Going Beyond Surveys - Tracking The Progress
Needless to say, check-in's and progress updates are important. A baseline gets established and then the work gets measured along the way. An important piece of employee engagement surveys that many organizations leave out is the ongoing measurement of how things are progressing.
As we finish out our Going Beyond Surveys series we discuss tracking the ongoing progress. Imagine if we didn't have organizations like the FDA to check ongoing progress of drugs through clinical trials and the drugs were just released to the public after the first trial. While things might look promising after that first one, something unforseen can easily pop up in the second or third trials that can be corrected before being released to the general population. Or, if you have ever had a new house built or done some remodeling, as the owners of that particular project we don't typically just write a check and say "See you when it's done!". No, we go and check-in on the progress, making sure that what was agreed upon is being done or, if changes need to be made, they are made before the work gets too far along and becomes very cumbersome.
Needless to say, check-in's and progress updates are important. A baseline gets established and then the work gets measured along the way. An important piece of employee engagement surveys that many organizations leave out is the ongoing measurement of how things are progressing. An annual employee survey sets the baseline. We find out what areas are strengths and what areas are opportunities and then action plans are devised (hopefully) to build on the strenghts and attack those opportunities. Pulse, or what we call QuickView, surveys measure those action plans along the way. Too many organizations wait for a whole year to pass to run another survey just to find out they haven't made any progress at all in the areas they were hoping to impact. QuickView surveys are short, targeted surveys to help measure specific success, making sure progress is being made along the way. If progress isn't being made, then a correction can be implemented before too much time and too many resources have been lost going down the wrong path. Then, progress can resume knowing everything and everyone is aligned.
One final note, and this may seem obvious but you'd be surprised, when the annual survey rolls around next year, don't forget about the previous years' data. Pull out the old numbers and match them up against this years data. Tracking year over year results should never be left out.
Next week we begin a new four-week series on The New Performance Environment where we discuss how powerful an employee-led organization can truly be, how each individual can (and should) be owning their own performance, how negativity can kill a culture, and how a new vision for the performance review can actually drive performance.
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.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Going Beyond Surveys - Creating Sustainable Change
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.
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.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Going Beyond Surveys - What do we do with the results?
Employee surveys can be an incredibly powerful tool, but unfortunately most organizations squander the opportunity by making one crucial misstep once the survey results have come back. Learn what that misstep is and some recommendations to solve it!
Organizational or employee surveys are fairly common practice these days, but as an employee taking the survey, many will ask, “Where does the data go?” For employees in most organizations, it would seem like the answer is…nowhere. We take the survey, submit our answers, and the only response we ever hear back is the “Thank you for taking your (insert year here) employee survey! Your answers lead the path to our future.” response once you hit the submit button. Maybe, if your organization is really good, you get an all-employee meeting where the company executives stand up on a stage and highlight certain data points that will be “addressed”. At least you know they compiled the data, right?
EMPLOYEE surveys can be an incredibly powerful tool, but unfortunately most organizations squander the opportunity by making one crucial misstep once the survey results have come back. Not involving the EMPLOYEES. Here are two easy ways to involve the employees in the survey process, all the while increasing transparency and, in effect, increasing employee engagement.
Form a team of motivated employees and let them lead the employee survey section of the all employee meeting and deliver the results. By giving the control of delivering the results to the employees it shows immediately that the organization is serious about making a difference using the data given by the employees. This creates a first step for transparency and accountability. Also, we have seen overall engagement and connection to the results by the rest of the employees at a much greater level when presented by peers than when senior executives stand up and review a series of prepared PowerPoint slides. Yes, the executives should still be there, but their focus should be less about presenting results and more about discussing the future vision and purpose as well as fostering an environment where the employees can thrive and engagement flourishes.
Engage the employees in tackling the survey feedback opportunities. For example, a certain process identified in the survey results is giving a large portion of the organization issues. Charter an engagement team to research and bring options and recommendations. Are the employees wanting better organizational communication? Put together a team to understand why and where the communication disconnect is happening and recommendations for how it can be fixed. Having worked with many organizations, we have found that employee engagement teams can be your organization’s biggest ally. Bringing together a cross-functional team for a short period of time to help better the organization instills trust and builds an atmosphere where the employees truly believe (and are) making a larger impact within the organization.
There are certainly other ways for engaging and gaining greater impact from employee surveys, however we have found these two provide the biggest ‘bang for your buck’ ways to cultivate, or at least begin to build, the kind of performance environment most organizations strive for today.
Come back next week as we discuss how to take the change initiated by the survey and make it sustainable.
