May 2011

Companies invest a great deal in employee surveys to plan and measure business improvements, but without effective action being taken as a result, this is money down the drain. With insights from senior HR practitioners at large private-sector companies, we provide simple answers to the question: ‘how do you ensure effective action planning that builds value for the business?’

How to maximise survey success through action planning

Original insight

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Line manager accountability and failure to show business impact are two common barriers to effective action planning.

Companies make significant time and financial investments in employee engagement surveys. Even where senior executives are bought into the survey, the challenge remains: ‘how do we motivate the business to take action on the results?’

The most common problems we encounter relate to line manager accountability, showing business impact, keeping action planning fresh and maintaining momentum.

We meet few companies with a ‘mature’ action process, one where there is momentum on survey actions and a clear link to improved business metrics.

In order to reap the benefits of more engaged employees, we have summarised overleaf four key themes to effective action planning, which we’ve developed based on extensive experience working with major companies such as G4S, ITV and Thomas Cook.

Executive summary

Critical areas to ensure successful action planning Survey owners often consider action planning only when the survey is complete. In our experience, the seeds of action planning success must be planted before the survey begins. This is one reason why we offer this advice in themes to be followed throughout the survey cycle rather than at set stages.

Action plan process: Actions need to be business relevant, which means aligning the survey with business objectives and identifying what success looks like. An action plan process suitable for all parts of the business is required, so that action planning can begin as soon as the data becomes available.

Accountability: Stakeholders must be consulted at the start of the project, their business needs identified and their role in driving actions forward clarified. Stakeholders should feel involved rather than just informed to encourage them to take ownership of action planning.

Communications: Pre- and post-survey communications should aim to generate a sense of excitement around engagement and action planning. Communications really need to clarify the benefits of taking action, both from an organisational and employee perspective.

Translating data into action: Data reports need to be accurate and relevant at a corporate and local level. While encouraging managers to take responsibility for action plans, it is vital to provide them with support to interpret their data and develop high quality actions.

We are often asked how to maintain momentum behind taking action. Our advice to survey owners is that they will achieve momentum by addressing each of the four key themes. The exact process will depend on the culture, context and resources of each company. ETS has found no single, simple solution but instead the need to strive to achieve tangible business actions that drive behaviour, culture and process change.

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Action PlanProcess

Communication

AccountabilityTranslate data

into action

Figure 1: ETS’s four key areas to be addressed throughout the survey process

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Difficult individuals can threaten the engagement programme early on. Actively involving them ensures they support the project and can help identify weaknesses or threats you may have missed.

Theme 1: Action Plan Process

Which action planning approach is right for your organisation? To ensure actions will support business objectives and maintain their momentum, it is critical at the beginning of the programme to answer these questions:

• Where does engagement sit within the wider HR and organisational strategy?

• What is the business aiming to achieve with the survey?

• What does success look like?

This will inform what is required for effective action planning and help align the engagement programme with business objectives. It is important that this is done before survey design begins, as the business objectives will determine what needs to be included in the survey and whether a ‘top-down’ (corporate driven) or ‘bottom-up’ (locally driven) action process is best.

A number of companies we’ve worked with – across financial services, travel, leisure and retail, for example – adopt local action planning. The challenge when implementing this bottom-up approach is achieving consistency across the organisation and allowing enough flexibility to account for different cultures and business functions. This local approach does, however, create a greater sense of ownership and helps to motivate managers into taking action, as they will feel they can develop actions that will support their own objectives.

Case study example 1A European manufacturing organisation with approximately 1,700 employees adopted a top-down approach, as they wanted all locations to be focussed on one or two areas to drive improvement across the organisation and develop a consistent employee experience. This approach also allows different locations to share best practice and resources.

Case study example 2A leading retailer with operations in seven countries worked in partnership with ETS to develop a very effective bottom-up approach. Action planning takes place at a store level placing ownership with the store manager, which demonstrates that the organisation is actively listening to employee feedback and makes actions very visible to employees.

