Going Beyond Surveys - Creating Sustainable Change
As we continue to take a deep look into employee surveys, one of the biggest questions we get from clients is, “All of the survey data we get back is great, but once we package it all together and come up with some sort of action plan, how do we make sure what we are doing is sustainable and has the desired impact?” This is an excellent question and one that, frankly, has alluded many organizations. A survey gets released, a plan is formulated to improve the low rated areas, but then somehow a year later another survey is conducted and the scores remain the same. Many factors can lead to this unwanted cycle, but here are the top three reasons we have found when we begin working with our clients and what you can do to break the cycle. Take note, a core theme is NOT involving the employees.
Executive team or HR tries to go it alone. This is not to say that executives or HR should not be involved, they should, but the employees need to be even more involved. The role of the leaders should be one of support, while cross-functional employee engagement teams should be formed and chartered to bring options and recommendations for the opportunities presented in the survey. There is no better way to create sustainable change than to give the responsibility of that change to those who will be most affected by it. Engagement is a powerful tool and empowering for the employees.
Not building awareness. In many organizations, change initiated by survey results tends to fall flat because awareness has not been built throughout the organization. Awareness of why the survey is important, awareness around the results and where the opportunities for improvement are, and most importantly, awareness around what initiatives have been chartered to improve those opportunities and how the employees can and should get involved.
Making the main focus improving accountability. This may seem like a strange or unusual reason for survey change initiatives to not be successful, but what we have found is that a low accountability number in a survey tends to distract the organization from the true opportunities and becomes the whole focus for the next year. Identifying that accountability is creating disengagement in the organization is important, but a higher accountability score on next year’s survey should not be the only goal. It should be the indirect outcome by engaging the employees to improve other areas, increasing empowerment and creating an environment throughout the organization where everyone is holding themselves accountable.
Again, there are other reasons for the survey cycle of unsustainable change initiatives, such as lack of support from the top or an overall performance environment of negativity and employees not caring or being motivated, but those listed above are the ones we seen again and again when we begin working with organizations. Avoid these and break the cycle. Create the sustainable change you’re looking for.
Join us next week as we wrap up our Going Beyond Surveys series with a discuss about tracking progress.
If you’re looking for help in administering your employee survey, or just need help in building an effective survey question list, don’t hesitate to contact us! We’re here to enable your success.
