We’ve blogged long and hard about the importance of improving employee engagement if you need to boost business efficiency, increase staff retention and appeal to the best candidates on the job market.
If you don’t believe us take a look at this post on improving employee engagement in 5 easy pieces. Or this one on 6 employee engagement comms tools you should be using. Within our sagely advice you may have picked up on the fact we advocate employee engagement surveys as a means of understanding what departments and teams on the ground are really thinking.
The problem is, you could spend thousands on creating a survey and wind up with disconnected data which is of no real use. The whole idea of employee engagement surveys is to glean vital insights into not just where problems lie, but what lies at the root cause of those problems.
Not content to simply sit back and watch organisations continue to make the same mistakes, here are 5 ways to better use your employee engagement data that will ensure you’re not throwing cash, and hours,0 down the drain…
Unify measurement
The first step towards better use of employee engagement survey data happens before the survey has even been created. You need to understand what the business overall is measuring, what metrics are important to the core goals and aims of the company, and then build these directly into the survey itself.
Remember no source is an island
When considering where to source information from it’s crucial that you cast a wide net. This means not just relying on data from the employee engagement survey itself, but also incorporating data from HR departments, performance management systems and business outcome assessments. This way you can place the feedback from employees within a greater context, and start looking for correlations.
Investigate the anomalies, oddities and alarm bells
You’re not here to big-up how great your company or organisation is. Employee engagement surveys and the subsequent data analysis is all about highlighting what’s not great and looking to change that situation. As such when you find things that don’t look right, or don’t look as you would like them to, dig deep and drill down. Then drill down some more. Conduct true analysis combining various metrics from across the business and different statistical processes so that no measurement criteria is isolated.
Tell your story
It’s really important that you don’t simply hit departments, teams or individual members of staff with a shed-load of data, pie charts and analytical numbers gleaned from the employee engagement survey. You need to create an engaging story from the information you have which can explain, in the simplest terms, exactly how cause leads to effect. For example the way high staff turnover in stores has created a lack of customer service specialists, in turn making staff members feel ill-equipped to deal with detailed queries.
Prove, get investment, do something
This is quite often the most difficult step because, let’s face it, all businesses have limited resources (to some extent at least). Similarly every organisation wants to curtail spending as much as possible. Nevertheless, money splashed on employee engagement surveys will be wasted without the ability to secure the funds needed to correct any problems it has brought to light. You need to come up with concrete proof to the key decision makers, showing that acting on the results will offer tangible business value.
Struggling to improve your employee engagement? Why not email or give us a call to discuss what models could work for you.
