Best practices to follow when analyzing survey comments from at-risk employees.
Last Updated: December 3, 2024
In this article:
Overview
Best practices to follow when analyzing survey comments from at-risk employees.
Apply these best practices to the Retention Radar to uncover key insights when viewing a demographic group's survey comments to mitigate future risk of turnover. Learn more about the Retention Radar.
What to Do with Open-Ended Survey Comments
Best practices to follow when analyzing survey comments.
- Compare major themes to the overall themes from the Engagement survey
- Are these comments in line with previous themes, or do they bring up unique challenges?
- Do these comments touch on known pain points that you are actively working to address?
- Assess the urgency of the comments
- Are employees sharing things they need to see fixed immediately, or are they speaking about longer-term opportunities?
- Are employees sharing frustrations that are timely/trendy, or are they sharing frustrations that have troubled your organization for some time?
- Look for potential bias and prejudice
- Employees may have specific reasons for leaving an organization- it’s important to understand what might have occurred that led to their decision to move on from your organization
- Look for the positives in the comments
- Employees at risk of leaving may still have had positive experiences during their tenure, look for the things they enjoy about working at your organization and use these aspects as potential highlights for current and future employees
What to Avoid with Open-Ended Survey Comments
Practices to avoid when analyzing survey comments.
- “Who-hunting"
- Don’t try to determine who said what as a means to retaliate against them or take comments personally- rather, focus on the ideas or frustrations shared
- Ignore the comments because you think the employee is already on their way out of the organization
- Even if these comments are coming from at-risk employees, it doesn't mean that they have left your organization or will do so
- By taking action and responding to the frustrations shared by at-risk employees, you can still mitigate the flight risk for these employees
- Hope that managers and other leaders are already doing something about the negative comment
- While managers and other leaders may have already seen the comments when reviewing survey results, this doesn't mean that they were acted on
- Look for opportunities in future meetings with leadership and management to discuss the key themes identified from the at-risk comments and potential solutions