Taking your employee survey strategy from annual to agile

In a fast-paced world everything needs to be agile, including our employee voice strategy. Now what do we mean by agile? It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean an endless cycle of surveys continuously being sent out. Instead, an agile survey approach means you can listen to your people quickly and with ease.  

There are three components that go into running a successful employee voice strategy – motion, speed and ease. These factors have positive implications that all factor into one another, for example:  

• Continuous motion implies action, which is a key factor of an effective employee voice strategy. 

• Speed implies ease as you can’t do difficult things quickly.  

Why move from an annual survey to agile listening?  

Let’s reflect on the journey we’ve had just over the last 24 months. We’ve had a pandemic, tackled hybrid working and are now facing what returning to work looks like. Over this time there’s been more than a few challenges that organisations and their people have faced and will continue to face as new challenges are constantly presenting themselves. 

A current challenge that HR is facing is a talent shortage. There’s a tough fight for talent and on top of that the cost of living has sky-rocketed which very much affects how people feel about reward, recognition and benefits within the workplace. 

Lisa Hughes, Senior Consultant at People Insight and former Employee experience specialist at the University of Surrey says: 

“There is a massive level of uncertainty that we have had in the last 24 months. We had the pandemic and now we’ve got all the other external factors that have come as a result of it. When people are uncertain, their behaviour changes quite a lot and with constant changes to the world around them, their behaviour will change more frequently.” 

This is why an agile approach to an employee voice strategy is important. Waiting a full year to ask people how they are feeling won’t keep up with the pace of change organisations need to adapt and respond to today.   

“When we’re doing any form of employee survey, it can create vulnerability in your organisation with your leaders and managers, so it all comes down to communicating the intent of what you’re trying to do. Our listening programme was about positive intent, to create a better experience for all our employees, including our leaders. It was about creating a psychologically safe environment for everyone.” – Lisa Hughes. 

How to move to an agile employee voice strategy 

When looking at examples of businesses who have a strong employee listening strategy, there are three elements that indicate an agile approach. These are:  

1. Using multiple channels – Use a blend of internal and external employee voice channels to always have your finger on the employee voice. Some great internal methods that are easy to start using include employee pulse surveys, joiner/leaver surveys, 121s, team meetings and employee forums. Whilst externally, monitoring channels like Glassdoor and Indeed will help create a bigger picture of the issues that matter to your people.  
2. Being adaptive – World news and events will change the behaviours and needs of your employees so being adaptive and reactive to these is vital. Most recently we’ve seen companies use surveys and listening activities to understand how the cost-of-living crisis, inclusion and employee wellbeing are affecting the employee experience. Many are also including employee survey questions about hybrid working to understand how changes to ways of working are affecting the employee experience. .  
3. Action orientated – Share insights you collect through surveys at multiple levels throughout the company. Doing this will benefit you for a few reasons. Firstly, it will ensure that the responsibility to act on feedback is distributed fairly and not just left up to HR (also making it quicker to achieve outcomes,). Secondly, it will clearly link together employee voice, actions and positive change so that everyone understands the process. Action planning tools help maintain momentum after your survey closes, and keep people accountable for change. 

Find out more about People Insight’s employee survey platform and built-in action planning tool. 

What does an agile listening strategy look like?  

Lisa Hughes shares the tactics used to amplify colleague voice at the University of Surrey:  

“We wanted to make sure was that the employee voice strategy was a golden thread that ran through all the university departments to bring us all together. Doing this enabled us to have a baseline to work together on various actions. I really wanted to make sure it wasn’t just about surveying; it was also about all the other activity that takes place when we’re listening. 

We started by reviewing the annual survey and mapped the questions against key stakeholder requirements to make sure we were meeting those needs.  

We then wanted to get those key stakeholders and leaders involved. Our approach was to communicate openly to leaders and managers how we were changing the survey and how we planned on building out the colleague voice. We used this as an opportunity to talk about the employee voice strategy and the vision of what we’re trying to do.  

I really wanted to focus on how we humanise data and remove any friction, and I think communicating to raise awareness of what we’re doing, why are we doing it, what’s the difference going to be, how we’re going to add value is a great way to do that. 

After the employee engagement survey had gone out, we started reporting each month and this was really what started to drive the actions. Reporting back meant that people could see movement and when people see movement, they are more eager to get involved.  It eventually started to become a journey that encouraged people to come with us rather than pushing them up the hill, which created a great experience for many of us!”  

Ready to take your employee voice strategy from annual to agile?  

• Watch the instant replay from our Annual to Agile webinar to learn how The University of Surrey’s approach can help your organisation improve employee engagement and drive faster, data-driven decision making for leaders and managers alike. 
• Lisa has also answered your questions on this topic, for everything you need to know for an easy, agile employee voice strategy.  
• Bookmark our Employee Experience Glossary: Define employee experience & key terms
• Speak to us for more help developing an agile listening strategy for your organisation