What To Do When Your Employee Opinion Survey Results Are Poor

Most large organisations do employee opinion surveys, and many worry about their results.

Low employee engagement, high staff turnover, and a lack of understanding and buy-in for the corporate culture leaves executives frustrated that they’ve spent significant resources to quantify what they feared.

They can feel frustrated, disillusioned and sometimes powerless to effect real change.

But it’s the perfect time to act. It’s a time when we’re often brought in to help.

This is what some of our clients have done:

  1. Run an employee engagement program to get staff to identify the root causes and create and implement action plans to solve organisational problems
  1. Invest in communication training for executives to give them the people skills to connect with their staff
  1. Create long-term strategies for staff engagement programs that include devolving some decision making to staff to ensure they buy-in to decisions, and to create unique ways to build on cultures
  1. Stop and listen. It’s simple, but sometimes it’s impossible for staff to talk openly and honestly if they’re talking to their bosses. They may need an independent facilitator to help.
  1. Applied an appreciative approach or strength-based approach to identify what’s going well, explore why and then build on those positive experiences.

All organisations go through periods of upheaval but the smart ones recognise that and do something proactive.