Why I should consider a Culture Survey?
Posted on 15th December 2021 at 12:19
Our guest blog by Lindsey Marriott, co-founder at Specific Learning & Coaching Ltd, tells us the importance of culture within an organisation and why you should be surveying the culture of your organisation writes:
The culture of any organisation has a direct impact on commercial performance. Big statement…but there is a wealth of data to show that great employee engagement, creating a cohesive, positive and empowered team is the key driver to improving that performance and helps to reduce absenteeism, attrition, improve presenteeism, productivity and customer satisfaction.
So -what’s the difference between a culture survey and an employee engagement survey?
In reality, nothing…it’s the collective team including senior and other managers throughout the business that create the culture – so gauging what they think and how they feel is the first step to understanding your business culture
The first step is to be very clear about what you want to know – and be authentic. Is this survey about improving the internal service chain and how you work together – or is it an exercise in auditing how ‘well’ you are performing as a leadership team? (in which case it’s not an engagement survey).
Genuine intention to truly listen to your employee voice, commitment to act where you can, or communicate the reasons why if you can’t, must be the basic prerequisite.
Get an expert to help you formulate the survey so you get the answers you really want – even if some of the questions might seem a bit risky – if you don’t probe you won’t know- and an open and honest content discovery session is the right way to start.
Positioning the purpose of an employee engagement survey is important, particularly if this is the first time…so show respect for anonymity, demonstrate a clear plan for communicating results and be clear about the commitment to act.
Have a robust process in place for deploying your survey, capturing responses, and analysing the results – quickly. It’s critical that nothing knocks you off track or significantly delays the response – trust from the team to do what you said you were going to do is fragile at this point, so make sure you follow up fast.
And finally, be honest. If the results are difficult to see, that’s OK – after all, that’s why you asked the questions and the gift of honesty from the team in having shared their true feelings with you gives an amazing opportunity to put together a plan of improvement, whether that be people, process or platforms.
Share your plan, ask for help, share small successes along the way – and don’t forget the principle of Marginal Gains – it really doesn’t have to be ‘sorted’ all at once!
Specific Learning & Coaching offer an extensive eLearning course for leaders which will enable them to implement a plan that is fit for purpose and meets the business needs, including an employee engagement platform and group coaching.
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