5 Criteria to look for while choosing an Employee Engagement Survey provider

Conducting an employee engagement survey is like visiting a doctor in many ways. An individual consults a doctor when he/she wants to assess his/her health; it could be because they are currently experiencing some ailment, or because they wish to check their general health. Similarly, the leadership team of any organization would partner with employee engagement consultants to conduct an employee engagement survey when they want to understand the issues in their organization.

Given the criticality of such a survey initiative, it is imperative that your organization keeps certain points in mind while choosing their survey provider. We have listed 5 such key criteria to look out for while selecting an employee engagement partner.

1.       The science behind the survey

When visiting a doctor, an individual always checks if the practitioner is well qualified for the job. Similarly, it is critical for organizations to assess if the survey partner is qualified for the job of running their survey. One important parameter gauge this is to understand the framework or the science behind the partner’s survey solution. The framework usually forms the backbone of the survey, as both the design and the results will be based on the framework. Hence, while shortlisting your survey partner, look for someone who understands how to drive not just engagement, but even business performance.

2.        Credibility

An employee engagement survey requires employees to share their honest opinion on myriad facets about the organization. Some of these opinions might not be seen as ‘favourable’ to the senior leadership team. Consequently, employees would only be comfortable in sharing their honest opinion when they are confident that it would be completely anonymous and would have no repercussions on them. Hence, it is important that organizations partner with service providers who are established for their credibility, thus eliciting honest employee feedback. An important data point to ask the partner is the number of engagement projects they do annually and the data points / available benchmarks in your industry. 

Emplouee Engagement Survey

3.       Lead time to launch the survey

Let’s draw a parallel here with the time when an individual has a medical emergency. The said individual would like the doctor to diagnose the ailment at the earliest. Having to wait in a long queue might aggravate the condition, while almost certainly affecting the individual. Similarly, when an organization is looking to run an engagement survey, they want to get started as soon as possible. Having to wait for the survey provider to get all the requirements in place to launch the survey is not ideal. Hence, while looking for an employee engagement survey partner, check on their lead time to survey launch. Anytime up to 3 weeks is your benchmark.     

4.       Quick access & dynamic reports

Suppose the individual got all the tests done. How long would he/she be comfortable waiting before receiving the results? Not very long, clearly. Waiting for the survey results is equally uncomforable for organizations. With the best technology in place, partners should provide results the minute the survey concludes.  This immediate reporting helps the organization to study, understand and action on the survey results at the earliest, while the survey results are still relevant.

5.       Post survey consulting & support

Finally, the individual who had gone to the doctor and has received his/her report. Now what? The individual would obviously want the doctor to work with him to understand the reason behind the diagnosis, and what could be some of the medicines/therapy to get well. Similarly, the survey provider should also have the consulting capability to understand, interpret, and share the action plans for the survey. That would give the senior leadership team very specific issues to execute. Your organization may also want a longer term engagement with a survey provider who can not only conduct the survey and share the results, but also hand hold your organization to improve engagement in a sustainable manner and also impact business performance.

In summary, conducting an employee engagement survey should be considered as a strategic imperative which should highlight insights shared by your workforce that can help you leapfrog your business and retain your talent. It’s also a strong signal to your workforce on your commitment to their success in your organization. Hence, while selecting the best consulting firm with whom to partner, carefully weigh in the five parameters above and thereafter choose on the basis of the firm which provides you the best fitment – in terms of understanding your organization’s context.

How does communication impact employee engagement?

Just the other day, we presented the findings from the engagement survey for one of the world’s leading bathroom fittings company.

At first glance, their numbers and accompanying qualitative feedback on employee engagement were extremely positive. Particularly, a 100% response rate and over 3 comments per employee on average went to show just how important every employee believed the survey was and how much they expected would improve as a result of this survey.

The organization had also pegged itself against other high performing organizations in the same industry and comparable industries to benchmark its performance and engagement scores relative to others

While all the scores checked out per the CEO’s expectations, he began to realize a common trend across all areas of improvement:

• The company had not scored as favorably in it’s Performance Management process owing to low scores in HR and Managerial effectiveness
• Despite being a global leader with dominant market share in countries like India, employees did not give a thumbs up to how the company went about resolving customer related issues, especially after-sales queries from dealers and end customers
• Employees voted down the ability of their managers to engage in 1:1 conversations with them relating to their career goals, development and felt the overall ability to relate to and trust managers was inherently missing
• Even though the organization’s goals and long term vision was a source of pride for employees, they felt directionless on the progress they and their company were making towards these goals. Many employees cited that despite clear goals set at the start of the year, many changes were introduced without enough firsthand knowledge about why those changes to the organization’s goals were important.
• Lastly, despite several areas of improvement, there were genuine high performing areas that the organization excelled at such as safety, quality assurance and brand name in the market. However, employees believed that successes in these areas (and others) were not highlighted nor were they rewarded in the local markets where such milestones were being achieved. In the absence of such R&R, it became harder for best practices to be highlighted and shared across the organization.

As you might have guessed, ineffective communication or a lack of enough communication emerged as a stark gap across the organization, emanating perhaps from the senior leadership’s inability to constantly communicate the shifting priorities of the organization. This communication gap further trickled down to local managers not being able to have proper discussions with their team members.

Many other smaller but equally telling incidents were tabled by the CEO and his HR Director relating to how employees feared speaking out their minds and avoided confrontations that later would flare up to become much larger issues. For example, for a local manager at one of their largest plants, the idea of discussing HR policies seemed trivial enough to Whatsapp it to his team members. Little wonder then that members of his team either suffered from a misinterpretation of the policies or worse an equivalent way of responding to the manager on matters such as taking leaves, working from home, etc.

Quick to grasp on the seriousness of the matter, the CEO resolved to put together a quick action plan to arrest this communication issue within his immediate team and thereafter ensure it cascaded down all the way to the local managers at the plant and branch offices.

This incident might not be as isolated of a case as you may expect. In fact, 60% or more annual employee engagement survey results point to effective communication as a key lever to improve important business issues – from sales and customer service to manufacturing and managerial effectiveness.

By getting it right, organizations can create an internal momentum that catalyzes employees to provide discretionary efforts, which ultimately improves employee engagement results and in turn business performance.