You want to get the most out of your employee survey results. You realize diverse groups of people in your employee population have unique employee experiences. But how can you segment employee sentiments and demographics in a way that makes it easy to see and understand those differences? In a way that’s meaningful to executive teams and direct managers and actually influences positive change?
The jobs we hold, who we report to, where we work geographically, our interests, motivations, and life outside of work all contribute to our employee experiences.
When an organization uses an employee segmentation model to interpret pulse and employee engagement survey results it’s like putting on a pair of reading glasses that magnify the fine print. Looking at employee responses by different demographics, traits and values brings clarity to issues and insights that might have been difficult to read, if not completely hidden from sight.
What is Employee Data Segmentation?
Employee data segmentation is a crucial part of people analytics. It looks at survey results based on a grouping of one or more employee attributes – the characteristics that make us unique. This data is typically found in your Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Information missing from your system can be captured in a new survey.
The main intentions behind using an employee segmentation model are to easily find where there are issues. To see the smoke before there’s fire. And to see the positives happening in your organization so that you can replicate or emulate them elsewhere.
Like a painter who arranges and mixes paints on a palette to create compelling works of art, employee attribute lists can be arranged and mixed in survey reporting to create compelling insights that lead to great work experiences for all.
To segment frequent pulse surveys and more extensive employee engagement surveys, results can be split into groups that share common characteristics. A variety of other attributes and different sentiment factors can be blended to paint a picture far more detailed than one painted using broad brush strokes.
For example, rather than looking only at aggregate (broad brush stroke) employee engagement survey results, you can look at how GenX women with diverse cultural backgrounds feel about team and collaboration, their direct manager, communication. What are their sentiments around job satisfaction or training and development? How does this compare by business unit or region or with their male counterparts? What’s happened since the last survey? Did results move up or down?
Employee Attributes Lists: Then and Now
Traditionally when employees fill out surveys, organizations have included questions like: What department are you in? Who is your leader? One of the problems with these types of questions is the increased risk to data integrity. People can and do accidentally make the wrong choice (inadvertently identifying as a member of marketing instead of sales for instance). Plus, people are less apt to give real feedback because of a perceived lack of confidentiality.
Sophisticated survey tools have changed all that.
Nowadays leading employee survey platforms import demographic employee attributes directly from your HRIS.
Employee Segmentation Examples
The number and types of employee characteristics you can divide into groups are as expansive as the information in your dataset.
