plan/timeline for acting on the results.  Don’t just talk about the survey at “Survey Time” – talk about it periodically and discuss the action plan and what your business/management team has been doing to move the plan forward.    

Engagement surveys have the ability to provide the context your business needs to identify concerns, create an action plan and drive meaningful change within your business.  Collecting and tracking survey results will allow you to benchmark your data over time and identify opportunities for improvement and measure the impact of any of your actions taken.