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Communicating the results and planned actions from your employee surveys is critical to the success of future surveys. Transparent survey result communication, followed by action, is what ensures high response rates.
So, you might be asking yourself: is there a right way to communicate the results? How can I be confident in my organization’s approach to closing the feedback loop?
Remember this: Survey storytelling is important for clearly making employees’ voices heard.
Today, considering how we share information is more important than ever. We live and work in a time of on-demand information. Our blended workforces are diverse, multigenerational, and frequently able to choose where and when they work.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, but with the right communication strategies and tools, you can easily share employee survey results with your employees.
The picture you paint starts with the type of survey that’s been issued. Communicating the aggregate findings of an organization-wide Employee Engagement survey is different from reporting on a department or region’s moment-in-time employee pulse survey. It’s also important to consider the audience: how do you communicate results to managers and leaders? This group should be invested in the actions that follow results as much if not more than the results themselves.
Personalize your communication strategy for your people and survey type
Introducing different survey types into your people strategy is the best way to learn what employees think and feel. And by communicating results in different ways, you ensure the data collected:
- gets the attention it deserves
- shows employees their feedback is being heard
- triggers action from the people most able to make changes
Today’s survey tools let you use conditional routing for specific questions. For instance, you could choose all employees for a company-wide engagement survey or limit it to employees from a specific region facing a newly introduced process.
Better yet, today’s tools also let you give people leaders access to survey results. Customized confidentiality thresholds and permissions you manage all become part of your survey communication strategy.
Employee survey communication is a two-way exchange
Frequent employee pulse surveys are a perfect way for people to express their opinions in real-time and for organizations to receive, listen, and act in response.
Adding the employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to frequent employee feedback surveys keeps employee sentiment front and center. Regularly sharing eNPS results lets everyone keep a pulse on this critical loyalty measurement as it relates to their teams as employees and their actions as leaders.
Layering the insights of multiple surveys over different topics, timelines, locations, and other factors is an excellent way to communicate where progress is being made or lost.
- Sort and display, prioritize, and report “key factors” that highlight other Employee Engagement measurement scores
- Communicate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) sentiment across demographic data or different equity-seeking groups
- Build engagement insights into pulse surveys
- Correlate DE&I with other employee feedback survey insights like hiring, retention, and career growth
The more your organization knows about employee sentiment and shares it with timely transparency, the more likely people are to stay and be enriched, happy, and engaged.
Seven ways to communicate employee survey results
1. Visual Presentations
When to Use: All survey types, especially those with complex, correlated data
Presentations help to communicate employee survey results with clarity and credibility.
The human brain can interpret images 60,000 times faster than text because more than 93% of all human communication is visual. The more graphs, charts, and other visual aids used, the better.
This is an excellent approach for presenting quick, at-a-glance pulse survey outcomes as well as the more complex, correlated data that comes out of Employee Engagement surveys. Information is fast and easy to grasp for everyone.
These are great for screen sharing on video calls in a remote or hybrid workforce. Webinars and videos are also effective options.
2. Town Halls
When to Use: All survey types
Town halls allow everyone to hear and understand the results from the same position. Whether live-streamed, delivered by webinar or video, this kind of survey communication should be mobile-device friendly.
It’s a broad-brush-stroke communication method particularly effective for conveying a high-level summary of Employee Engagement survey results.
3. Open-Ended Comment Reporting
When to Use: Best for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) or Health and Wellness surveys
Your survey is complete, and you may be facing hundreds or thousands of text-based responses to sift through – that would take a lot of time to review manually. In combination with AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP), word clouds have become a highly visual communications tool that extracts themes and overall comment sentiment.
An engaged workforce wants to share their observations and suggestions for positive change. An open-ended question is well suited to employee engagement surveys. Concepts become clearer when quantitative scores are qualified by personal comments.
For similar reasons, open-ended comment reporting is equally effective for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) or Health and Wellness surveys. This form of reporting and communication is well-suited for business-critical employee surveys about change management events like Mergers and Acquisitions, which are bound to stir up lots of discussion.
4. Focus Groups
When to Use: Best for understanding and addressing specific survey themes
Organize smaller, more intimate groups of people from across the organization to express how they feel in ways the survey can’t. This approach allows employees to expand on themes and search for root causes. It’s particularly effective when clarity around certain employee engagement scores and subsequent action planning is needed.
5. Anonymous Conversations
When to Use: All survey types
This technology is a two-way dialogue breakthrough in employee survey communication. When employees fill out open-ended questions without receiving any kind of acknowledgment, it seems as if no one’s reading their comments. On the flip side, management’s hands are tied when it comes to acting on employee feedback if they don’t understand and can’t circle back for clarity.
Enable leaders in your organization to read, acknowledge, and respond to comments – while keeping the employee’s identity completely anonymous.
A quick comment shows an employee that leadership is listening, motivates strong participation rates in future surveys, and gives managers the opportunity to solicit more information to guide their actions.
6. Provide Real-Time Access to Leaders
When to Use: All survey types
Combined with increased employee survey frequency, accessing the survey results in real-time is a game-changer.
Sending employee survey data to HR for filtering has no real advantage; it only adds a lag to the action that can be taken. Employees’ voices need to be heard directly by the source that has arguably the biggest impact on the workplace experience: leaders and managers. HR’s job is to make that happen.
Increasing numbers of organizations are using intuitive real-time reporting systems with unlimited options for powerful trending insights.
- Role or division-based dashboards for executive and HR leaders easily identify high-potential or problem areas by comparing and ranking feedback across different parts of the organization or by using any correlation of data imaginable.
- Manager reports make it quick and simple for managers to see insights and sentiments from their direct reports and hierarchies. Additionally, accountability levels rise when managers know their team scores are visible and being monitored at higher levels.
An Interact survey showed that a stunning majority (69%) of managers said they’re uncomfortable communicating with employees. People leaders who have personal access to survey data are better informed and in a stronger position to confidently communicate employee survey results. Relative trending insights—the kind of people analytics where leaders and managers can see the impact of their actions—also increase a sense of responsibility.
If a division leader gets feedback indicating stress is on the rise, for instance, they can send their team a message saying “Hey, we heard you. We realize stress levels are high and here’s what we’re going to do about it…” The impact this communication has on employees is considerable. It’s not unreasonable to imagine people thinking, “Wow! They’re listening to me. I’m going to continue to give my feedback.”
7. Provide Real-Time Access to Employees
When to Use: All survey types
Open the access one step further: Provide real-time access to employees when they finish the survey. Allow employees to see averages from everyone who’s responded to the survey already (rather than waiting days, weeks, or yikes—months—to hear filtered findings). This is an appealing employee feedback feature for today’s instant-information on-demand world.
Close the feedback loop and celebrate success
Your survey is complete, you’ve communicated the results, and leaders have taken action. Now what? It’s time to close the feedback loop and make a big deal about what’s changed since the last survey.
In employee gatherings, internal communication platforms, or your employee recognition platform, give a shout-out to people who have made a difference (even the little steps). Show employees they’re making an impact so they build confidence in offering feedback. And remember, when it comes to your leaders, they’re employees, too. Focus on a better experience for them regarding receiving (and using) feedback.
