How to Encourage Involvement in an Employee Engagement Survey

Although savvy business leaders recognize the value of an employee engagement survey, front-line managers and employees may need to be convinced. 

And unless a large enough majority participates willingly and honestly in the process, assessment results will be incomplete and invalid. As company leaders, we need to be able to persuade our employees that the employee engagement assessment process will benefit them, their team and the organization as a whole.

Think about when you were asked to stay on the phone to complete a customer satisfaction survey… perhaps for your bank or to rate an online shopping experience. Most of us have multiple reasons to decline. 

• We don’t have the time.
• We don’t believe there’s anything in it for us.
• We don’t trust that it will make much difference (unless we were either over-the-top delighted or super dissatisfied).
• We just don’t care enough. 

Many of these reasons are the same reasons we hear in our employee engagement training workshops that keep employees from participation in employee engagement surveys.

Here is what we must do to encourage and support their critical involvement in the process.

1. Make the engagement survey simple and easy.Every employee should have easy access to the survey, whether online or on paper, it should be in their preferred language, and it should take no more than 10-12 minutes to complete.
   
   
2. Ensure survey anonymity.Employees need to trust that their comments will have no negative consequences or repercussions. Leaders must be able to assure that the individual responses will be confidential. If there are issues of trust in your organization, hire a third party to administer the survey.
   
   
3. Be clear on the purpose.Make sure employees understand that this is not a survey whose goal is idle and self-serving curiosity. Your work force needs to believe that you are measuring the degree of employee advocacy, discretionary effort and intent to stay because you want to improve the overall performance environment for the good of the company. You want their honest feedback in order to make the important changes that matter most to them in terms of their commitment to their job and the organization.
   
   
4. Outline the engagement implementation plan.In your introductory communications, explain that the engagement results will be analyzed and reported back, first in rather general terms and then in more specific actionable terms as they cascade throughout the organization. Tell employees that they will have opportunities to weigh in on the plans for improving engagement and will be involved with their teams in the implementation of what matters most.
   
   
5. Follow through on your engagement plans.Be straightforward in reporting the employee engagement results so you have a mix of the positive and negative. Link the feedback to the specific changes you intend to make. Involve employees through focus groups and general meetings where questions and suggestions are encouraged so they feel as if they share ownership of the change process and are still a critical part of the process.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/leading-for-employee-engagement/