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Every organization would like to have employees who “whistle while they work”. In addition to employees feeling good about working for an organization, senior leaders certainly would like to have employees who feel inspired and energized to go above and beyond in their work.
This is why engagement is critical for business success. High performing teams that produce high quality work, are innovative, are customer-focused and exhibit an array of other critical behaviours that ultimately drive customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and organizational performance.
Motivation & Initiative: Engaged employees are self-driven and motivated to go the extra mile, leading to higher quality work and increased productivity.
Problem-Solving & Innovation: They are more likely to contribute creative ideas and solutions, fostering innovation and continuous improvement.
Lower Turnover: Engaged employees are less likely to leave, saving on recruitment and training costs associated with high turnover.
Reduced Absenteeism: They are more present and committed, leading to decreased absenteeism and its associated costs.
Positive Brand Image: Engaged employees project a positive attitude, leading to better customer service and a stronger brand reputation.
Customer Loyalty: Satisfied and engaged employees contribute to creating a positive customer experience, fostering loyalty and repeat business.
Teamwork & Collaboration: Engagement fosters a sense of belonging and teamwork, creating a more collaborative and supportive work environment.
Morale & Company Culture: High engagement contributes to a positive and vibrant company culture, boosting overall morale and employee well-being.
Profitability & Growth: The combined impact of increased productivity, reduced costs, and enhanced customer satisfaction ultimately leads to improved profitability and sustainable business growth.
An important rule of thumb in understanding your survey results is not to overthink things. Your first and foremost task is to understand the results at a very descriptive level. This does not require you to “interpret” the results. You simply need to understand how your employees responded to each of the topics and individual survey items covered by the survey.
It also is important to understand whether or not your results have improved since the last survey, how your results compare to the organization as a whole and/or the larger part of the organization of which you are a part and how your results compare to the external benchmark, if appropriate.
Employees’ work perceptions differ by function, job tenure, and level – some groups tend to have lower scores.
Employees who are most committed can be most critical – engaged employees want things to be better.
Position yourself as a leader with your team on the same side of the table, jointly looking to make improvements.
In general, there are three ways your organization may choose to manage the post-survey action-planning process:
The organization, based on discussions with Human Resources and the senior leadership team about the survey results, will identify a shortlist of issues to focus on during the ensuing months of the post-survey phase. The logic of this approach is to ensure that every part of the organization is focused on the same list of issues in order to maximize the odds of improving these areas.
Survey results are disseminated to all parts of the organization and managers are expected to identify a few (e.g., two to three) key issues to discuss and develop actions to improve. The logic of this approach is to maximize ownership of action-planning at the local level and allow flexibility for departments/teams to decide what they believe is most important to work on based on their individual survey results.
This approach combines the best of the centralized and decentralized approaches. The organization identifies a few issues that it would like every manager to work on, which maximizes organizational focus. But it also allows managers the freedom to add an issue or two to the list of priorities for discussion and action on their individual survey results.
If your organization uses either the decentralized or hybrid approaches, you will need to identify the issues you would like to focus on for action with your team.
TalentMap’s research proves that the dynamics that drive organizational engagement (i.e., employee connectedness to the organization) can be very different from those that drive team engagement (i.e., teams going above and beyond in their work). Although every organization is different and can have unique key drivers, there are a few drivers that are very common across most organizations, regardless of their size, region, sector or industry.
How employees feel about their senior leadership and the organizational culture are almost invariably the two strongest drivers of organizational engagement. More specifically, inspiring and effective senior leadership and a caring, high-integrity, respectful, celebratory organizational culture that harnesses the intellectual capital of its employees are the two most important organizational dynamics that drive employee pride, optimism and morale.
Regarding team engagement, the most common key drivers that will energize teams to go above and beyond are inclusion, inspiring and effective team leadership, performance management and the leveraging of employee insights and ideas.
The insights report is a granular extension of key driver analysis and will help you better understand three important things about your survey results:
The relative impact of specific dimensions and items on engagement.
