How to turn employee survey results into action

Whether or not you’re aware of it, employee engagement affects almost every area of your business. According to Gallup’s 2020 Q12® Meta-Analysis, engagement levels are directly linked to business performance; the report points at strong correlations between employee engagement and performance metrics like well-being, safety, absenteeism, quality, customer loyalty, and productivity.

What’s more, highly engaged business units lose 59% less employees. Reducing turnover results in increased efficiency — turnover costs can add up quickly, as new employees need training and won’t be working at full productivity right away. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that employee turnover can cost up to one-third of the departing employee’s annual salary, and other studies point to an even grimmer scenario: Replacing one person could cost you up to two times their annual pay.

Considering how employee engagement affects turnover and performance, it’s no surprise that so many organizations choose to track this metric through surveys. But it’s not enough just to run employee engagement surveys. You also have to use the information you gather.

Acting on employee survey results is key to achieving better business outcomes and building employee trust. Employees appreciate when their concerns are listened to; in fact, those who feel heard are over four times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. Conversely, when employees don’t feel heard, this can quickly create an engagement problem: 64% of professionals say “leaders making decisions without seeking their input” is their biggest problem at work.

Acting on survey results also makes employees more willing to take part in future surveys. According to McKinsey, the number one driver of “survey fatigue” was the perception that organizations wouldn’t act on the results.

So how do you leverage employee survey results and use them to boost engagement? Read on to learn how to get the most from your employee surveys.

You can start acting on employee survey results as soon as you receive them. You should use this playbook if you’ve recently completed an employee engagement survey, have pulse survey data that you’ve been aggregating over time, or if you intend to start running surveys — after all, you should be prepared to take action.

Reviewing survey results can help you deal with immediate problems and identify long-term trends. For example, measuring engagement will allow you to pinpoint current issues in your company, but it can also help you spot changes in company-wide engagement levels year on year.

Along with engagement surveys, you can also use other types of surveys, like diversity surveys and pulse surveys, to better understand the employee experience.

An employee survey program
To use this playbook, you’ll need to have an employee survey program in place to collect data.

If you don’t yet have a process for running surveys, or if you think your existing program could use improvement, check out our playbook “How to Run an Employee Engagement Survey” for helpful tips on how to get started.

Defined goals for your survey program
Your survey program should have a set of defined goals. Why are you running employee engagement surveys? What do you hope to get from your survey program?

This will help you understand how to act on the surveys and what kind of results you should be working towards.

• Before kickstarting an employee survey program, create a strategic plan outlining what the process will look like, what your primary goals are, and how you’ll measure success.
• In case you decide to run anonymous surveys (which we recommend), make sure employees understand that their privacy is preserved. Anonymous surveys often lead to better data, since employees may feel uncomfortable sharing sensitive concerns.
• Use best practices when creating survey questions.
• Consider the unique needs of remote teams when creating survey questions.
• Use engagement data to understand other important metrics, like performance and employee churn. 

Before you can start turning your employee survey results into action, you’ll need to administer your surveys.

Most HR departments run surveys frequently. Surveys may be sent weekly, monthly, or quarterly. To avoid survey fatigue, try to balance the length of your surveys with the frequency you’re sending them. The more infrequent the survey, the more questions you can include, and vice versa.

For higher completion rates, make sure employees know when to expect a survey and send reminders to prompt them to complete it. Remember: A culture of acting on employee survey results is the strongest motivator. No matter how many reminders you send out, no one wants to spend time completing a survey if they think the results will be ignored.

How are you currently running employee engagement surveys? Are you using a mix of software apps and documents, or even administering surveys on paper? Having employee survey results scattered in different places can lead to confusion and make it more difficult to analyze the data you gather.

To stay organized, it’s useful to have a “single source of truth” for your employee survey results. You can manage your survey process all in one place, alongside other HR functions like performance management, OKRs, and learning, with a people management platform.

