Why Don’t Employee Surveys Work?

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Why don’t employee surveys work? Employee surveys have many benefits. If done right, they can measure engagement across your business in a reliable and cost-effective way. They’re also very effective at improving communication amongst your employees and leaders.

Creating your survey in-house

Like any other tool, survey’s need to be done correctly if you want to see real results. Let me share a few suggestions on how to do just that.

Here are the elements to remember when designing your survey:

  • Concrete survey goals
  • Correctly-chosen questions
  • Properly phrased questions
  • Correct response scale
  • Questionnaire design
  • Questionnaire validity and reliability
  • Timely notification for employees and leaders
  • High levels of survey participation
  • Survey programming, hosting, and feedback collection
  • User support in case of issues/usability questions
  • Answer collection and analysis

Have a plan of action

It doesn’t make sense to run a survey if you don’t do anything with the results or ignore the key issues. In fact, when nothing comes out of a survey, employees stop trusting you and get disengaged–which defeats the purpose of having an employee survey!

Here are the steps you need to take to set the stage and develop an action plan:

  • Present the results to your employees and leaders
  • Don’t take it personally
  • Be objective. Don’t look for who said what or why they said it.
  • Develop action plans
  • Follow-up on recommendations
  • Make the changes

If you want to get value from an employee survey, you need to be prepared for negative feedback. You need to be willing to make the changes and consult again and again throughout the year. The effectiveness of your results will be measured by your employee’s engagement. Have fun! Let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you. 

 

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