Insights
We look at the main reasons for hosting a staff survey, how to respond once the responses arrive, and what you should do with the findings of the survey
You’ve promoted your staff survey, written insightful questions, rolled it out, and had a great response rate. But what next?
Without carefully planning your next steps, all that time and effort could be meaningless.
Remembering why staff surveys are important is helpful to keep yourself motivated and to use the findings to make meaningful change.
A staff survey can:
We share tips on how to run a staff survey, and below are pointers to make the most of your findings.
Completing a survey takes time (and hopefully) thought. Thanking participants will show that you respect the time they’ve taken to complete it and value their feedback.
A little appreciation goes a long way and thanking them now means they’ll be more likely to participate in future surveys. You might also like to reiterate why their input is important and how their views will help to improve the organisation.
Many digital survey tools have the ability to collate answers, analyse data and present it clearly. One of those tools, Survey Monkey, has a useful guide on how to analyse survey data.
It can be hugely revealing to segment data according to specific employee groups. For example, if you’ve asked employees how they rate their work/life balance, you might have a high percentage overall saying it’s good.
But drill down into that, and you could find that one team rates work/life balance as very high, while another as very low. Segmenting your data can help to show the specific teams or departments that are struggling or have particular concerns.
It’s likely that the survey results will spark new questions or need further clarification. For example, if responses to particular questions weren’t what you expected, or if there were significant differences between teams.
You might like to ask a few follow-up questions to a specific group (but keep that to only two or three questions). And if there are specific areas of concern, you could run a focus group, or offer one-to-one conversations, to better understand the issue.
This qualitative information can be an important way to really understand what’s going on under the surface of your organisation, and pin-point ways to improve it.
Share the findings with exec teams, team leaders or department heads before communicating them more widely. Doing this will give managers a chance to understand what the findings are, and specifically, what it says about their own team’s dynamics or concerns.
Next, share the survey findings across the organisation – and don’t wait too long to do it. Communicating the results honestly and swiftly again shows that you respect people’s time in contributing to the survey and that you take their input seriously.
Sharing the results is a way to celebrate what’s going well and what people appreciate about working for the organisation.
But acknowledging what’s not going well is just as important – if not more so. Being open about any challenges shows that you’re listening and receptive, and it can help to build trust. Also outline next steps, even if that’s simply that you’ll be creating an action plan and when people can expect to see it.
If there are issues that affect specific teams, it can be helpful for leaders to speak to their teams about what the survey findings mean for them.
It’s possible that your survey has unearthed several areas for improvement. The task now is to prioritise them and decide which to focus on and what to do. Don’t try to tackle everything at once. It’s more productive to focus on a few key areas (and a few quick fixes). This might include working with managers to set team goals and targets. Then it’s time to share the action plan more widely, start making changes and build on the momentum.
Regularly check against the goals in your action plan, and report back to employees. This will help to communicate that the organisation is committed to positive change and to responding to what staff need and want.
You might also want to follow up with a pulse survey – these are much shorter surveys and because of that, are helpful for measuring specific issues more frequently without burdening people.
And finally, use the data from the survey as benchmarks for any subsequent surveys. This way you can start to identify trends and measure improvements over time.
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