When you work on employee listening projects you know how critical taking action is. Research conducted by Qualtrics, a leader in experience management (XM) solutions, shows that when employees believe their organization listens to and acts on feedback, employees are more engaged. In fact, a recent study found that employees whose employer turns feedback into action “really well” are twice as engaged as those whose employer does not act on their feedback well.
Newmeasures had the opportunity to partner with one client, a healthcare organization, to track the impact of action planning over a period of several years. By employing a well-executed action planning process with a focus on engagement drivers, this organization improved their engagement scores from 55% to 79% over an eight-year period. From a benchmarking perspective, we saw this organization move from the 6th percentile to the 86th!
While it is encouraging to see such success cases, we’ve also seen some clients struggle with action planning. In fact, according to a 2020 report from the Human Capital Institute, 66% of organizations collect feedback from employees but only 33% report taking meaningful action.
At stage 2, the senior leadership team prioritizes organization-wide opportunities and designates a person or team who will own taking action on each.
For example, one of our clients, a community health center, assigns opportunity areas to the leadership teams who are already working on elements of the strategy. The CEO told us, “A good action plan requires someone to own it, someone to drive it. We have steering committees for each of our business goal areas. The survey input and open-ended comments are divvied up to those accountable based on how the issues relates to our strategy.”
Another client in the banking industry recruits champions to review findings, conduct focus groups, and suggest 2-3 company-wide actions.
Stage 3 is sometimes referred to as the waterfall or cascade approach. At this stage, the senior leadership team prioritizes org-wide opportunities and leaders at all levels take action on those priorities.
One project leader told us “We focus globally and plan locally. We try to keep the firm focused on 1-2 key areas, so efforts are concerted, coordinated, and efficient. Leaders set their own goals to tie into the firm's priorities. That way we are not creating a bunch of new initiatives.”
Recently, we’ve seen many client organizations who want to improve with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). In addition to making changes at the company level, they also encourage each team leader to study their specific DE&I feedback in order to identify changes that will be the most important for their individual work group.
As organizations mature their employee listening programs, many choose to expand responsibility for interpreting feedback and identifying areas of improvement. At this stage, business unit, regional, and/or site leaders identify local-level priorities and own action planning.
In the most advanced version of this stage, every frontline manager is responsible for action planning based on their own team’s specific feedback. This can be a powerful approach because each leader is working on engagement at the level where they can have an impact.
The final stage in our journey framework occurs when employees take ownership for prioritizing opportunities and taking action. This often involves a work team committing to new habits that will improve the work experience for everyone. In other cases, employees volunteer to start resource groups or workstreams designed to address an improvement opportunity.
In this stage, each team or work group manager becomes a facilitator of the process. The key to success is ensuring every leader is trained in the skills of understanding employee feedback, facilitating constructive conversations with their team members, and tying engagement goals to the broader strategic goals of the organization.
PepsiCo crowdsourced ideas for their “Process Shredder” and got over a million comments and ideas for new business processes in the company in days, which then led the company to radically simplify the performance process and also start a crowdsourced new beverage product.
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