What Should You Do After Engagement Surveys?

You’ve put the time and effort into creating engagement surveys, sending them out to your employees, and reading their feedback. Now, your job is done – right?

Wrong.

After you complete an engagement survey, your work has just started. If you send out an engagement survey to your employees, get their feedback, and then don’t take any action, you will break their trust. 

Ideally, you run engagement surveys periodically to check the pulse of your employees, find out what matters to them, and figure out where to invest in the future. However, if you don’t take that feedback seriously and take action, you may have problems getting people to respond and impact the company’s culture.

So what should you do after engagement surveys? Here are a few practical action items:

Share The Feedback

What did you hear from your employees? They want to know the answers as much as you do. You can either share the results or give a higher-level look at just the basics. Then, drill down into those results when you can.

Give a list of 7-10 action items you are thinking about implementing. You don’t have to commit to anything right away. (These numbers will vary by the size of your organization and how many people you employ!)

Allow Discussion

Once you’ve released the feedback, wait a bit to hear feedback. Many employees will see answers they agree with or even provide solutions you didn’t know existed. For example, maybe the nurses at your retirement community want to have ways to learn more and become managers in their departments – you likely have a learning management system that helps them upskill. They’ll get the feedback they need to enroll in online courses or do the work to get a promotion.

During these discussions, be an active participant. Talk about some of your ideas and company expectations and get feedback, but never try to dominate the conversation. Engagement surveys are to help employees talk.

Pick A Few Things To Do Well

After engagement surveys, there’s always an inclination to do everything people suggest to keep the workplace happy. This isn’t possible. If you do try to do everything, you are either going to do things poorly, or you are going to put your business at risk. 

Instead, pick a few action items (preferably 3-5 that you know you can do well and that people care about) and start thinking about them. 

Don’t pick things against your company culture or that your employees don’t feel strongly about. 

Set A Timeline

Once you’ve announced the feedback and given people ample time to respond, you need to plan your action. Give yourself a timeline to achieve your goals. Set it up like you would any other purpose, using a SMART methodology. If you want help writing better plans, you can download our SMART goals template here.

Figure Out How To Achieve Your New Goals

Now might be the time to build a task force to accomplish some of those goals. If your survey results say that your workforce needs to bond with each other more, how can you do that? Bring together a few representatives from different parts of the organization and see what might work.

This can be more difficult in hybrid or remote environments, but it isn’t impossible. Use the framework from your SMART goal to create an action plan that fits into your timeline.

Provide Updates

As you work towards these new goals, provide updates to your employees. How are you faring? What roadblocks do you have? Being open and honest with your workforce can help create trust in leaders. It also makes them more realistic the next time you send out engagement surveys. They know that you are working towards their asks, even if it takes longer. 

It’s also possible that someone you didn’t recruit to join your team for that specific task may have information or ideas about how to make it a reality much more quickly.

Present Your Final Product

When you have something accomplished from your engagement survey, present it. By bringing attention to the fact that you got the idea from an engagement survey and brought it to life, you build trust in leadership and the employee engagement survey process.

Next time you do an engagement survey, you will have better results. You’ll get more information. You’ll be able to make smarter decisions.

Do It All Again

The great thing about engagement surveys is that you can do them repeatedly and get something different every time – as long as you are taking action. With Trakstar Perform, it’s easier to automatically send out surveys on a routine basis, get the results in an easy-to-decipher format, and then take action on what you find.

Increase Communication and Transparency with Engagement Surveys

Does the idea of engagement surveys make you nervous? They shouldn’t! They are a fantastic way to keep your workforce happy and motivated. They also help you know what’s going on when you can’t have eyes and ears everywhere.

Engagement surveys are only a tiny part of engaging, retaining, and attracting today’s top talent. For more information about how you can keep your workforce happy, healthy, and continually striving to do more and improve their skills, schedule a demo of the Trakstar platform to learn more. You’ll get a personalized demo that fits your needs, concerns, and questions.