AN INTRODUCTION TO EMPLOYEE RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
IMPROVEMENT ACTION PLANNING
Background
As noted earlier, the guiding principle of employee research is that, if you are not prepared to act on the results, then do not conduct the survey in the first place. You have spent time and effort getting employees enthusiastic about the employee survey and they now have high expectations that there will be improvement activity in which they will be involved.
Although improvement action planning is the most important part of the process, it is also the activity that a number of organizations fail to deliver against. One of the main reasons for this failure is the lack of a clear and coherent process for action planning throughout the organization.
The ideal situation must be for each manager (from senior management to the localized frontline manager/supervisor) who receives an employee survey results report to work with their team to identify and prioritize three to four areas requiring improvement and then develop and implement an improvement action plan that is regularly reviewed.
Improvement Action Process
Improvement action planning should be "top down" process where the priorities for the organization are identified, communicated and acted upon at the senior management level. Then moving down to Divisional and Unit levels, local teams should identify and tackle the things that they have direct control over and escalate anything else back upwards.
Before proceeding with action planning, it is vital to ensure that:
- Employees have had time to see and digest the results,
- The results have been discussed fully by the team and the main issues identified together with their root causes,
- There is clarity about what is being tackled at higher levels,
- That all members of the team are committed to moving forward,
- Any "Quick Wins" can be identified.
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