Planning Employee Engagement Surveys
The first step in your survey plan is to determine whether you genuinely need a vendor to conduct your surveys or whether you can handle them in-house.
Why Build Engagement Surveys Yourself
- It’s your job! One of the line-items in your job description is “Employee Engagement Surveys” and your senior management team is expecting you to deliver.
- You need custom survey questions which are specific to your organization. Your leadership team believes your industry/organization is so unique, standard employee engagement surveys just can’t capture the nuances of your culture.
- You need to have total control over the process including the design and implementation of the all employee engagement surveys.
- You don’t have enough in the budget to hire a vendor.
Why Partner with an Experienced Employee Engagement Survey Vendor
- An experienced vendor can offer a proven system for employee engagement surveys, ‘road-tested’ by their R&D department and their previous clients.
- Once you a sign an agreement with a vendor the project can begin immediately and finished quickly since this is their expertise. Now have a firm commitment with a timeline in place.
- Working with an experienced employee engagement surveys vendor means they can help you through the set-up process and manage the implementation details for you. You supervise the project and spend your valuable time on your other to-do list projects.
- An employee engagement survey vendor is probably more affordable than you think once you determine the ‘real cost’ of doing it yourself.
What it’s like to work with an Employee Engagement Survey Vendor
Consulting firms with 20 years or more of experience with employee engagement surveys bring their expertise to your project and can mean the difference between success and failure of your survey. Surveys should not be a “one and done” or “check the box” project. Instead, organizations in any industry can genuinely benefit from a consistent, regular check on the health of their business. Think about how often you review and report on your key business metrics such as sales volume, safety, profitability. Monthly? Weekly? Daily? Ask yourself why you report at that frequency. This strategy of checking your key metrics frequently should also apply to your workforce. Best-in-class organizations survey every six months to establish a rhythm of feedback and action that leaders and employees come to expect and appreciate. When employees see and understand the process, they are more likely to participate and enjoy the results. An employee survey can quickly turn negative if results are not shared correctly throughout the organization. Plus, it would be best to clarify to employees where survey results are tied to changes within the organization itself, whether it’s business processes, policies, or standards.