Workers who feel that their employer doesn't recognize or care about their best efforts may not give the most forthcoming answers. "I'll just tell them what they want to hear, they're not going to do anything anyhow" goes one line of thinking. Some employees may even feel that their answers could be used against them.
1. The true level of disengagement
As many HR professionals agree, your employee engagement survey is likely to suffer some bias that most likely skew results to look better than things actually are. It's very difficult to get high levels of participation (some organizations incent employees to fill out the survey) and it's hard to assess how honest employees are when they fill out the questionnaire. Respondents tend to provide answers they feel are most polite or socially acceptable, yet some workers may use the survey as a way to vent dissatisfaction.
2. The root cause of the problem
If your organization falls anywhere south of "exceptional" on a bell-shaped curve you can count on getting disappointing news from your survey. In other words you'll find that somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of your staff is disengaged. But you won't know why. Recognition is likely to be part of the problem but you can't tell for certain. Employee surveys are descriptive -- not prescriptive.
3. What to do next
Even when the results of your survey come back completely clear, the survey can't tell you what steps you should take next. Maybe that is why so many organizations sit on their hands for months after administering an employee survey. Failure to act visibly and quickly after the survey is completed is one of the worst things a business can do to employee morale, yet it is typical.
4. Whether you are trending up or down
A survey can provide a valuable baseline, but if you only administer the survey once a year you're not likely to get results that show a clear trend. Have you had significant staff turnover in the past year? Did you bring new hires on board? Both of these factors can add "noise" to the results that can cloud the picture.
5. What you are doing right
Maybe your company has gone through a tough growth phase and people are burned out. That said, you have a strong set of core values and your workers are in touch with your organization's mission. In other words, yes employees are disengaged but it might not take much to get them back in the groove.
What You Can Do About It
The shortcomings of employee surveys are one of the reasons we built TemboStatus, an all-in-one engagement dashboard that will not only help you analyze engagement levels across your business but will also prescribe actions and help you measure results. For less than the cost of what you would ordinarily spend on a company-wide survey TemboStatus offers exceptional value and a hand-held path to positive change.
But whatever tools you settle on, the big take-away is that any measurement needs to be followed immediately by action. Employees will start believing in the change you profess once they see action after the survey is complete.
