Getting the most out of of the Culture & Engagement Survey
Make it come alive in your organization.
Overview
Getting Started
Congrats on completing the Culture/Engagement Survey! Whether it’s your first or whether your team has already participated many times, I hope this Survey becomes a catalyst for some real improvement in your business.
Here are the steps I’d suggest that you follow:
Understand the reports
Share the Results with your Leaders
Assess your team’s results
Share the results and assessments with your team (full staff)
Make final decisions about what to focus on
Take action to build an even better culture than you enjoy now
Track progress to make sure your actions create lasting culture/engagement improvement
1. Understand the Reports
Below you will find links to overviews of each of the reports - each has a definition of each column and suggested ways to use the reports. I’d suggest you process them in the following order - click the links to learn more about each report and how to use it:
Survey Report - To learn more about the SnapShot report, I encourage you to watch the videos embedded in the report and in the email I sent out with your results. This will give you a better understanding of the report and data collected. Bring additional questions you have to the survey webinar on 8/3 at 3 pm EST or email me directly.
Comments Report - take a deep breath and prepare yourself for this one. People share honestly in these surveys, and I cannot control what they say. Take it all in and commit to learning from it. Remember that one person’s opinion does not reflect the sentiment of the whole group, but also don’t ignore opinions just because they don’t land well. Look for patterns and good ideas that you can take action on that will make things better.
Excel Export - We created a sortable Excel sheet with survey data so you can sort it however works best for your team. Notes about each column are available in the column headers.
2. Share the survey with your leaders
Sit down with your leadership team to review the results. Look for and discuss the following:
Celebrate the above-average scores first – get some positive energy flowing.
Think about and learn from the below-average scores. Which do we need to take most seriously?
Avoid the temptation to try to figure out who answered which way (“Why did we score so low here – who is to blame?”). It’s not productive and will distract you from what you really need to do.
3. Assess Your Team’s Results
Review the survey reports from five perspectives:
Are we happy with our Average Score on each statement? Before we compare our score to other companies, are we happy with how our team agreed (or disagreed) with the statements? Look for lower Score Averages and think about whether you are comfortable with your team's opinion. Make a list of the statements that you want to improve.
Are we comfortable with the amount of Variance on each statement? Which statements should we mark for discussion about why we see things so differently?
If you’ve taken this survey before, are we happy with how we’re trending compared to prior results? What’s moved in a good direction? What’s gotten worse? What actions might we take to reverse trends we don’t like?
Are we happy with how we compared to other teams? Look for the larger negative differences between you and the other companies who took the survey. Now that you know your scores and that other teams scored better, what actions might you need to take?
What can we learn from the comments we received on the Comments Report? What trends do we see with the answers given? Were there any ideas that were unique but had real potential to be impactful? What are we willing to learn from this report?
Come up with a list of 3-5 key issues and 1-2 specific actions which you can focus on over the next 3 months.
Draft a list of the most significant findings from the data in the reports. You cannot change too many parts of a business at once - you must choose what to focus on.
Once you brainstorm possible areas of focus, prioritize the list down to the most significant 3-5.
Choose 1 or 2 items to begin making progress on in the next month or so.
4. Share Your Results and Assessments with Your Team (Whole Staff):
Here are some principles to keep in mind in your discussion with the team:
One of the best ways to let your team know that you’re taking the survey results seriously is to share the results with them and get them into a discussion about how to make things better. Sharing and getting people involved in discussions will help them participate enthusiastically in future surveys.
Please recognize that Culture and Engagement are collaborations between leaders and staff - they’re neither top-down nor bottom-up. Leaders and staff must work together to make both Culture and Engagement better. Here are some principles to follow when setting up conversations with your team
Develop your communication plan. For smaller companies, it’s easy to get everyone together to share the results. For larger teams, it’s more complicated. Decide when you will share results with different groups. Have a plan to eventually share the results with everyone. Keep in mind that sharing results isn’t the same as having a discussion to collaborate on improvement ideas - those are better done in smaller groups.
Decide what to share. Most teams that have done the Survey in the past use the Summary report as the basis of their sharing. It will give the team an overall sense of how your team thinks/feels about your culture and engagement, and shows how your team compares against many other teams. Make sure you explain the concept of the Score Average and the Variance Average.
I do not recommend sharing the whole Comments Report with everyone. I do recommend sharing selective comments, both positive and constructive. I wouldn’t give comments that are overly harsh or critical any airtime, but I might translate them into more positive language and bring them up as topics that people seem to have opinions about.
When sharing with your team:
Start with the good news – the positive variances and comments where your team was above average – celebrate the good news. Get positive energy flowing.
Look at the negative variances – share the ideas for improvement that you’ve already developed.
Share your top 5 issues that your leadership team developed. Talk about some things that you believe you can do to make improvements. Ask for their help on those items.
If your team is small enough to have a conversation/dialog rather than a presentation, ask them – “what else could we do better together” for each high-variance statement – get them talking and sharing their ideas.
Maintain an attitude of curiosity – write down what you hear, with no defensiveness or arguing. In the end, thank them sincerely for their feedback.
After this meeting, process these new ideas with your leadership team and add the best ideas to your ideas for action.
If you want to get real feedback and discussion from your team, set dates to sit down with groups of 5-10 and discuss the results. Real discussions are hard with too many people.
Breaking Into Smaller Groups for more In-Depth Conversation
If you want to get a broader perspective on the survey results, commit to getting the team into smaller group conversations. People feel freer to share ideas when they are with smaller groups, especially if they know and trust the people they are in conversation with. If your team is larger, or even on smaller teams that want to get into more conversation, consider sharing the results and having specific questions prepared for smaller groups of people. Groups can be cross-departmental, or they can be single dept groups. Put people together who will enjoy speaking together about making the company culture and the engagement of team members better.
5. Make Final Decisions About What to Focus On
After sharing the reports and your assessments with the team, decide if you want to try to improve in key areas. You can take your previous assessments and commit to taking action. Your staff may have had good feedback when you went over the results with them. You may have decided to get into small group discussions and received good insight. Go through the feedback from whatever discussions you’ve had, review your previous assessment, and make final decisions. No more than 5 topics, and it’s probably best to take action on no more than 2 at a time.
6. Take action to build an even better culture than you enjoy now
Identify the 3-5 statements or comments where you want to improve most. ‘
Brainstorm ways you can improve on those statements.
After generating 10+ ideas, commit to action on the ideas that will have the most impact.
Group the ideas into 2 categories: short-term actions (easy to do, low-hanging fruit), and long-term actions (harder to do, but very impactful).
Assign each action item an owner (a person who will make sure the idea gets implemented) and a proposed date for its completion.
Follow up regularly with the owners of each action to make sure the commitments get done.
Put the ideas into motion as soon as you can and keep taking action to improve. The goal is to show the team that the survey and their sharing has made a difference and that things are changing for the better.
7. Track progress to make sure your actions create lasting Culture/Engagement improvement
Like any company priority, making Culture and Engagement improvement takes some energy. Making sure that you have clear next steps, and you are clear on who is accountable for making the steps, is key to making progress. Getting people into regular meetings on a regular basis to check in helps to make sure that progress gets made and that the action items get accomplished.
Remember to keep tracking well beyond the end of the improvement in order to make sure that the action item becomes a permanent part of how your team works together.
Schedule the Next Survey
I’ll be doing this survey every 6 months or so. I recommend doing this survey at least annually, and some teams have committed to doing it every 6 months. If your team elects to participate, your results will show your progress over time.