FAQ: conducting an employee loyalty survey

Common Questions-How do I use the information?
Friday, April 24, 2009 by Chris Woolard

The last question in this series on five common questions in conducting an employee loyalty survey is, how do I use the information?One of the worst things a company can do is conduct an employee survey and do nothing with the results. It would be better for a company to do nothing than to ask for employee opinions and not act on them. What I have seen work best is to create a cross-functional team of 5-10 employees. Their job is to digest the information, help communicate the results, solicit feedback and suggestions, and create the final action plans. The team should be comprised of employees from various departments and positions, although I would not recommend putting an employee on their boss on the same team. You can have team work on all of the action items or have a different team assigned to each action item. I like having different teams (with maybe one or two common members across all teams to help coordinate and facilitate) as this gives more employees the opportunity to help create change in the organization. Not only does this create buy-in because it is no longer just an "HR" initiative but it also helps the employees grow and develop by doing something that is not part of their typical job but is valuable to the organization. These teams can be at any level of the organization. Some clients will have teams at the total company level only while others may have teams going on at different regions or even different departments in the organization. It really depends on the culture, size, and complexity of the organization as to the specific structure of the teams. Once action plans have been created, smaller implementation teams can be created to ensure the action plans are carried out. It is generally not necessary to have 5-10 people on the implementation team as the implementation team is more about execution and less about brainstorming. The implementation team's responsibility is to ensure the specific actions are carried through.