Why employees responded the way they did to the survey topics, including their comments, insights and suggestions for improvement.
Which survey items offer opportunity for improvement or are a strength and can be leveraged.
Each insights report is meant to dive deeper into a key driving dimension (key driver analysis is located in the snapshot report) and outlines the top three impactful items in the survey with relative comments.
TalentMap defines employee engagement as a strong emotional and intellectual connection that employees have for their job, co-workers, manager, senior leaders and the organization, which inspires and motivates them to go above and beyond in their work.
There are two equally important but somewhat different aspects of engagement:
How connected employees are to the organization as a whole.
How energized employees are to go the extra mile in their work.
TalentMap looks at employee engagement through both of these lenses. The first lens can be best described as
The most challenging part of the employee engagement process is moving from having survey results in hand to deciding what actions to take. The survey data and analyses identify the most impactful issues (i.e. key drivers), as well as which issues employees view least favourably. The written comments provide additional insights as to why employees feel the way they do and very often include some extremely good ideas about possible solutions. Employee focus groups can provide yet another valuable source of input to better understand selected issues and harness the best thoughts of employees regarding possible solutions or ways to improve.
The basic concept of focus groups is to avoid putting a tall stack of problems in senior leader inboxes with no solutions. It’s much better to place a short stack of reasonably fleshed out issues in those inboxes and a very tall stack of possible ideas for action. This also can be a very effective way to engage employees in moving from results to action so that senior leaders are not embarking on that journey alone. The following captures the basic steps in that process and pinpoints where focus groups occur in the sequence of events.
If you are responsible for multiple groups, you may be provided a heatmap. Multiple groups might be two or more business units, divisions, departments, locations, teams or demographic subgroups (e.g., age, tenure, gender). The following chart describes the basic content of a heatmap report.
A heatmap report is valuable in three specific ways:
It provides a very convenient means of looking across your organization to see which parts are generally more or less favourable than the organization as a whole.
It allows you to focus on a specific dimension (e.g., compensation, work/life balance, performance management) to see which parts of the organization are most and least favourable.
It allows you to focus on the Team Engagement versus Organizational Engagement scores to see which parts of the organization have the most and least engaged teams, as well as which parts are the most and least connected to the organization as a whole.
The scores for each part of the organization represent the difference between the subgroup and the overall organization percent favourable score. Differences that are more favourable than the overall score are highlighted in blue and differences that are less favourable than the overall score are highlighted in orange. It is important to view these differences as more or less favourable than the overall score, rather than as good or bad.
Engaged employees are energized employees who go above and beyond the call of duty. They are more likely to provide exceptional customer service, strive for quality work, show initiative, be creative, take personal ownership of their work responsibilities, resolve problems or issues that arise, encourage their colleagues and continuously try to improve. Survey questions that tap into the energy, performance and willingness of teams to go the extra mile measure team engagement.
This guide to employee engagement provides information, templates, and tips to help you understand engagement metrics, interpret your survey results, and develop effective action plans to meet your organizational responsibilities.
Ideally, an employee focus group should consist of no more than 10 to 12 participants. If the group is much larger than that, it becomes difficult to facilitate. Participants should be selected largely on a random basis. However, if certain employees are known to be very shy and unlikely to speak up, or others are very dominant to the point of making it unlikely that others will have a chance to participate, they should be excluded from participating.
The exact number and composition of the employee focus groups should be driven by the data, the topics to be discussed and organizational logistics. For example, if the topics are broad organization-wide issues, such as the organizational culture, a mix of employees across divisions/departments/sites might work very well. Alternatively, if the issues selected for discussion are more localized, the groups also could be localized. Some organizations will conduct both types - i.e., some site-specific groups, as well as some mixed cross-organizational groups.
The following document is an example of a discussion capture sheet. It is a very simple and straightforward way of capturing the two key aspects of the group’s discussion for each topic. Once a topic has been selected by the group, the first goal is to have an open, free-flowing discussion of the topic and to capture the thoughts of the participants.
