If you are about to send your first Deep Dive survey to your employees, make sure to read our tips and tricks here first.
Employee engagement strategies that produce effective long-term results are more than just survey results. What HR and leadership do with those is critical to truly drive engagement in an organization.
Once the results are here – don’t panic! You will get some good grades, as well as some bad ones. Even organizations with the best employer brand get bad grades.
If you have completed your open Deep Dive survey, or are about to, one of the major steps is behind you. However, to truly increase employee satisfaction and engagement, you must focus on a few next steps that will allow you to develop an effective strategy.
Take this document as guidance, but modify it to fit your organization's needs and goals.
Thank all the participants
A simple first step that will help ensure future survey success is to thank your employees for taking the time to complete the survey. You should express gratitude, especially if you intend to conduct the Pulse survey soon. Share your intentions with your employees, as well as your intention to implement future action plans based on the results.
If the surveys are simply distributed without prior or subsequent information from your side, they will not result in effective long-term relationships with your employees.
Analyze
The first step is to analyze all the data. The HR department should carry this out. If an organization is small and doesn’t have an HR team, anybody with an admin role or most similar one is recommended.
While analyzing, create a document and write down all the learnings and pain points (what is the learning, which segment of the organization is affecting, etc.).
Data segmentation based on specific employee groups aids in identifying teams, departments, or other organization parts that may be struggling in a particular area.
We recommend using the top-down approach for analysis. First, analyze the organization level and search for patterns for improvements. When finished, start filtering and segmenting data per team, department, office, market, seniority, etc. – whichever filter interests you or might show you new perspectives on your data.
For example, a recent survey may have found that the overall work-life balance dimension has a 3.8 rate, which is an acceptable score for most organizations. However, after digging deeper with our filtering options, you discover that the marketing team scored this dimension with a 4.6, while your sales department received a 2.4. While the overall result may be satisfactory, there are clearly pain points within particular departments which might be overloaded with work tasks.
Present
Following analysis, we recommend presenting the findings in two streams: first, to leads and managers, and afterward, to the entire organization. The HR department should encourage leads to go over the survey results of their teams to see what they mean for them and to begin discussing action plans. This is an essential first step before presenting the survey results to all employees because it is critical for leadership to understand what the results say about their team dynamics.
After presenting the results to the management, we suggest presenting them to employees during a meeting; however, you can also distribute them in any other format you deem appropriate.
You don’t have to show every detail, but it is recommended that employees are informed of the results.
We recommend going with candid leadership and accepting that you have some areas that need improvement but also some that are already excellent – those are your strengths.
The segment of presenting the results is most often missed; however, it is crucial because of these few reasons:
- Expressing the importance of the survey leads to a higher response rate the next time
- Proving that you are willing to listen increases employee satisfaction
- Showing that you are serious about survey results results in better satisfaction
Plan
Once the data has been analyzed and shared with leadership and employees, more detailed action planning can begin. One thing is to learn your pain points, but solving them is another story.
The best experience is to take the leadership team somewhere relaxed and brainstorm the activities that will be collected and written down in a document called the action plan.
In smaller companies, one group is enough for the whole organization. Divide larger organizations into different groups for different organizational segments. E.g., per office, department/team, or whatever suits you best.
The action plan has to be written in a document with clear information:
- What exactly is an action item?
- What defines success?
- Who is in charge of the plan?
When creating an action plan, you don’t have to have an action point for everything. It is not feasible to change dozens of segments in a few months. We recommend taking 2-3 points per responsible person.
Follow up
Once you create an action plan, it is equally important to follow its progress. What we recommend is:
- Set up quarterly check-ins with the teams. Sit down, assess how the team is doing, and (re-)establish ownership;
- Connect the action plan with other KPIs, which allows you to track all KPI achievements;
- Use a monthly Pulse to track the progress of your organization or team. If your action plan is proving successful, that is fantastic. If results are stagnant or decline, change your strategy;
- Inform the organization about your progress regularly. It is critical to demonstrate that you truly act on the feedback they provide.
Other tips & tricks
Here are some other tips and tricks which can help you improve satisfaction and engagement:
- Add a segment about employee satisfaction to the primary managers' KPIs and link it to measurable results from Deep Dive or Pulse survey. For example, an expectation is to have an average overall satisfaction rate of 3.5/5 or an average eNPS of more than 7.
- If you have good grades or ones higher than the benchmark, you can use that in your marketing, PR, and HR activities to help attract talent.
- In case the HR, management, or other employees have anonymity concerns, we suggest reading this blog post to find out how we ensured it.
