Enhancing employee engagement through communication, support, and action planning.
Front line leaders are critical for determining and implementing effective action plans that positively impact your organization after an employee engagement survey. They have the most frequent and direct interactions with the employees who participated in the survey and serve as the foundation for action planning to improve engagement in the following year. No matter your leadership level there are four pillars to follow post-engagement survey: understand, share, act, and commit.
Knowing the results of your team and how they relate to the overall organization is the starting point to determine where to focus your energy for improvement. Spend time understanding the scoring metrics of the survey, how those metrics might reflect certain opinions, and how to use the information to determine meaningful differences. Then, summarize key findings for your team’s “story” to be conveyed at the team feedback meeting.
As a front line leader, you’ll conduct feedback meetings with your team to discuss the survey results. Knowing how to conduct a successful feedback meeting is key to determining what actually matters—and what doesn’t—to your team.
Prepare for the meeting with ease by knowing your team’s story of summarized highlights, themes, strengths, and opportunities, using the WSA Heat Map dashboard.
Lead the discussion with focused listening questions based on the key engagement drivers that are most important to your team, through WSA’s Action Planning dashboard.
Reflect on the meeting before taking any action to summarize common concerns, topics of interest, and ideas for improvement, with WSA’s Full Survey dashboard.
Keeping the meeting simple while exploring the team’s results, identifying areas for improvement, and celebrating successes ensures your team feels heard and knows that their voices matter.
Once you’ve identified what’s most important to your team, you need to create an action plan. Create an action plan using best practices by leveraging sample action steps, leveraging the S.M.A.R.T framework, and setting goals with your team. Then implement actions involving your team, identifying accountability, and establishing checkpoints on progress. Follow our tips below for taking effective action.
Focus on the engagement drivers – improvement on these items will give you the greatest return on your investment.
Action is not ALWAYS needed – sometimes it is about communication or setting priorities.
Make sure the team is involved in plan development and execution.
Your ongoing commitment to the action planning process is crucial to the success of improving your employee engagement. Acting on feedback once or twice a year is not enough. You must continue to monitor and evaluate progress, communicate with your employees regularly, and leverage opportunities to discuss progress with your team. Beyond that, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of the evolving employee landscape to ensure employees have the resources and support to perform their best.
Explore Pulse Surveys Explore Employee Lifecycle SurveysMotivating leaders at each leadership level ensures your employee engagement strategy is consistent throughout the organization. Each level of leadership impacts the workforce differently and each level has a role to play from senior leaders who must prioritize areas for action to business unit leaders who create accountability with their frontline leaders. By fostering a culture of emphasis on employee engagement within your leadership team, you’ll improve organizational performance and ensure positive change is the outcome.
