You Gotta Let Them Know – Part One

Want the best from your employee survey? Then, you need to encourage as many of your employees to complete it as you can.

Your employee survey should be treated as seriously as you would any of your products or services. It must be of high quality, and it must be marketed and communicated effectively and correctly.

Before launching your employee survey and sending invitations out, you should communicate the plans, goals, and intentions with senior leaders, managers, and employees. By ensuring they all understand why the survey is being carried out, and giving assurances that necessary and appropriate action will be taken upon the results, then more people are likely to be receptive to the idea and complete the survey.

What is imperative is that the benefits of conducting an employee survey must be sold in and bought into at the very top. Having someone from the senior leadership team sponsoring the project, your CEO for example, will send out the message that the survey is to be taken seriously.

The sponsor should outline his/her personal commitment to employee engagement – what it actually means, why it is so important, and how it will benefit the organisation and all other stakeholders. They should give an outline summary of the survey logistics, including what is expected from senior leaders in respect of carrying out or supervising the debriefing of results.

There should be communication relating to the definition of the roles that HR and top leaders will play, including what support is to be given to each senior leader and departmental manager.

It must be highlighted to each team member, what the benefits of the employee survey are, for example, increased morale and performance, a reduction in staff turnover, enhanced leadership and a drive to increase employee engagement levels.

Prior to survey invitations going out to employees, the sponsor should communicate the project to all employees in a personalised email. The email should be sent out a week or so before the survey is due to go live. The content of the email should include the announcement of the forthcoming survey, the timeline, why it is being conducted, how and when the results will be published, emphasis should be placed on the fact that all responses will be anonymous and that, if applicable, the data is being collated by an outside independent company.

Employees should be encouraged to respond honestly, frankly and openly and tackle any potential trust issues that might exist.

Highlight the benefits to each employee. Simply telling people that you want to know about employee satisfaction or employee engagement might actually ring hollow with some people. It’s important to make clear the personal benefits of completing the survey.

The tone of the message should be thought through carefully, how does it sound from an employee’s perspective?

These same messages can be communicated in other ways too. Perhaps via team meetings, one to ones, an internal newsletter, posters, flyers and/ or desktop postcards.

However you choose to communicate your employee survey, it must be clear and accurate. This way, more of your employees are likely to be ‘on board’ with the survey and complete it.

In tomorrow’s blog, we will talk about communication during the survey, keeping the momentum going.

If you would like more information about conducting effective pre employee survey communication, then contact us on +44 (0) 1255 850051.