For modern organizations, listening to your employees is imperative.
Understanding the degree to which employees think, feel, and act, along with their willingness to contribute their knowledge, skills, abilities, and effort, is crucial to the success of an organization. Whether you are just starting to implement employee engagement surveys, or fine tuning your existing program, the experts at Mercer have the tools and tips you need to succeed.
Here are five things to consider when developing or perfecting an effective employee listening program.
- Create a dedicated survey season
- Ensure reliable data interpretation
- Utilize consistent measurements
- Build employee trust
- Identify and validate leadership issues
Create a dedicated survey season
Having a dedicated “survey season” for your engagement survey creates expectations for your employees. The survey is the time where leadership says “how are we doing” and employees feel comfortable responding at this time. While employees may be able to voice their opinion at any time, it has a much different impact when employees are requested to provide feedback.
Ensure reliable data interpretation
A set survey season also, allows you to collect feedback at the same time of year, every year. This limits variability, ensuring cleaner interpretation of the engagement data. Changing the time of year the survey is conducted creates new influences to the data that make it more difficult to interpret. There is no “perfect time” to conduct a survey, but once a survey season is determined, it is best to keep it consistent.
Utilize consistent measurements
Consistent measurement allows you to track all the constructs contained in the survey. What is the employee reaction to organization changes? How are people reacting to messages of direction? How are employees reacting to operational risk factors?
Build employee trust
The survey is the mechanism by which employees feel valued by leadership. When the survey doesn’t happen when expected, employees lose trust in the process and more importantly feel like they aren’t valued. Employees may think that leadership is “gaming the system;” that is, moving the survey to increase scores or cancelling a survey because leaders are afraid of what the results will say.
Identify and validate leadership issues
The engagement data provides information on every manager in the company. Those who are under performing can be identified before you lose valuable talent. The data helps to validate any complaints by employees and gives leaders of poor managers specific feedback to guide changes.
Ready to learn more?
Check out Mercer’s comprehensive employee listening solutions, or contact us at surveys@mercer.com or 855-223-8180.