SWOT analysis: identifying strengths and barriers to action planningIt’s important for your project team to consider strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within the wider organisation. By doing this at the start of the survey cycle, you allow time to overcome any foreseen barriers and to take advantage of any strengths or opportunities. This can also work as a reflective exercise to identify what worked well and what could have been improved on a previous survey.

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Possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats could include:

• Strength: We have a project team to share the workload and deliver our engagement programme effectively.

• Weakness: None of the project team was involved in the last survey. How can we gain knowledge of what worked well and not so well?

• Opportunity: A leadership conference is being held shortly before the survey launch. Can we add engagement to the agenda and discuss how leaders will be involved in action planning?

• Threat: Our HR database is not necessarily accurate; how can I confirm which reports will be needed for managers, so that they obtain accurate information to inform local actions?

Figure 2: SWOT analysis

Strengths

Opportunities

Weaknesses

Threats

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“Engagement only happens if employees feel involved, well-led, respected and valued by those they work with and for. Ensuring effective action plans are in place at a local level helps drive employee engagement, which in turn helps improve business performance.”

Mike Healy, Project Manager - Employee Engagement at Boots UK

Theme 2: Accountability

Engage key stakeholders from the start Think about who needs to be approached to support action planning. Buy-in from the CEO and executive team is imperative. Consultation with the executive team will clarify where engagement sits within the wider business context. These discussions will also enable identification of the most appropriate action planning approach and possible threats or weaknesses. We recommend you explore at this stage whether any senior executives can be identified as ‘engagement champions’.

Functional heads and regional managers will have different business needs and challenges when it comes to taking action. It is essential to consult with these groups early on to discuss:

• Survey objectives.

• How taking action to improve engagement levels can help them to achieve their business objectives.

• Their role in the survey and action planning.

• Any barriers they might have for local action planning.

Positioning the survey as a business tool, rather than an HR initiative, encourages managers to take action. It may be that local questions are asked in the survey or certain questions need to be ‘tweaked’ to ensure the data will be useful to all parts of the organisation.

Employees are an important stakeholder group often overlooked in the early stages of engagement programmes. Getting them involved early on to identify topics to include in the survey and exploring what engagement means from their perspective demonstrates that the organisation is already listening to its employees.

A number of companies have dedicated ‘engagement champions’. These employees need not be managers but should be located in different business areas. Their role involves communicating the importance of engagement, supporting administration of the survey and local action planning. This responsibility usually goes beyond their job role and it is important to recognise and reward efforts accordingly.

Unions are another important stakeholder group. Failure to gain their involvement or approval has led to opposition to survey completion among some organisations. Companies should consider how involved they feel unions should be in their engagement programmes. This could be as simple as keeping them informed and sharing an advanced copy of the survey for their reference, right through to having them as part of the survey project team.

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Identifying managers’ business needs and incorporating them into the survey is a good way to get their commitment. Data will be more relevant and actions will be focussed on achieving tangible business outcomes.

Encouraging stakeholders outside of HR to take ownership A common challenge companies often address is shifting the perception that action planning is an HR initiative. Companies with the most successful local action planning allow managers the autonomy to determine actions. However, it is vital to provide appropriate reports and support managers with data interpretation and action plan best practice. This ensures managers can create high quality actions that will drive change. Figure 3 illustrates the type of information that might be included to help managers identify key themes and actions that will most effectively improve engagement:

• Employee engagement index.

• Response rate.

• Headline data (e.g. top/bottom-scoring questions, most notable comparisons to external benchmark and historical data).

• Bespoke business indexes (e.g. questions measuring manager competencies or organisational values).

• Action plan template.

Some companies choose to include engagement score targets or targets related to specific actions within managers’ performance objectives. This emphasises the importance of engagement to the business and managers’ responsibilities in taking action.

Figure 3: Provide managers with meaningful reports to help them identify action

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“Feeling part of a team is a strong driver of engagement. Our team ‘angels’ have helped foster a sense of belonging and we all appreciate that silent support. This sense of fun can be easily overlooked in our own task-driven worlds and it has had a big impact on engagement.”

