Survey’s done – now what? The moment that counts and how not to waste it

 

Survey’s done – now what? The moment that counts and how not to waste it 

 

Imagine this.  

You’re in the midst of a full-on week. You’ve got three huge deadlines. As you’re working on a document for your manager, another reminder to complete your work’s employee survey has just landed in your inbox.  

You’ve finally managed to carve out half an hour to complete it. You’ve made yourself a cup of tea, found somewhere quiet to sit. You want to do it properly. Give a real reflection of what’s it like to work here. 

You click through to the survey and diligently read the introduction and confidentiality notice. You decide to trust the process and be candid about the good bits and the bad.  

You start clicking through the questions – really thinking about each one. You reflect on your CEO, processes, inclusion, and so on, taking the time to consider different scenarios. 

When you get to the open feedback section, you really take the time to get the balance right. You want to put across what you think should change without sounding negative or ungrateful. You reread your answers three times to make sure it’s not obvious it’s you.  

Finally, you get to the end of the survey. You’ve put in a lot of effort because you know it’ll make a difference – it said so quite clearly in the email with the survey link! 

So you submit it. And you wait.

 

And you wait some more.  

It’s been a few weeks. But it must take a while to analyse so many views. You’re patient. 

Your CEO mentioned she’d seen the results and was considering the responses.  

But now it’s been months. You’ve still not heard anything.  

After a while, you forget about it.  

 

The next year, the survey arrives and you fly through it in 5 minutes. You think it matters, but you’re not sure anything will happen with the results. And again, it doesn’t. 

The next time you get a survey invite, you fly through it 30 seconds, just clicking wherever. You wouldn’t bother but your manager’s asked a few times. Again, you hear nothing back. 

After that, you don’t even bother opening the email.   

I don’t blame you – I wouldn’t either. 

 

What’s the point in this story?

 

No matter how much effort you put into promoting and communicating about your survey, it can all be undone by what happens afterwards. 

We’ve seen organisations neglect the action-planning part of their survey process – or, not ‘close the loop’. It damages employees’ levels of engagement, and it can go on to impact the quality of the insights. People stop putting effort into their responses – many stop responding altogether. Eventually, the survey just becomes a thing you do every year that no-one really cares about. 

We’re not talking about a handful of organisations. According to our latest IC Index, only 53% of UK employees say their organisation is good at showing how colleague feedback is used to inform action.

 

So, what needs to change? 

 

You need to plan what happens after the survey, before the survey. Dedicate the time to thinking about it so it doesn’t become an afterthought. 

 

Things you could do after your survey: 

 

• Spend half the time you have with your executive team sharing the results, and the other half discussing what you’re going to do about them. Bring in a facilitator if you need to, who can drive the purpose home. 
• Don’t leave it to leaders and managers to pass on the results. Put time and effort into telling the story at an organisational level. 
• Provide the tools managers and leaders need to have good quality conversations with colleagues. Make it part of your organisation’s rhythm, just like performance reviews.  
• Connect colleague insights into your business planning process. The results aren’t something ‘extra’ to communicate, they should be woven into everything you do as a business. 

 

Lacking a post-survey plan? Sign up for a 60-minute Survey Surgery session to find out what you could do to close the loop.