AN INTRODUCTION TO EMPLOYEE RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Results Analysis and Reporting
There are many different ways of analyzing, cutting and reporting employee survey results and each organization has to decide individually on the best method for their needs.
Some key things to consider are:
- Report the results to employees as quickly as you can after the end of the survey completion period. This will ensure that the momentum and interest that has already been generated will be maintained.
- Adopt a phased roll-out of survey results on a top-down basis so that the employees can absorb the results and are not overwhelmed by them. Although employees will be most interested in the results for their own team, they will also be interested in the results at an organizational level.
- Face-to-face feedback of results is the preferred communication method and, although this will probably not be logistically possible at an overall organizational level, it is essential for the feedback of local team results. This will allow employees to ask questions and suggest the root causes behind the results.
- Do not dress bad news up as being good news and likewise do not hide bad results. Honesty is important if you want to involve employees in improvement action planning as they will quickly identify anything that is trying to be hidden. It is as important to highlight and celebrate good results and recognize the reasons for them.
- Add interpretation to the results so that the employees can consider them in true context. This can be achieved by considering that the design of the employee survey can provide some invaluable interpretative analysis.
- Consider using proven statistical techniques to identify the key drivers of employee satisfaction. Using factor and regression analysis will highlight the most important areas to focus on from the survey results because these areas will bring the greatest overall benefits in improvement action planning.
- Before the results reports are produced, ensure that managers are familiar with what they will be receiving and what they need to do with them. The test of whether this has been successful is whether managers are able to interpret and identify the key strengths and weaknesses for their team within 30 minutes of receiving their report.
- Avoid the temptation to spend lots of time overanalyzing the employee survey results and re-cutting the data in a combination of different ways. We call this "Analysis Paralysis" because it gets in the way of focusing attention on taking improvement action. While the data from the employee survey will not provide you with all of the answers you need, neither will cutting it numerous additional ways. The results are intended to provide a catalyst for discussion and the best way to get behind the data is to actually discuss it with employees in teams.
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