Helen Read, Employee Insight Leader at RSA

Theme 3: Communication

How can communication support action planning? A common problem is that having conducted surveys over a number of years, it is challenging to maintain excitement around the process. We’ve come across some great examples of how this problem can be addressed in pre- and post-survey communications:

• Engagement in pictures: One organisation in the construction industry uses strong visuals to represent behaviours they would like their employees to demonstrate. Following focus groups with employees, pictures were designed for the engagement survey and are used in place of worded questions, with the response scale appearing next to each picture to measure how much employees believe certain behaviours are being demonstrated. This helped employees identify the meaning of engagement and the importance of taking action to improve their working environment.

• ‘Angeling’: A financial services company adopted an innovative initiative to promote engagement. Each employee is allocated an anonymous ‘angel’ within their extended team. The angel’s role it is to do things that make their charge feel valued at work. They decide the nature and frequency of these gestures, which might include leaving encouraging notes or small gifts on their desk. This had a very positive effect on how employees feel at work and keeps engagement visible on a day-to-day basis.

• Internal competition: Generating healthy competition for survey response rates and developing action plans between business functions is an effective way to keep engagement on the agenda. This can be achieved through league tables, live response rate updates, providing ‘management information’ reports on action plan development/completion and can be promoted via internal newsletters or bulletins.

• Survey branding: Creating a strong survey brand helps position the survey as an employee feedback channel. It can be useful for reminding employees of actions taken as a result of the survey, as this link is often missed.

• Strategic positioning: It can be difficult to keep employee engagement meetings on the agenda for senior management. A global company in the leisure industry has added updates on action plans to the agenda of scheduled executive meetings. This guarantees frequent engagement discussions at a senior level, which is helping to maintain support in driving actions forward.

• Promote business impact: One of the most powerful post-survey communications is to demonstrate the value of taking action to improve employee engagement. Few companies are currently able to demonstrate the impact engagement has on business metrics, but those that do have successfully managed to embed engagement as a business development tool.

Companies often combine a top-down and bottom-up approach. This involves the executive team setting a small number of corporate actions and local action planning being used to further develop these actions or identify separate local actions.

We recommend using all sources of data – including question mean scores, external and internal benchmarks and statistical analyses – when creating corporate actions. This helps identify a small number of improvements and strengths that will have the greatest impact on engagement. Guided by the survey owner, the executive team can then apply business context, consider resources and decide which areas are to be acted on.

We typically recommend no more than three corporate actions, which should be communicated to the organisation within six weeks of the survey closing to help maintain momentum.

Local action planning can be difficult for some companies as there is often less experience and skill locally. We find it best to consider what support can be provided to help managers interpret their data and develop high-quality action plans.

We believe there are three main questions to be answered in order to translate raw survey data into a small number of focussed and measureable actions, as illustrated in figure 4:

• Which actions do I work on?

• How do I define and develop the action plan?

• How do I track and measure actions?

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Theme 4: Translating data into action

2● Data reports for:

● Focus group/team feedback

● Clarify understanding of issues

● Formulate solutions & gain commitment

● Confirm actions with team

● Action plan template

● Record action:

● Set target

● Assign owner

● SMART

● Search for owners of similar actions/identify mentors

● Action toolkit library

How do I define anddevelop the action plan? 1

● Data reports for appropriate units

● Statistical prioritisation (key driver, benchmark, trend, mean score)

● Apply business context

● Re-establish business priorities

● Action planning tool workshop

● Action planning workshop

● Supporting documentation for managers

Technology enabled

Which actions do I workon? 3

● Recorded completion rate and document progress

● Management Information (MI)

● Trend data on action questions

● Axtion plan surgeries

● Pulse survey

● Quarterly ‘health’ checks by central co-ordinator or managers

● Business modelling

How do I track and measure actions?

Figure 4: Local action planning - key steps for translating survey data into tangible actions

In order to identify which actions to work on, we recommend simple yet informative data reports – particularly for local use. This provides managers with more sources of data to identify actions. This decision process can be supported using an automated, online tool that includes a statistical calculation, helping to identify questions with the greatest need for action. Online tools can also help ensure a consistent decision-making process across the organisation.

