What do with the employee satisfaction survey results

Great! You're interested in how your people feel about your company. Have you taken any steps about it yet or are you currently running a survey?

There are few things any employer should know about when, how and what to do after before kicking off a questionnaire. With the send button, there will be consequences.

1. If you can fit the whole team around a table, choose the option "Let's talk face to face"
2. If you cannot, make sure there aren't a 3rd world war around the corner as that is going to mess up the results
3. Make sure who ever handles the raw data can do just that: handle it
4. Arrange a soft room with a bunching bag for the management if necessary to show negative emotions
5. You will have time to handle and communicate the responses
6. You have both motivation and time to make an action plan, in other words, make changes to where deemed necessary

The good thing about such surveys are that you show interest in understanding how people feel. But it's important to understand why you want to ask such questions in the first place. What is your goal and how do you plan to use the results in order to reach your goal. This will help you also form questions that provide you valuable responses.

5 tips for the formula of a questionnaire

1. Make it fun to respond to
2. Keep it simple and short, avoid open ended questions as much as possible
3. Guarantee anonymosity
4. Keep the wording simple and ask few people to test drive it to make sure everyone understands the questions in the same way
5. Use scales that are easy to comprehend

How to deal with whatever comes out of the Pandora's box
As I mentioned in the first paragraph, with the send button, there will be consequences. When you decide to go ahead with a survey, you are expected to communicate the outcome back in a speedy manner after the round has closed. For this reason a simple survey works wonders for you as it is easier to handle and put the results together. Here are my advice for what steps to take once you've got the results:

1. Plan how and who will communicate the overview of the results 
2. Present; what's on a good level, what could be better and what issues cannot be changed
3. Make sure the top management is present when results are communicated. Nothing signals better the lack of disrespect towards staff opinions than a CEO who has something better to do.
4. Decide on 2-3 action points and communicate the points and a schedule for them
5. Communicate regularly how your work on the points is going forward (status updates) and once you are ready, communicate that shouting out loud. Then make sure you keep communicating the status updates and deliverables regularly. This way you will gain trust for the survey method for the next round.
6. If one of your action points for some reason will not head towards the goal, make sure you explain this to all staff. Don't just forget about it or try to hide it. It was important for your people and it should be important to you as well.

Don't keep the worm in the box, take it out and do something with it!
Susanna