For example, if organizational culture is the selected topic, the participants could expand on how they feel about the culture, how they would characterize it, what adjectives would they use, do they have concerns about it, etc. Once they have had an opportunity to expound on the issue, the next and most important part of the discussion is to brainstorm as many ideas as they can about possible solutions and/or ways the topic could be improved. All the usual brainstorming rules should apply at this point - i.e., every idea is a good idea and no critiquing of ideas is allowed. This can be the most challenging part of the discussion since it is much easier for participants to talk about a problem than to brainstorm possible solutions. However, the brainstormed ideas are what senior leaders and/or higher-level managers need the most - i.e., a mountain of suggestions to consider and evaluate for action.
If your group has at least 30 or more survey respondents, you can access key driver analysis within the snapshot report.
This report provides some of the most important information for understanding your survey results. The most effective, impactful and successful post-survey efforts are focused efforts. It is best to identify a short list of issues to focus on over the ensuing months. If valuable time, money and other resources are spread across too many initiatives, the risk is not making much progress on any one issue. The key driver analysis helps to identify which issues will have the most impact on engagement.
The following chart is an example of a key driver analysis:
The key driver analysis displays the strongest drivers of an outcome (i.e. engagement or retention) to help you understand which organizational dynamics have the most impact on making employees feel connected to the organization, or can also identify the dimensions that have the strongest impact on employees thinking of staying or leaving the organization.
The key driver analysis uses a statistical technique known as correlation analysis and displays the correlations in a table. This is the first step in deciding which dimensions should be prioritized for action. Dimensions with the highest correlations will provide the biggest “bang for the buck” for increasing engagement. As a general rule, correlations of .60 or higher are considered very strong. Correlations between .40 and .60 are still strong, but not as impactful as those correlating .60 or higher. Correlations below .40 are considered relatively weak.
Once the strongest drivers are identified, the next step is to consider the overall percent favourable score, whether the score is declining since the last survey and how the score compares to the benchmark. Strong drivers that have low favourable scores, are declining and/or are below the benchmark should be prioritized for action.
In most organizations, managers are accountable for five important activities:
High-performance managers increase employee and team productivity and success by leading with a focus on employee engagement. They consistently create an inclusive and engaging environment that inspires and energizes employees and their teams. Managing with a focus on employee engagement will:
Help you drive and sustain high levels of performance
Gain the commitment of your employees
Make your job easier and more fulfilling
Managers are the critical link for influencing employee energy, performance and success.
By this point, you have shared your results with the team and have given them a few days to consider the results. To create an action plan, you must understand what is and is not working when it comes to engaging your employees. This means digging into the survey results to uncover your team's strengths and weaknesses and identify areas for improvement. This is an activity that must involve the entire team if possible.
If you manage an area where it's not possible to bring everyone together at the same time, find ways to share thoughts across the different meetings; you might have the team share additional feedback using the huddle board or a bulletin board, for example.
A few days after you meet with the team to communicate the survey results, they will have had time to think about the information and are ready to consider the next steps.
Do You Need Additional Information?
There is no added value in an extensive analysis of why respondents answered a question in a given way. Striving for more information may make employees feel pressured to forego confidentiality in order to answer your probing questions. It is more productive to simply focus on creating solutions.
When developing employee engagement action plans, it is important to focus on a few important areas, rather than attempt to tackle everything at once. It is strongly recommended that your local action plan address no more than 1 or 2 focus areas.
You should decide on a tentative shortlist of priorities prior to meeting with your team that you can share once you have reviewed the results with them and are outlining next steps.
Step 1: Review your key driver analysis. It will identify which issues have the biggest impact on how your employees feel about the organization (Organizational Engagement), as well as what is most important for inspiring and energizing them in their work (Team Engagement).
Step 2: Once you identify the key drivers of engagement, look to see whether these issues have been improving or declining since the last survey and whether your employees are more or less favourable than the organization as a whole.
