Jump into 2018 with These Employee Engagement Survey Tips

There are many articles out there about the secrets to employee engagement. The secret is there are no secrets. In fact, employee engagement isn’t a quick, five-step fix. It’s a strategy implemented by an organization to create a culture of commitment. When the romance of the new job wanes, organizations with strong engagement strategies continue to have dedicated, loyal employees,/a>.

But an organization has to start somewhere. Try here.

1. Outsource your employee engagement survey. Just as a person won’t make, and take, their own personality test, an organization shouldn’t create an in-house survey. Find a reputable organization to administer the employee engagement survey. Ask for references. Make sure the survey results are benchmarked (there must be comparable data for each question) and include drivers for both engagement and disengagement. Each organization has its own personality and culture, so there will be no one-size-fits-all result.

2. Who cares? To have an effective survey experience, you have to have senior leaders and managers on board, understanding the importance of the survey and how the results are actionable. Take your time to get the organization ready. So many surveys stay in the theory cloud. A good survey will have actionable results. And the organization must take the appropriate steps to improve, based on survey results.

3. Share employee engagement survey results. Within one to two weeks, maximum, of receiving the employee engagement results, socialize the global information with the entire organization. So many survey processes go belly-up because there is no clear communication plan.

4. Dig deep with the employee engagement survey results. The results of the engagement survey should be socialized with managers and senior leaders in more depth, each one analyzing the results of their teams. Depending on results, managers might need more coaching and leadership training. This should be understood from the get-go.

5. Share the survey results with your teams. Each leader has the opportunity to share the survey results, in-depth, with her team in order to make action plans to improve. This is a team effort in which all stakeholders are accountable for their own growth and improvement.

6. Hold managers accountable. Managers have to be held accountable for the action planning and improvement of their teams. There’s no finger-pointing here. Managers have to show growth and improvement, following-through on the action plans made by the team. This is true leadership.

Employee engagement doesn’t just happen. It takes time, planning, dedication, and follow-through to affect real change in organizational culture. Start with a survey. Listen to what your employees have to say. Improve. Repeat.