Whether you’re about to embark on your first or your 31st employee engagement survey, the way you communicate about it in the lead up to launch can make or break its success. Think about who it is that needs to be bought into the survey and its purpose. Leaders, managers, employees… Let’s just summarise it as everyone. For the most successful survey, everyone in your business should be aware of the intent and purpose of it.
Core messaging in the lead up to the engagement survey should answer multiple questions:
Why?
- Why are we running the survey?
- Why does it matter to measure engagement?
- Why is my feedback important?
- Why should I encourage my team to take part?
What?
- What’s the point of the survey?
- What’s in it for me?
When?
- When can I share my feedback?
- When will I see the results?
Where?
- Where can I take part?
- Where can I see the results?
Who?
- Who can take part?
- Who can see my feedback?
How?
- How do you use my feedback?
- How do I take part?
Answering these questions in your launch communications gets easier the more surveys you run, and the more gathering feedback becomes embedded in your culture.
With each survey you run, you are able to build up a catalogue of evidence to demonstrate the power of employee feedback using ‘you said, we did’ messaging. The more evidence you can offer your people to support your initial communications around the purpose and intent of the survey, the simpler it is to improve buy-in into your engagement and feedback strategy.
If you are struggling with survey response rates or are starting to notice that your employees see the survey as more of a tick box exercise, it may be time to assess the questions you’re asking, the frequency of surveys you are sending out, the comms you are sending out in the build-up to launch and the actions you are taking once you receive the feedback.
For further advice on how to effectively comm your employee survey results, visit our recent article.
If you would like some advice or feedback on the employee surveys you are sending out, get in touch with the WorkBuzz team today: hello@workbuzz.com. We’re always happy to help!
Written by Lilith Nagorski, Bespoke Project Lead at WorkBuzz