Step 3: Formulate a tentative list of priority issues for action. This does not need to be the actual actions that might be taken. Rather, it is a list of the topics or issues that need to be addressed with some action. The most logical topic choices are key drivers that are declining, scored low compared to the benchmark and/or scored low compared to the rest of the organization.
Your team members will establish what they believe to be the areas of greatest strength for the team, and what they consider the most important areas of concern. You will want to build on the former and improve the latter - addressing both can help maintain motivation. A sole focus on areas of concern can lead to a consistently negative point of view.
For areas of strength, ask the question, “What is the source of our strength and how can we draw more deeply from this source?” Consider factors such as:
Motivated people
Continual improvement culture
Learning organization
Open, trusting culture
Questions to Consider – Areas of Concern
For an area of concern, ask the question, “What is the source of our lower scores in this area?” The team may wish to consider factors such as these:
Inadequate knowledge or skills
Inadequate authority
Lack of information
Inadequate or outdated equipment or other resources
Based on the discussion, have the team as a whole select what they consider to be the most important factors. Keep in mind what is within your control and what is not and focus primarily on what is. It is important to pass relevant information on issues outside your control to your supervisor, but your action plan needs to focus on what you and your team are able to do.
With the most important factors identified, have the team brainstorm potential solutions and decide upon the solutions to be pursued.
To create the action plan, divide the selected solutions into discrete, concrete steps. The action steps should include tasks that will surmount any identified potential barriers to implementation. List the action steps in the sequence in which they will occur. The Action Plan Template, located in the More on Action Planning section, includes a notional example of what this might look like.
Once action planning is begun, remember that the most effective action plans are clear, specific and linked to your program priorities and objectives.
When you develop the action steps, think in terms of how you can create opportunities for small but meaningful accomplishments that will add up to important changes. If the team can immediately “fix” small things, employees will feel that the time spent responding to the survey was worthwhile and their input is valued.
As small achievements accumulate, employees see that positive change is indeed possible and can visualize more positive differences in the future. Success generates more success and creates an optimistic mindset open to more change. With positive momentum, champions and supporters emerge.
Resources
Consider the resources needed to accomplish each step. The resources may include time, people, materials, tools, training, authority, or information.
Due Dates
Set a due date for each action step. Make it realistic but aggressive.
Accountability
Assign accountability to one or more individuals for the completion of each action step, while involving all team members as much as possible.
Once you have reviewed the survey results for your area, it is time to share the survey results with your team. This is a very important step in the post-survey process. It is your opportunity as a leader to demonstrate to your team that you are taking personal ownership of the survey results and that you very much value their insights and opinions for making your team and the organization more successful and a better place to work.
Responding to the results of the Engagement survey should be a team effort – this is where we all work, and we all have a stake in it being an environment that brings out our best. Employee commitment and involvement is a key ingredient for successfully addressing engagement issues. People are much more likely to support solutions that they played a part in creating.
As noted in the Sharing Your Results section, when communicating the survey results, you do not immediately move into action planning. What you may wish to do is ask for volunteers to participate on an Action Planning team. This can make the action planning process more manageable in instances where you have a very large team. Still, even if such a team is created, encourage all employees to offer suggestions and comments through a physical or online suggestion box, conversations and/or emails with Action Planning team members, or staff meetings.
Step 4: Ask your team what they believe should be on the shortlist of priorities for action. If they seem unsure or do not speak up, share your tentative list and ask for their reactions and thoughts as to whether they agree with your list.
Clear performance expectations
Strong knowledge and skills
Good project management
Service orientation
Strong sense of mission
Employee empowerment
There are clear consequences for positive and negative behaviors
Peer pressure for high performance
Poor workflow
Lack of time
Inadequate funds
Conflicting demands
Organizational constraints
Rewarding not doing it
Punishing to do it
Doesn’t matter much if we do it
We don’t care enough about it
Depending on the size of your group and your organization’s policy about distributing the written comments employees provide when completing the survey, you may have access to a comments report. The comments report is particularly valuable for getting an initial understanding of what employees are thinking about regarding each specific topic in the survey.
