Monday, August 10, 2009

Action Planning after Employee Surveys

You’ve probably heard that effective goal setting is a key to gaining successful results from your employee surveys. Whether or not you choose Insightlink for your employee surveys, you owe it to yourself and your organization to set goals and show employees that their time taking the survey was not wasted. Setting (and meeting) those goals gives employees a sense of the organization’s commitment to continuous improvement. Helpful tips for accomplishing this are included in our Action Planning Guide.


Effective Action Plans cannot be established without knowing the end result you want to achieve. In deciding what goals to set for your organization and/or your own department, site or functional unit, ask yourself:

Which issues are in your control to change?
What resources do you and/or your organization have available in order to resolve the issue?
How long will it take to correct the issue?
How will implementation of the proposed solution provide value to your employees?

All goals established for Action Plans should be divided into three categories:

Short-term “quick fixes” that can be implemented immediately.
Medium-term objectives that can be achieved in 2-3 months.
Longer-term goals that are more ambitious and likely require 6 months to a year to achieve.

Also, you should record the goals that cannot realistically be handled at the site level or cannot be tackled at this time. You need to let your employees know what these goals are and why they cannot be addressed at this time.