Post-survey action planning: turning results into change

The survey is the easy part

The employee survey has closed and the company and departmental reports have landed. What now? Some organisations flick through, think "that's interesting," and file the report in the drawer alongside the last five years' worth. That's the fastest way to waste the whole exercise — and to damage engagement.

Gallup's research is blunt: neglecting survey results is a proven way to undermine engagement. Conversely, workgroups who strongly agreed that "action plans from the last survey have had a positive impact on my workplace" showed significant engagement gains — up to a 10% increase in the top quartile. Fail to act and follow-up surveys show falling participation and falling engagement.

So as soon as the organisational report arrives, the senior team should take ownership of the cross-cutting issues that affect the whole business — then a structured plan cascades the rest.

The six-step action-planning process

1. Communicate the results. Publicise the key organisational findings and what will change. Make clear employees will be involved in the follow-up and that their input makes a difference — poster campaign, newsletter, intranet, briefings, whatever reaches people.
2. Involve employees. Bring teams together, ideally in facilitated, focus-group-style sessions, to explain why you ran the survey and present the results.
3. Get talking. Teams discuss their own results and what they mean to them. Managers can facilitate, or bring in external consultants for the harder conversations.
4. Target the areas that matter most. Work through each team's results and pick around three priorities — not everything at once.
5. Generate solutions and plan. Teams propose their own fixes in a non-judgemental discussion (an anonymous physical or digital board helps if people feel inhibited). Turn these into a team action plan with SMART goals — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely — and clear ownership so someone drives each action.
6. Review and support. Revisit plans, update them and keep the momentum. Make sure people feel equipped and supported to deliver the changes they want to see.

What good looks like

The organisations that get the most from this go all in. One 500-person employer with a conservative, deferential culture and no tradition of involvement invited every employee to a workshop where their part of the business's results were presented "warts and all." Breakout sessions produced an impressive set of suggestions; the relevant senior manager attended each one and responded openly, even to criticism. Cynics who'd doubted anything would come of it were confounded — and the top team's previously low profile was transformed. A public commitment to a progress-checking survey later in the year sealed it.

Another world-renowned employer ran facilitated action-planning workshops for every team of more than twenty, with the responsible senior manager in each session agreeing actions and setting improvement targets to be measured later in the year. Time-consuming and not cheap — but, as the director put it, money well spent.

The payoff

There's a consistent pattern: the organisations that throw themselves into follow-up achieve measurably higher engagement — and they tend to be the high-performing businesses too. There's even a bonus effect — the act of involving people in the post-survey process itself lifts engagement, because employees feel part of the wider business and see that their contribution counts.

It's almost too obvious to say, but you get out what you put in. The survey measures the gap; action planning is how you close it.

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