When reviewing the comments report for your area, it is very important to keep a few things in mind:
First, try to avoid playing the “who said what” game. In other words, don’t try to guess which of your employees made specific comments. Instead, try to identify broad themes that communicate a message about how employees feel and suggestions they are making about how situations or issues can be improved. It is possible that some comments are rather harsh.
Try to control your emotions and how you react to these comments. Some employees can be less than diplomatic when they write a comment. Looking past any harsh words, ask yourself whether there is an important message that is being conveyed that perhaps is consistent with other comments that are more tactfully written.
Assuming that your team had at least a reasonable level of participation in completing the surveys - ideally, at least 50% - it is important to thank them for taking the time to participate and provide honest feedback. If the participation was low, still thank those who participated and encourage those who did not participate to engage in post-survey conversations.
Be Fully Prepared: Ensure that you understand the results, including what your employees are most and least happy about, how your results differ from the organization as a whole and what the key driver analyses indicate about the most impactful issues on engagement for your group.
Be Relaxed and Confident: It is important that employees feel that you are comfortable in sharing the results with them.
Don't Be Defensive: It is not uncommon to take things personally and try to give reasons why the results are low. Try to stay focused on simply communicating the results and not trying to offer your explanations. The results represent the views of your employees, so let them offer any explanations they are comfortable sharing as to why the results are what they are.
Listen: It is most important to listen to whatever comments or questions employees have to help them understand the results. The sharing session provides you another opportunity to learn from employees how they feel about things, beyond what the survey results convey.
Prepare: Ensure you understand the results and the key messages. Ensure you understand the drivers of engagement and how they are similar to/different from the rest of the organization. Understand in broad terms how they were derived and why you should focus on these to improve engagement, and not just what employees have indicated they are least satisfied with.
Convene a separate staff meeting focused on the survey results. Ensure this is viewed as a high priority. Walk through the results. Allow ample time for Q&A.
DO NOT attempt to obtain feedback or reaction during this meeting. Let employees ask their questions. Asking for feedback at this point distracts them from processing the new information they are getting, and what comments they have to offer will not be based on reflection and consideration but on unprocessed impressions. Giving your team time to consider and discuss the results will significantly improve the quality and focus of the feedback offered.
Allow employees a few days, then conduct one or more “feedback” sessions.
Additional information on the steps above can be found in the "More on Action Planning" section of this guide.
A few days after you have presented the results, it’s time to listen. Conduct one or more feedback sessions with small groups of employees. The ideal size is 6-8, but if you are sharing with a large group this may not be possible. In that case, periodically during the meeting divide the participants into small groups of 6 - 8 to discuss and share their thoughts and share back to the larger group. This ensures everyone has a chance to speak and be heard.
The purpose of these sessions are to:
Listen to team members’ interpretation of how they see the results and how it reflects their reality
Understand the root causes of the key issues (why team members answered the way they did)
Establish 1-3 key priorities upon which to focus action
Once you and your team have established the priorities and the root causes of those priorities, the work of meaningful change can begin.
Your first goal is to work with your team to create actions that will improve the situation.
Ensure you understand the results and the key messages.
Ensure you understand the drivers of engagement and how they are similar to/different from the rest of the organization.
Understand in broad terms how they were derived and why you should focus on these to improve engagement, and not just what employees have indicated they are least satisfied with.
Understand how to influence behavioural change.
Individuals change their own behaviour; forcing someone to do something creates resistance
Individuals only change their behaviour when dissatisfied with the status quo
Ambiguity encourages people to take no action, to wait and see
Research shows that about two-thirds of employees WANT CHANGE
The commonly known “fact” that two-thirds of change initiatives fail is actually FALSE (and was never empirically founded)
Sometimes an entire group can achieve improvements when:
Part of the group changes work behaviour
Different parts of the group make different forms of changes
Ensure this is viewed as a high priority. Walk through the results. Let employees ask their questions and allow ample time for Q&A.