There are two types of data you should collect through your surveys: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data can be expressed through numbers or metrics, while qualitative data consists of more subjective, long-form answers.

One commonly tracked quantitative metric is the employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). Net Promoter Score is a widely used metric for tracking customer satisfaction, and eNPS is an application of the same metric for employee satisfaction.

You can find out your eNPS using just one survey question: “On a scale of 0–10, how likely would you be to recommend our organization to a friend or colleague?” Employees may be classified as detractors (0–6), passives (7–8), or promoters (9–10), depending on the scores they give. To calculate your eNPS score, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. You can also easily measure eNPS with our employee survey analytics.

To better understand your quantitative data, try filtering and segmenting it (for example, by age, gender, team, or job title). You can also check for correlated questions using Impact Drivers and verify other companies’ benchmarks.

Qualitative data is a bit more complex to analyze than quantitative data. When looking at someone’s long-form answer, you may be unsure of what they mean by their comments. While you could simply ask them to elaborate in an in-person conversation, this can be difficult with anonymous surveys.

Fortunately, the platform allows you to reach out to employee survey respondents and engage in anonymous talks.

You can also analyze qualitative data at scale using sentiment analysis. This natural language processing (NLP) technique can help you digest and visualize information by grouping comments into categories and classifying them as positive, negative, or neutral.

The next step is to have a look at the “big picture” of your survey results. Your qualitative and quantitative analyses should have pointed you towards some key points to focus on. Once you’ve identified your company’s strengths and weaknesses, brainstorm ideas for how these might translate into action.

For example, if most employees gave low scores on the statement “my manager cares about my opinions,” you could look into setting up a managerial training program. Or if the statement “I have access to the equipment and tools I need to do my job” received a low score, perhaps it’s time to upgrade your technology and infrastructure.

The ideas you come up with during this brainstorm will serve as a foundation for your action plan.

At this point, it’s time to create an action plan and decide how to move forward. This is where you’ll choose the points that are most important to focus on, and outline the specific steps you’ll take to reach your goals.

To be effective, your action plan should be laid out in writing and should include regular checkpoints and deadlines for accountability. the solution allows you to create this type of post-survey plan and assign ownership of specific projects, making it easy to keep track of your progress along the way.

To keep employees at all levels of the company engaged and involved, try to avoid simply issuing decrees from above. Consider also offering ways for employees to create change from the bottom up. For example, many companies have created working groups where employees can discuss DEI issues, express their concerns, and plan future actions.

Once you’ve analyzed the data, understood it, and created your action plan, it’s time to share the survey results with people in your company.

Decide who needs to see the survey results, data visualizations, and action plan,  and how these should be presented. Employee survey results must be discussed with managers, and we recommend that you share them with employees as well — especially if you’re planning to make big changes.

You can share employee survey results at an all-hands meeting and follow up via email, recapping what was promised in the action plan from previous rounds and what has successfully been implemented. 

Employee survey results should guide the direction of your company culture over the long term.

When turning survey results into action, you may come across goals that can’t be acted upon right away or have to be postponed. In that case, these long-term objectives can be integrated into your company’s overall OKR or goal-planning framework. That way, they won’t be forgotten, and the relevant stakeholders can hold one another accountable for making things happen.

Our people enablement platform can deliver outstanding survey analytics and actionable insights into how your employees are feeling and are in need of.

When communicating employee survey results, keep in mind that your people appreciate transparency. 70% of employees say they’re most engaged in their job when senior leadership communicates openly with them. If you’re planning to make major changes, it may be best to discuss these with employees at a meeting rather than over email. That way, employees can ask questions, share feedback, and clarify any doubts they have.

When sharing results, be sure to respect anonymity and privacy. Avoid sharing detailed comments that could be traced back to an individual, especially on sensitive topics.

To run an employee engagement survey, start by defining your survey goals and deciding who will participate in the survey. Then, create your employee engagement survey questions. Finally, send out the survey at regular intervals, according to your preferred schedule. Don’t forget to send reminders to encourage responses!