Communicating Employee Engagement Survey Data
Your employee engagement survey has closed, and you have your data, you have come up with an action plan from your results, but now what? An important but often overlooked step is coming up with a plan to communicate to everyone in the company the results and the next steps the company is taking. Survey data should be shared org-wide at a high level by leaders as well as at a low-level by directors and manager. It is important for employees to know that action is being taken at all levels and what those actions are.
Part of your overall survey communication plan should include a piece that covers post-survey communications. In this piece of your plan you need to decide who, what, when and how. Who is responsible for communicating the data and the action plan? What are you communicating? This is most likely different for the different levels of the organization. When do you want to communicate the data? And last, how are you communicating the data?
At a high-level, it is a best practice to send out a company wide communication. This helps ensure everyone gets the same message. In your communication include a brief thank you to your employees for participating in the survey and providing their feedback. You will also want to provide a brief summary of what was learned from the engagement survey results, and to share the percentage of employees who participated as well as the plan of what is going to be done with the data. Make sure to let employees know they will hear more detailed results or action plans from their specific areas. Employees may want to get more information. Let employees know what the communication channels are that they have to learn more about what action is being taken at a high-level. If they have questions or want to learn more, where do they go? You could include a contact or process in your message for where employees should go to get more information.
At a lower-level, managers and directors should come up with a plan to meet with employees to discuss the survey results and what action they are taking based on the results. In order to communicate in a time-effective manner, a town hall meeting or a webinar would work well to allow managers and directors to communicate to everyone at once. This is also an opportunity for employees to ask questions and learn what others have to say. As part of the communication managers and directors should include where an employee can go to get more information. A follow up newsletter or company intranet help reiterate what was said and allows the employee to have another resource to get information.
Completing an engagement survey and creating an action plan are big undertakings, but keep in mind they are just part of the whole process. The employees took time to participate and provide feedback. Making sure employees know their feedback is being heard and acted on is essential. The communication plan is one step in the entire employee engagement survey process. Remember, these employees participated in your survey to share their voice. They want to know that they were heard by seeing your communication about it, and action plans that are backed up by real action.
