Employee Engagement Results Are In: Now What?
Employee engagement surveys are a useful data point, giving you a framework for important conversations and tangible measurement that can indicate strengths and weaknesses across the organization or even against an external benchmark. And they are a great way to signal that the organization is listening to its employees and willing to invest in the employee experience and a strong workplace culture.
But, too often, organizations do a better job of administering the survey and tallying up numeric results than they do actually generating and implementing meaningful steps towards improvement. This leaves the heavy-lifting – digging deeper into the data and determining how to best affect change – up to individual leaders.
So what can an already-busy leader do to get real value out of their results? Engage an objective third party to host focus groups with their team.
Employee engagement focus groups offer several more benefits than the engagement survey results alone:
You’ll gain an understanding of why your employees feel the way they do. A focus group provides a place to ask for and explore the ideas and feelings behind some of those broadly-phrased questions found in engagement surveys.
You’ll be able to solicit ideas (and pressure-test them with key players). Inviting your team to develop the solutions to the identified issues shows that you value them as experts. Sometimes little things make a big difference! You’ll also hear which ideas WON’T be well-received, saving you time and money on actions that won’t have an impact.
You’ll demonstrate your commitment to listening. Remember how we said surveys signal a commitment to listening and a willingness to invest in culture? Digging in deeper, taking action, and hosting a focus group proves that you’re not simply ticking the box and going back to business as usual. It shows you that you care about improving.
You’ll drive accountability – for yourself and your team. By inviting your team to be part of creating the solution, you place your engagement goals on a more public stage. Employee engagement focus groups give your team an opportunity to contribute and a sense of ownership in the solution.
It’s important to set up your employee engagement focus groups quickly after your results are in. An expert partner can help you design, moderate and manage the discussions so that you can ensure you get actionable insights. Findings from these focus groups will help you more efficiently create your action plan by identifying the wins and opportunities that are most important to your team and offering perspective on the most effective ways to solve key issues.
