When conducting staff surveys there are a number of stakeholder groups to be considered. Effective handling of each of these groups will secure a more successful outcome for your organisation. Find out more about the first stakeholder group, senior management.

Staff Surveys and Senior Management

Each stakeholder group has different roles and responsibilities during the process of staff surveys. The effective use of each of these groups will improve the short term and long term benefits of your employee survey.

Understanding levels of staff satisfaction and employee commitment helps to improve productivity and staff turnover. The effective use of a staff survey can, therefore, save your company vital resources.

The top management team is a key stakeholder group. By communicating the objectives of the employee survey and the organisation’s commitment to change, these aims will be reinforced.

Furthermore, the greater visibility of the staff survey will show its importance to the company. As a result, there will be more employee buy-in and improved response rates.

Find out more about Improving Employee Engagement Survey Response Rates.

Your workforce will be more interested in a staff questionnaire if they believe their views will be listened to and cause follow-up actions. With senior management backing, they are more likely to participate in your staff survey and future ones.

Without such support, the engagement survey is in danger of being viewed as a ‘one-off’ and completion rates will be low. Low response rates mean that data is not as robust or reliable and your staff survey investment will be somewhat wasted.

Communication is Key

To secure high completion rates, employees must understand and buy-in to your organisation’s commitment to positive change. To achieve this, we explore how to maximise the effectiveness of communications to this stakeholder group at each stage of the staff survey process. These stages are specification and planning, data collection phase and analysis and feedback.

Here’s a guideline for the communications process with senior management:

Specification and Planning

• Communicate the organisational objectives of the employee survey and the commitment to follow-up and action planning;
• Mapping out of staff survey process;
• Agree timing of survey to link into business planning phase;
• Reinforce importance of their visible support for the process.

See Engagement Survey Communication examples.

Data Collection Phase

• Reinforce the importance of employees taking part in the engagement survey;
• The staff survey is anonymous so employees can be candid and open in their responses without fear of comeback.

Analysis and Feedback

• Thank employees for their participation;
• Provide summary of overall response rate and next steps;
• Provide analysis of survey: companywide vs. business, divisions (or appropriate breakdowns).

Contact great{with}talent and find out more about their TalentEngage employee engagement surveys.