The next step is to define and develop the actions. Online tools offer a consistent and structured method for carrying out this step. However, a challenge to online tools is that they do not guarantee behaviour change or discussions between managers and employees. We recommend including discussion templates and prompts on action plan tools to encourage managers to get their team involved in developing the actions. It can be difficult for managers to identify what can be done to improve chosen action areas. Building a toolkit or library for the most common local actions is a useful starting point.

Case study example 3A global manufacturing company has a comprehensive toolkit that explains the importance of engagement and gives key considerations, skills, required knowledge, external/ internal resources, contacts and specific suggestions as to what the manager might do to improve the area. This is particularly valuable for ensuring high quality actions.

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Figure 5: Local action planning - key steps for translating survey data into tangible actions

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“Encouraging more dialogue within teams helped establish a natural feel to engagement. Managers and their teams are not simply ‘doing’ engagement, but are having targeted discussions on key issues. Action planning is now seen as part of people’s day job rather than an additional activity, and an increase in engagement has followed.”

Helen Read, Employee Insight Leader at RSA

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Actions need to be tracked and measured to identify progress and value to the business. A challenge that companies utilising local action planning often face is for HR to be able to collate an overall picture of the activity occurring across the business. Action plan tools provide a useful summary of survey questions that are being acted upon, when managers intend to carry out their actions, action plan completion rates and whether question scores have improved when the next survey is carried out.

‘Pulse’ surveys are a good measurement for providing a more frequent flow of data to see if scores have improved. We work with a large media organisation and conduct monthly pulse surveys to measure actions. The surveys include a small selection of questions and are sent to a representative sample of employees each month to prevent survey fatigue.

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Conclusion

Embedding a successful action planning process that will build value for the business is one of the greatest challenges companies face within employee engagement programmes. We have explored how companies should go about approaching this key component of the employee survey process and offered some best practice examples of survey practices used by successful companies ETS works with.

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ simple solution to developing and maintaining effective action plans. Action planning requires extensive thought and preparation within the four themes outlined, ensuring it is set up to fit your unique organisational needs and to deliver business value.

Action planning should be a top priority for companies considering how budgets should be utilised when investing in employee engagement programmes. Without effective action planning, the business benefits of employee engagement cannot be realised or recognised.

Next steps for successful surveyingETS is an expert in the field of employee engagement with extensive experience of devising and delivering surveys for large and complex organisations. We currently work closely with companies including ITV, G4S and Thomas Cook to provide employee surveys and help them take action to drive business improvement.

We are uniquely well placed to design a questionnaire and implement a bespoke solution that meets specific business needs. By deploying a survey that fits culturally with the company and reflects the day-to-day working experience of staff, you will enhance buy-in to the process and ensure a maximum return on investment from your employee engagement programme.

We design questionnaires to measure employee engagement levels and ensure that action planning, which is suitable for their specific organisational context, can be undertaken using the results.

Companies must ensure their survey process and the data it generates is effective and relevant to improve employee engagement and positively impact the bottom-line.

Please get in touch if you’re interested in speaking with a member of our business psychology team to discuss your survey or any aspect of your employee engagement programme.

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About ETS

This original HR insight report was co-written by Hannah Stratford, the Head of Business Psychology at ETS and Samantha Arnold, Business Psychologist at ETS. They work with high profile clients to help them leverage strategic value from performance and talent management, employee research and leadership assessment and development programmes. Dominic Wake and Ben Egan also contributed to the content of this report.

To contact Hannah or Dominic about this report, please send an email to dominic.wake@etsplc.com or call +44(0)1932 219949.

ETS provides business-focused consultancy and custom-designed technology to meet the performance management, employee research and 360-degree feedback needs of world-leading companies. We combine innovative technology solutions with practical experience to design a solution that ‘fits’ your business needs.

ETS delivers our clients’ ‘ideal world’, which means that our solutions exactly match each client’s corporate culture and processes: we listen to you needs; we do not expect you to bend to our solutions. Where appropriate, we develop the new processes needed to meet your people objectives. Where it is possible, we can integrate with, and automate, any existing HR processes so that new and old work together.