DO NOT attempt to obtain feedback or reaction during this meeting. Asking for feedback at this point distracts them from processing the new information they are getting, and what comments they have to offer will not be based on reflection and consideration but on unprocessed impressions.
Giving your team time to consider and discuss the results will significantly improve the quality and focus of the feedback offered later on. Allow employees a few days, then conduct one or more "feedback" sessions, as needed.
Use a positive attitude to focus on improvements
List a summary of the action areas already discussed
When X happens, it results in Y, and makes workers feel Z
Highlight the areas you think deserve the team’s attention first
Don’t disregard other areas, but explain why addressing them should wait
Ask the team if that logic seems right to them and potentially refocus or schedule further meetings
Root cause exercise: Ask a series of WHY questions to create a specific flowchart
Form a desired outcome (start fuzzy then get more specific)
Then, if possible, list in order what must be accomplished before the desired outcome can be achieved
Listen to team members' interpretation of how they see the results and how it reflects their reality
Understand the root causes of the key issues (why team members answered the way they did)
Establish 1-3 key priorities upon which to focus action
Using the template provided and working with your Action Team, draft an action plan for each one of your team's key priorities.
Here is a sample Action Plan, for reference.
To maximize efficiency, work with HR and other managers to pool resources and coordinate actions based on the action plans created.
Human Resources needs to know the extent to which:
Managers are working on the same initiatives
Managers’ actions would be more successful with organizational support
Outcome(s) for the team depend on others outside the team
It is important to communicate and update all stakeholders. Consider starting ALL meetings with 5 minutes of progress updates.
Even if every team solves its own problems, there are some problems that exist among the teams. Ensure cross-silo dialog, create cross-silo actions, share progress throughout the organization.
The action planning job is not over once the action plans are developed. The team should still oversee progress and make adjustments where necessary. During regular team meetings, plan time to evaluate the progress you have made on the improvement plans. Have each team member responsible for a task report on the progress made thus far and the progress expected by the next team meeting.
Discuss what is working well and what is not. Figure out how you could make your improvement efforts more effective or efficient. Offer advice, assistance, and encouragement to each other. Apply a little group pressure to team members who are not meeting their commitments.
As part of the action planning process, you decided how and when you would measure the achievement of the objectives you defined. At the times you specified for each objective, apply your measures and discuss the results. If you achieved your objective, it’s time to celebrate as a team! Choose a celebration that will be fun for all of you. Don’t forget to document the lessons learned.
If you did not achieve your objective, figure out why. Discussing the questions below will help.
Did we select a valid, accurate measure of achievement?
What factors interfered with our plans?
Were there interfering factors beyond our control?
If not, what could we have done better?
Was the objective unrealistic?
Do we need to modify the objective?
Did team members fulfill their commitments?
What lessons did we learn?
Your team will find it useful to document your answers to these questions so you can use this information in planning other improvements.
After you have determined why you did not achieve your objective, discuss your conclusions with the team champion and sponsor and with them decide whether to maintain the objective as is and continue working on it, revise it and try again, or drop it entirely and work on another priority for improvement.
If you decide to retain the objective or revise it, discuss what you can do to ensure you meet your objective this time and prepare another action plan.
Before reviewing your survey scores, it is important to consider the percentage of employees who responded to the survey. The goal of the survey administration is to hear from as many employees as possible. The higher the participation rate, the less room there is for questions about how those who did not respond might have impacted the results.
A healthy level of participation is 60 percent or better. This allows you to have confidence that you have heard from more than not. If your participation is low (e.g., less than 50 percent), you can still review your results. However, you should exercise some caution about placing too much confidence in the representativeness of the results. When participation is low, it might be prudent to conduct some post-survey focus groups to further validate the results - i.e., to discuss the results with employees to determine if the results, despite low participation, still ring true with your employees.