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.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Going Beyond Surveys - Key Identifiers
With all of the good and important data that can arise from employee surveys, it is absolutely crucial to set objectives, communicate the importance to the employees, and, most importantly, to know and understand the key identifiers that are important to measure.
Employee surveys are great, they are. They provide anonymous organizational employee input that is extremely helpful in cultivating a more productive and inviting work environment for the future. More specifically, they give employees a voice and help discover, without employees having to worry about repercussions when identifying what is not working within the organization and, just as importantly, what IS working well. They can provide benchmarking results to use against previous and future surveys, other industry-specific data, as well as identify if any issues are specific to the organization or are industry-wide. Most importantly, employee surveys can help direct organizational growth in many different areas, including employee engagement and if the performance environment within the organization is effective.
With all of the good and important data that can arise from employee surveys, it is absolutely crucial to set objectives, communicate the importance to the employees, and, most importantly, to know and understand the key environmental and engagement factors that are important to measure. We’ve seen many surveys where this just isn’t the case and the data received ends up being little more than a waste of the organization’s money and the employees’ time.
What are those key factors? Well, they can vary from organization to organization, however, after years of working with organizations to increase employee engagement through performance advising, we have come up what we believe are the most effective areas of employee surveying and a foundation for any successful employee survey.
Work Environment – This section of questions focuses on the organization as a whole, from culture satisfaction and diversity, to team cohesiveness and company communication.
Work Engagement – This section measures an individual’s engagement within the organization and the organization’s ability to inspire.
Senior Leadership – This section focuses on the senior leadership’s ability to respectfully and effectively lead the organization.
Manager or Supervisor – This section asks questions related to the employee’s direct manager and whether they are an effective and inclusive manager.
Career/Performance Development – Is the organization providing opportunities for its employee to grow both personal and professionally? This section measures an employee’s personal feelings toward their career development.
Compensation and Benefits – This section is obvious. Are the employees satisfied with their compensation and benefits package?
Written Comments – This section can vary based on what an organization wants to ask its employees, but here are a few questions we find are especially useful.
How can the Company more effectively retain our employees for the long-term?
How does Senior Leadership contribute to a positive work culture? If not, what can they do to improve?
If you were the person in charge for the day, what single thing would you change in the organization to make it a better place to work?
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.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cultivating Employee Engagement
Are you asking the right questions?
Now is that time of year where many organizations invest time and resources to measuring their employee’s engagement. Clearly employee engagement is critical to sustained, top-tier results, but what engages people and how best to engage them is changing rapidly. What doesn’t change as rapidly are the survey questions developed to determine engagement and the post survey process for assessing progress throughout the year.
So are we asking the right questions to even gauge engagement? Then are we, as an organization, providing the focus, resources, and support required to enhance and cultivate top-tier engagement that leads to top-tier performance? Often times, components of what we measured in the past for engagement such competitive benefits packages, comparable pay and compensation, and other internal policy and procedures, etc are important to measure and understand but tend to be lagging indicators. They tend to have marginal impact on true engagement and we have never come across survey results in over 20 years that say our organization has too rich of a benefit package, pays too well, and provides way too much vacation and leave time!
Before investing in your employee engagement survey process this year take a few minutes to redefine what future, top-tier employee engagement looks like throughout the organization. Once success is defined, reimagine your employee engagement strategy going forward. Your strategy should include thought and discussion on what engages your employees and how it has changed in your industry and organization over time. Based on that, ask the questions that will provide insight and feedback on the current state with a focus to the future. Set your future engagement factor bar higher, don’t settle for just a reflection on how well you are doing today. That leads to settling for and cultivating more of the same.
Does your engagement survey questions provide insight and feedback in these critical engagement factor areas?
· Creating a unique employee experience for each individual
· Evolving to an employee-led, leader supported performance model
· Knowledge shared and feedback received in near real time
· A shared purpose throughout the organization that inspires performance
· A culture that enables the right behaviors that lead to the right results and stands on values and principles
· A climate that focuses more on change leadership than on change management
· Leadership that inspires, facilitates, and develops not directs, controls, and manages.
In addition to considering these future focused engagement survey factors, are the recommendations, actions, and results of the annual feedback process employee-led, supported by leadership, and enabled by the organization, not driven by management directive? And is progress on these employee-led actions and recommendations followed up on during the year with random rapid pulse surveys to gauge near term progress so success can be leveraged and adjustments can be made, if necessary, prior to another beginning of year engagement survey coming around again?
Employee engagement is changing. To make 2017 your year for enhanced employee engagement, start and end by asking the right questions!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
