Sean Glaze explains how to get real value from employee surveys. Use them before events to capture honest perceptions, then actually act on what you learn. Tell people upfront what will change based on their feedback.
So what do you do to make your employee surveys far more meaningful and effective? Well, if you're truly an effective leader, you understand that more surveys is not always the answer to a more engaged workforce. Now, before I go in and work with an organization as a speaker or as a team-building facilitator, I'll normally include a pre-event survey to get an idea of what the perceptions are of leadership in the workplace culture. For for the event to be that much more effective, I want to make sure that I understand what are the perceptions, and what is the point of view, and what do people feel about the workplace presently before we make the transformation. Now, if you've done surveys in the past, you've probably realized that those surveys are only useful, and only appreciated, and only have value if you take action based upon the results that you get. The problem is not that you haven't done enough surveys. The problem oftentimes is that when you've received the information from surveys, the people that have completed them for you don't see you taking action based on the information they provide. So the single most important thing you can do as an effective leader is to make sure that you are transparent and that you communicate clearly exactly what actions are being taken, what you noticed as major takeaways from the surveys that you've collected, and what's going to be different moving forward because of the input they shared. I'm Sean Glaze. That's what effective leaders do.
