Fear. Apprehension. Excitement. Emotion. You’ve set up your groups, the additional employee engagement survey reminder went out, and the participation counter inches closer to that perfect 100%. You’ve completed your assessment, and all that’s left to do is wait for the clock to strike midnight and those results to arrive in your inbox.
What do you feel right now? Overwhelmed, excited, or nervous? All of the above?
Good – that shows you care!
While you may not be the owner of the organization, you are no doubt a pillar to the business – a key player in transforming the results from your first employee survey into outcomes. The actions you take as a leader directly affect your team at a more personal, day-to-day level, arguably more than the owner of your business.
The outcome of your first employee survey
As you dive headfirst into your team’s results, remember the following:
1. There’s no such thing as a bad score.
Any time you receive valuable feedback and actionable insight, you’re on the right track. Over the coming months and years, you’ll use this as your benchmark to measurably improve not just your overall engagement survey score, but how the leadership team is improving and growing as well. Simon Sinek believes that “the hardest part is starting – once you get that out of the way, you’ll find the rest of the journey much easier.”
Seeing results for the first time may be nerve-wracking or hard, but you have officially started your engagement journey, and it’s up to you to take the results and improve it!
2. You’re either winning or learning.
Perhaps you jumped straight to your comparisons page and it’s mostly blue and green – congratulations! You’ve scored successful or engaged throughout your company on your first assessment, a win in my book! Dive into the qualitative feedback to ensure the comments align with your score, find the golden nugget to improve on over the next 90 days, and keep up the good work.
Or, perhaps you’ve seen an array of colors on your comparisons page – some red, orange, blue – and you don’t know where to begin. Employee feedback suggests leaders aren’t spending enough time with their direct reports, communication is lacking sorely throughout the organization, and some employees don’t even know why they are coming to work. Sounds harsh, right?
Don’t worry, these learnings give you a blueprint for what you and your leadership team need to do to gradually push that score up a point or two for your next survey, but more importantly create an Engaged Organization – another win in my book!
3. Open heart, open mind.
The journey toward an engaged organization never truly ends. The fun really starts once you’ve achieved the allusive green circles with 100% participation – but it all begins with a group of brave and caring leaders and owners, daring to take their organization from good to great. By adopting a growth mindset and seeing your first results as an opportunity to improve, your employees will see a new side of you, and you will face an uphill trajectory. You now have the structure and framework to succeed – so let’s get going!
Leading a team isn’t a walk in the park
Managing the details of a project, approving expenses, or coordinating logistics – that’s the easy stuff. Hearing what your colleagues have to say, digesting that feedback, taking ownership of the situation, leading your team toward greatness, and helping fulfill a purpose – that’s one of the more challenging, albeit most rewarding, aspects of our job.
Best of luck with reviewing your first set of results!