Employee focus groups probe identified problems and causes, and surface suggested solutions. The process allows participants to contribute without much preparation or effort, and promotes a healthy sense among employees that they’re genuinely being “heard.”
Here is an easy to follow, step-by-step guide on how to dig deep and get the most out of your focus group efforts:
Employee focus groups can dig deeper into problems and causes identified in employee surveys, and can surface suggested solutions. Once you have determined the purpose of your employee focus group, what questions will be asked, and have finalized the timing and location of your focus group, it’s time to ensure you’re ready to facilitate the discussions.
Use the following step-by-step facilitation guide below to gather open and honest employee feedback.
Verify the recorder, if used, worked throughout the session.
Make additional notes on your written notes, to clarify illegible scribbling or notes that don’t make sense, ensure pages are numbered, etc.
Write down any observations made during the session. For example, the nature of participation in the group, any surprises.
Conduct moderator and reporter/assistant moderator debriefing.
With the release of your employee engagement survey results, managers need to be able to view, understand and act on the results for their area. This guide contains information, templates and tips to help you understand employee engagement, your survey results and how to meet your survey action planning responsibilities.
Each manager who did receive a report for their area(s) is responsible for the following:
Reviewing results
Sharing results with employees
Working with their team to prepare action plans to address “local” issues - those within their control
Making recommendations to address broader issues
Reviewing action plans with their own immediate manager or HR member(s)
Implementing action plans
Communicating action plan progress to employees and immediate manager on an on-going basis (at least semi-annually)
To help you complete these tasks, this guide contains the following sections:
An introduction to employee engagement.
Understanding Your Results.
Sharing Your Results - Best practices for sharing the results with your team.
Focus Groups - Purpose and How to Guide.
Not every manager in the organization will receive results for their specific area of responsibility. Any department, division, branch, work unit, etc., that had fewer than five (5) respondents to the survey will not receive a report. This is the necessary cut-off number to protect the confidentiality of respondents. If you did not receive your survey results, this is the most likely reason.
From whom do you want to collect information? (Be specific). Managers and non-managers from across all functional groups at the organization.
Employee and manager participation at this stage in our planning is intended to provide executives with concrete ideas and priorities of how to turn survey results into action.
Agile thinker – handles quick changes in the session.
Organized – develops an effective written agenda and produces results within the preferred time frame.
Active listener- attends to each participant, clarifying meanings by using probing techniques such as paraphrasing.
Remembers – connects a participant’s current statement to a previous statement, developing a better understanding of the participant’s feelings and stimulating more discussion.
Knowledgeable- possesses background knowledge on the topic and organization. Is experienced.
What do you like best (or least) about…?
How will the setting affect the information gathered? Will the setting bias the information offered?
Can it comfortably accommodate the number of participants, where all can view each other?
Is it easily accessible? (consider access for people with disabilities, safety, transportation, parking, proximity, and convenience).
Review of meeting objectives
Confidentiality commitment to participants and from participants to each other
Review of ground rules
Introductions
Discussions of three to four focus group topics – for example: impact, root causes, expectations for improvement, possible solutions
Summary and wrap up
Geographic location
Length of service at organization
Employee Status (employee, management, etc.)
As a general guideline you can also follow the outline below:
Organization <250 employees = 3 focus groups
Organization <1,000 employees = 3 to 5 focus groups
Organization 1,000+ employees = 6+ focus groups
Each focus group should comprise 6 to 10 people to allow for smooth conversation flow. The common practice is to invite one and one-half as many people as you want to come (for a 66% response rate). For a focus group of 6 to 10 this means inviting between 9 and 15 participants for each session. To ensure open and honest input, keep manager sessions separate from non-manager focus groups. One-on-one interviews are recommended for executives if they’re going to be part of the process.
