Engagement survey action methodology for companies with 500+ employees

This article contains 15Five's engagement survey methodology for organizations with 500+ employees to make the most impact.

The only way you can accomplish your desired business outcomes (“scoreboard”) is through a focused, cascading action process.

We recommend bringing leaders into the engagement results process by authority level. This drives focused action and habit-building starting with the top of the org, cascading downward.

Some organizations move faster through this process than others. Generally, we see that it takes 9-12 months (or 3-4 surveys) to work results and action accountability through the org chart down to most line-level managers. For organizations with hundreds of line-level managers, the process may take longer. We see about 20% of them coming into the results and action process each survey cycle beginning at survey 2 or 3.

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This is a marathon instead of a one-and-done sprint. Actions will start broad (i.e. 1 company-level action) then go deeper (i.e. divisional, then departmental) as we continue to survey.

Another reason why this approach works is that we find that employees often look to their boss to see if engagement results access and action are working for them. Rest assured that, regardless of where you are in the org chart, the 15Five engagement tool itself will onboard each leader, suggest effective actions, create an accountability board, and track action effectiveness. Supplementary 1:1 consultations are also available.

In conclusion, if you are a CEO or CHRO who wants to decrease your people risk and drive the outcomes in your business that you came to 15Five to help with, you need to set your scoreboard and telegraph the above action framework early and often to the whole organization (see our example here).

If you don’t, you could fall into one of two traps. Either you will allow all the “opportunities” in your first results read-out to become an elephant on your back, and you will feel overwhelmed wanting to pull back on the overall survey cadence. Or you will feel forced into activating too many leaders in your org chart too quickly with an underdeveloped and unproven action “muscle.”

We have your best in mind, so please avoid these by following the action methodology above. 15Five engagement customers who follow this plan consistently outperform their peers both in engagement score growth and in attainment of business outcomes.

Read our best practices on the "how" here.

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