The essential guide to employee engagement action planning

A great employee engagement survey action plan will enable you to devise meaningful change following on from the completion of your survey. Employees do not become disinterested with undertaking surveys, they become disheartened with insufficient change. Organisations carry out a survey to measure employee engagement, assess the data, analyse and interpret the findings but then what?

People often find themselves feeling resentful when there is no visible action plan for the next staff survey. The intention to listen to the employee voice may be good, but if nothing appears to change colleagues are left wondering what they’re really getting out of taking part in these exercises. If it seems as though no change has taken place since the last survey, why participate again?

So what do you do with your employee survey data? Our essential guide to action planning will guide you through how to write employee engagement survey action plans that drive meaningful engagement and long term change in 2023. For more inspiration, check out our 2023 trends guide.

Writing an effective action plan

Utilise our action planning template to help guide communication and develop an action plan. Then you can focus on the important part –making change to improve the employee experience.

• Know the themes in your survey findings before you start

People Insight’s intuitive results dashboard is a great way to digest the key themes of your employee engagement results, while focus groups can help you dig deeper.

• Share initial findings with leaders and managers

The HR team is crucial in facilitating action planning, but it needs to be partnered with line managers. Inform them on their role and tailor the survey results dashboard so that they can see local data related to what’s happening at their location.

• Focus on 2-3 issues as a priority

Looking at the data, it’s clear that some things will always put you behind – no matter how hard you try. For instance: your peers have a much higher score than yours; benchmarking shows just where in particular this is happening so there are specific areas for improvement (e..g., need more exams taken); historical information can show what improvements were made over time which might give us hope as well!

• Plan how to create change

You can’t just focus on one aspect of the change management survey and hope for success. You need to involve every person who has an opportunity, from line managers all the way up through your company’s top executives—and explore how different demographics answer differently based off their needs or priorities in order find out what works best!

• Deliver on what has been committed to

It should be clear to all employees who is accountable for what section of your engagement action plan. Targets should be specific and time-bound – so that progress can easily be measured. with everything from team meetings to infographics.

• Sustain momentum

People are already interested in the progress that you’re making. Share updates with a creative tone and keep people engaged by celebrating milestones as they happen! People Insight’s results dashboard includes an interactive action planning tool which makes it easy to track your plans’ effectiveness – no matter how big or small those changes may be at any given time.

Employee Engagement Action Planning Template for 2023

People Insight’s employee survey results dashboard includes a built-in action planning tool. It helps your team record action items, assign owners and track progress.

If you opt for offline action planning, use our free employee survey action plan template. It will keep your plan on track without giving your team a tonne of extra admin.

Download our engagement action plan template

Improving Your Approach To Employee Engagement Action Planning

The vast majority of us have suffered as a result of poor employee engagement action planning. We spend hours talking about the results, and ideas that will transform your organisation into an engaging employer who gets people on board with their goals for success in this new environment – but it doesn’t always work out like you want! That’s why we’ve put together some tips from best practices around People Insight engagement strategy creation so all employees feel valued at every level within any given company or organisation.

1. Begin to think about how to approach action planning early in the survey process.

Ask employee survey questions such as:

• How will your employee survey form part of the bigger picture?
• Who will have the responsibility for owning action items?  Work out which groups or individuals within your company can help to have an impact on behaviours and lead changes.
• Which stakeholders should have an involvement in action planning? Sessions should be booked to ensure everyone can be present.
• What should local teams deliver post-survey action? It might be worth thinking about local teams delivering post-survey “post intervention” activities so that no factors get in their way!

Stakeholder engagement at LSBU:

People Insight’s employee survey consultants facilitated an interactive workshop for leaders at London South Bank University (LSBU) and London Business School (LBS). This group were engaged early in the action planning process and the People Insight team conducted a bespoke event to support them in understanding the results of their employee engagement survey. Different activities were put together to highlight key insights from the survey, share best practices and discuss potential ways forward. Local leaders were made aware of their role in shaping work culture in a positive way and left with some ideas which they could share with line managers and carry out for inspiring change.

2. Know the issue you’re attempting to solve.

Ensure the issue behind your survey results is understood, prior to starting to put solutions in place. Use qualitative methods like focus or listening groups to delve deeper into key areas. These are a great way to better understand how employees feel about issues such as work life balance, development opportunities or your company culture.

If you have an employee listening strategy that mixes in annual employee surveys, pulse surveys and social listening you will already have ample data which can be invaluable. Otherwise, refer to our guide on “how to design an employee listening strategy.”

3. Become creative with your solutions.

Once the areas to focus your action planning efforts on have been identified, begin to create methods to produce positive, long term change. Focus groups are a great place to crowdsource ideas.

Put quick wins in place to demonstrate your commitment to action planning. For further strategic change, involve employees and think more creatively. London South Bank University (LSBU) identified wellbeing as a crucial area to action from their employee survey letter. To improve this aspect of the employee experience, LSBU changed a lab space that wasn’t being used, into a social hub where employees could turn their attention to games, activities and wellbeing.

How to engage line managers with action planning

Line managers are the nearest to the every day change that employees feel the most keen about. They have more personal, more regular communications with their team and also have the chance to engage team members by letting them know what your action plan means for them directly.