It’s important to hear everyone’s ideas and opinions. There are no right or wrong answers – just ideas, experiences and opinions, which are all valuable.
It’s important to hear all sides of an issue – both positive and negative.
It’s important for women’s and men’s ideas to be equally represented and respected.
Once the above ground rules have been presented, it’s important to ask participants if they have anything to add to the list.
Repeat the reply – hearing it again sometimes stimulates conversation.
Ask questions to provoke more detail – use neutral comments:
How so?
Please tell me (more) about that…?
Could you explain what you mean by…?
Can you tell me something else about…?
Can you tell me more?
What specifically do you mean by that?
Can you share an example of what you’ve mentioned?
Is there anything else?
Note themes, hunches, interpretations and ideas.
Compare and contrast this focus group to other groups.
Action Planning - Once the results have been shared, you will need to work with your team to create and implement an action plan to address the issues and opportunities raised. This section provides templates and discusses best practices for this process.
The first report you should examine is the snapshot report. The following chart will help you understand the basics of this report:
The first and foremost thing to focus on in reviewing your report is the percent favourable (blue) score for each of the survey dimensions. If the favourable score for a dimension appears to be low relative to the other dimension scores (for example, less than 50% favourable), look to see if employees are simply neutral or if they are largely unfavourable. Keep in mind that neutral scores should be seen as the “opportunity zone”.
Depending on the data available in your report, some or all of the following comparative data groups will be available.
The next step in understanding your results is to examine whether or not your dimension scores are improving or declining compared to the previous survey period. These differences are displayed as percent increases (+) or decreases (-). It is important to put these differences into practical terms. If your report is based on only 10 people, for example, each person represents 10%. If your report is based on only five people, each person counts a whopping 20%. So, at first glance, a previous period difference of +/- 10% for a group of 10 or 20% for a group of only five may seem very sizable. But in practical terms, a 10% difference for a group of 10 or a 20% difference for a group of five simply means that only one person out of the group has a different opinion than the last time the group was surveyed. If, on the other hand, your report is based on 1,000 employees, an increase or decrease of 10% would represent 100 employees having a different opinion than the previous survey, which is much more attention-getting in practical terms.
Now that you have reviewed your overall dimension scores and have looked to see whether they are mostly improving, declining or staying the same, the next step is to see how your group compares to the organization as a whole and/or the larger part of the organization of which your group is a part.
If the results for your group are substantially lower than the larger comparison group, this may be cause for concern. However, it is important not to overreact. There are several important things to consider that may explain the differences. Be mindful of the point above about the size of your group and what a percentage difference means in practical terms. If your group has only 10 people and your scores appear to be about 10% lower than the larger group, this may not be cause for alarm. One person out of the group would account for that seemingly large difference.
Comparing your employee engagement score to benchmarks provides valuable context and helps you understand your organization's performance relative to others.
Above Benchmark: If your score is above the benchmark, it indicates an are to leverage and / or celebrate. However, don't become complacent; strive for continuous improvement.
Below Benchmark: A score below the benchmark suggests areas needing attention. Analyze the specific items and engage with staff to identify where you fall short.
Significant Gaps: Large discrepancies may indicate underlying issues requiring immediate action.
Remember, benchmarks provide a reference point, not a definitive measure of success. The ultimate goal is to create a thriving workplace where employees feel valued, motivated, and engaged.
If scores are lower than expected, avoid worrying. The goal of a survey is to help the organization do better. Use the feedback, both positive and constructive, as information to help move forward.
Use benchmarks and previous period comparisons to evaluate your room for improvement.
Focus less on the scores and more on the employee feedback you received. Scores may seem like GPS-locations, but they are really like using a map, or sometimes searching the stars.
Pay attention to any themes or patterns in the results. Use the comments to put the scores in context and identify reasons the scores may be lower on certain metrics.
Resist the urge to stress about who said what. When reading the results and discussing them with your team, strive to understand how to improve specific aspects of engagement going forward. Your thinking should be forward-looking, not backward.
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