The Survey Initiative: An Introductory Guide to Employee Research and Employee Surveys.
Setting improvement actions
Although improvement action planning is the most important part of the survey process, it is also the activity that a number of organisations fail to deliver against. You may consider using statistical techniques such as factor and regression analysis, these can allow you to highlight the areas impacting on employee engagement and motivation and help to focus action planning.
Indices can be calculated in key areas; for example if communication has been identified as an area for improvement in your survey, you can set a target for the average communication score for the next survey.
Setting and then publishing these targets can have a powerful effect on both management and employees alike. If managers know they are to be measured against specific standards they will take follow-up action much more seriously. And if employees can see a public commitment to change and improvement, they will play their part more energetically.
Follow up action
Ideally, each manager (from senior management to supervisor) should work with their team to identify and prioritise two to three areas requiring improvement – these could include the output from any statistical analysis or the global targets but can also be identified from the team’s local results.
The team then need to develop and implement an improvement action plan that is regularly reviewed. It is useful to document the agreed improvement actions and how they will be delivered. This summary can then be used to review the progress of the plan as actions are taken as result of the plan.