C-Suite / Leadership drive
It’s critical for any initiative that promises to make a change has vision, drive and buy in from the Board / C-Suite. If not, the business priority / commitment will show through the business as other drivers take over. If this hasn’t got that, don’t wait to be asked, show your passion and sell the benefits of ‘people feedback’ to the Business Leaders. Your message has to be “Don’t be scared of feedback, embrace it. ‘Today’s emotions’ are tomorrow’s performance’ - it’s important we don’t make assumption and help people thrive. Many companies dismiss feedback, only brave companies really take note and grow from it.”
Plan how you want to dissect the feedback insight
This is super important. The insight you get from the survey is only as good as the data held against the responses we receive. Consider how you want to report on the insight. How do you want to analyse your results? What groups do you want to review or compare? For example, departments, countries, demographics, length of service? Consider if you already have the information on these people or if you will need to ask for it. This is essential for action planning and empowering your teams / communities post survey. Your decision on ‘anonymity’ also plays into this - your CSM can help.
Simplicity
The biggest mistake companies make is to try and fit too much into a survey whilst they have the ear of their people! Don’t do it, survey fatigue is real! The more questions you ask, the lower you response rate. It’s much better to have multiple channels to provide feedback over the year based on particular topics and potential have one channel for ‘in the moment’ feedback. Same applies for reporting, at the start of your Listening journey, it’s always useful to start with larger groups and keep it simple as people data isn’t often in a place to support more granular reporting.
Supporting change
Plan ahead to offer support to Managers ahead of surveys to educate them on the importance of feedback. This could be linked to L&D across the business. Ensure the feedback is cascaded consistently, we recommend, feedback is condensed into a board report - presented to the Board / C-Suite initially, then through to the Senior Leadership teams before cascading through to Management. It’s important there is a framework for Managers to use (a Toolkit) that steers Managers in how to use the feedback with their teams.