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Creating an Action Plan Based on Employee Survey Results

After performing an employee survey, you analyze the results.

Perhaps you have found that nothing is badly broken, but you will find areas which could be better. In fact, if you created a survey where all the responses returned indicated everything was perfect, you have created the wrong survey!

It is much easier to collect survey results and place them on a shelf than it is to do something useful with the information.

However, you don't want to waste an opportunity to improve and you don't want to waste the time and money which was invested into the creation, deployment and analysis of the survey!

The results of any employee survey should be an action plan addressing specific points identified as those which have the least positive responses but which are most important to the employees.

Learning which points are important involves use of a correlation chart, which is the topic of another article about interpreting survey results.

Action plans must be developed on a timely basis and have full management support in order to make a difference. If the "voice of the employee" is ignored for a period of time, they employees will lose any belief that their voices matter to the managers and directors of the company.

Action plans can address three levels: companywide changes, organizational changes, and department or developmental changes.

When employee survey results have been analyzed, an action plan at EACH of these levels should be developed to address those points which need improvement. It won't make much difference if the department manager creates an action plan if that manager's superiors won't support the plan and allow it to become reality.

For example, let's say that a company's survey has revealed that employees are not very happy with the rewards and recognition programs available outside of their paychecks.

The manager-level employees can perform research by talking to individual employees about what causes this feeling and what they would like to see done about the problem.

After collecting comments, the managers can meet and compare results. Most likely, several points will be repeated in each manager's results. Those should be key points addressed in the action plan.

Once the managers have some firm key points, their superiors should receive feedback and then develop an organizational level action plan based on the action plans developed by the manager.

Then director level action plans must back up the action plans developed at lower levels, giving the power to implement.

One possible outcome of the above example survey results would be an action plan to develop an Employee Suggestion Program, rewarding employees who provide suggestions which can save money or enhance processes and reward and recognize those employees.

Another action plan point might be to implement an Employee of the Month Award.

The key part of the action plan development is that it goes from the employees' input, to the managers' feedback, to organizational level input to director level empowerment. Anything less will provide no results.

The action plans should be measurable, accountable, effectively implemented.

Creating an Employee of the Month Award won't work unless part of the action plan at the manager level is to submit an employee each month for consideration.

It also won't work if the director level's action plan is simply to write a nice letter.

People thrive on recognition and reward. A check and a plaque they can hang on their wall, however, will make employees come to recognize that something has changed for the better!

Copyright © 2005 by Bill Roche. All rights reserved. All material on this site (www.TopResults.com) is protected by U.S. Federal Copyright law. It may not be reprinted in any form, or hosted on any Web site, without explicit permission.

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Copyright © 1998-2008 by Bill Roche. All rights reserved. All material on this site (www.TopResults.com) is protected by U.S. Federal Copyright law. It may not be reprinted in any form, or hosted on any Web site, without explicit permission.