Five strategies to prioritize and shape your focus when deciding how to follow up on survey results and design action plans.
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Overview
Five strategies to prioritize and shape your focus when deciding how to follow up on survey results and design action plans.
Additional Resources:
By Lowest Scoring Questions
Sort your survey questions by score to identify the survey questions with the lowest favorability.
Pros:
- Straightforward to implement
- Can uncover your weakest areas
Cons:
- Not all cultural factors equally impact employee engagement. For some groups, manager effectiveness drives engagement most, while for others, recognition and feeling valued are key; Focusing solely on low survey scores may overlook areas with the greatest potential to boost overall engagement.
By High-Impact Questions
Identify and prioritize the survey's High-Impact questions. These focus areas offer the most room for improvement. Consider which high-impact questions your team can impact directly and feels most passionate about addressing.
Pros:
- A strategic way to maximize your ability to improve engagement
- Potentially identifies where you have the most leverage to make meaningful changes
Cons:
- Can require a deeper understanding of survey analytics
- This data isn't always available for non-Engagement surveys, i.e. short surveys, pulse surveys, setc.
By Questions With Largest Year-Over-Year Decline
Align your current and previous survey scores to easily compare survey results over time. Focus on the areas with significant year-over-year drops.
Pros:
- Highlights potential problems that may not have low scores but show high declines to address issues early
Cons:
- Not applicable for first-time surveys or surveys with different questions
- Staff changes should be noted as this can also impact year-over-year comparisions
By Questions Where a Group Scored Below the Organization
Helpful to identify gaps between groups, i.e. teams, departments, locations, etc. and the organization as a whole. Compare the group's score against the organization's overall score to identify potential issues.
The Retention Radar can automatically help identify groups detected as flight risks and validate findings, learn more about the Retention Radar.
Pros:
- Can pinpoint groups of employees less engaged than the rest of the organization to allow for targeted strategies to increase engagement
Cons:
- Over-use of this method can create an 'Us vs. Them' scenario; the moderator needs to be skilled to guide construcitve conversations about improvements
By Listening to Employees
While survey results and analytics are an excellent resource, it's also important to have conversations with your employees. Allow employees to guide discussion and provide insights into valuable focus areas as an additional post-survey strategy.
With Engagement surveys, use the Discussion Starter to hold guided conversation and organize any insights, learn more about the Discussion Starter.
Pros:
- Can reveal important improvement opportunities that data alone might miss
- Nurture relationships by allowing employees to drive conversations and have an influence on outcomes
Cons:
- A vocal minotiry can sway the discussion towards issues that the rest of the team may not view as a priority; the moderator needs to be skilled to ensure the discussion remains balanced and productive