It’s crucial for line managers to lead from the front in local action planning. Change closer to home has a greater impact on individuals more quickly. Also, local change which can be seen has a much larger effect on ‘belief in action’ scores. Once these scores are positive, dedication to the survey and change programme carries on with high response rates and the will to act.

How and when to involve line managers

Get line managers excited about survey results by:

• Sharing their team’s feedback – Yep the good, the bad and the ugly. People respond to feedback in different ways, so support them through this process of understanding feedback and where to take action. People Insight’s survey dashboard creates user-specific dashboards so managers need only view the relevant data to them.

Our guide will help you interpret employee survey results.

• Giving line managers ownership – Confusion over who’s doing what can lead to nothing getting done. Brief line managers about their role, expected behaviours and how you can help them with action planning.
• Asking them how it’s going – Give line managers a regular, informal way of feeding back progress and issues, and equip them with the training & tools to get stuff done.

See how “Train the trainer” workshops promote line manager action.

How to lead an employee engagement action planning workshop

An effective action planning workshop led by a line manager helps teams get a grasp on survey data. It involves them in suggesting ideas and commits everyone to targeted actions.

Before the session:

• Become familiar with the survey data from your team.
• Share key findings with team members.
• Explain the point of the action planning workshop. It is intended for them to share their views and inform change, not to hear about plans that have already been created.

During the session:

• Be open, honest and transparent. Reassure your team that you don’t know who said what (and don’t want to find out!).
• Celebrate your successes and dig into the areas where you scored less positively.
• Ask your team if there are any surprises in the results, whether there is other evidence to back up the scores and how they would like to see your scores change next year.

To wrap up the session:

• Prioritise 2-3 actions with the biggest impact.
• Assign owners and due dates to each action.
• Focus on actions you can take as individuals or a team. In addition, make a note of any that need to be communicated at a department level or fed back to the central engagement team.

After the session:

• Commit as a team to keep up momentum.
• Agree how to share progress; you might add action planning to the agenda of 1:1s or discuss it in a regular team tea-break.

How to support managers with action planning

London South Bank University (LSBU) operate as a Group, with two technical academies and a further education college, so empowering local leaders to deliver change was vital to post survey action planning. People Insight’s intuitive results dashboard and iDeck, a dashboard feature that exports instant results presentations, allowed local leaders and managers to take ownership of their results and identify how to take action.

As a result, the School of Applied Sciences focussed on 2 priority areas of engagement to improve: leadership and inclusion (which have improved by 17 and 16 percentage points respectively). This has been achieved through a number of activities, including:

How to get leaders on-board

Leading long term change needs to be driven by all parts of your organisation, particularly from the top. Consider how to engage key stakeholder groups in the action planning process.

For example:

EXECUTIVE TEAM

1. Identify your project sponsor and brief them early on what you need them to do.
2. Be clear about their role in communicating change. As a champion of the project, how can they help you launch change and make it stick?
3. Show that you’ve considered their needs when planning their role in action planning. Some leaders are happy to dive into discussions on Slack or Workplace, while others are better suited to in-person presentations.

More ideas for how stakeholders can communicate change.

HR BUSINESS PARTNERS

1. Involve HR business partners throughout the action planning process and be clear about responsibilities when briefing them. Who owns what? How will you be reporting back to the Board? Whose responsibility is it to follow up on actions?
2. Invite them to your results presentation so they can hear first-hand the results of your employee survey and the priority areas for improving engagement.

EMPLOYEE CHAMPIONS

1. Invite them to action planning workshops to represent their team’s interests.
2. Ask them for feedback on how changes are being experienced on the ground.
3. Encourage them to keep post-survey action on their team meeting agenda and influence action within their teams.
4. Share actions and progress with their team in a more informal way than line managers.

How to lead change in the workplace

For change to be successful, leaders need to lead change prominently and engage employees throughout the change process.

Unfortunately, People Insight’s findings demonstrate that only half of employees believe leaders listen and provide good direction:

When it comes to leadership’s role in action planning and managing change, these behaviours are key to achieving long-term success:

1. Leaders must lead with genuine passion. Firstly develop a clear vision – that you really, really believe in. Only then will you be motivated to strive to achieve it and be able to motivate others.
2. Live the vision and values consistently. Employees need to see you and your leadership team displaying the values and hear you talking about them frequently if they are going to buy into the process.
3. Earn trust through being frank. For the team to believe in the vision, they need to believe in the person promoting it. Be honest, admitting where things have failed, what a challenge the change is and committing to improvement is a sign of strength, not weakness.
4. Be present. Get amongst your people. Listen. Invite their views and opinions. Don’t hide in an office or behind a hierarchy. Be human.
5. Collaborate. You can’t achieve change by yourself – but change needs a clear leader. Invite in others – academic and professional, students and other stakeholders.
6. Have stamina. Embedding change takes time, patience, determination and an unfailing belief in the process.

3 ways leaders can influence employee behaviours and support employee engagement action planning

Inconsistent leadership risks undermining your post-survey action plan. Imagine the frustration of employees told to change how they’re acting, only to see their boss sticking to old habits.

We can learn from organisations like Sturrock & Robson and A2Dominion Group. They do a great job of engaging leaders to lead change by example.

3 ways leaders can influence employees to adopt new behaviours:

1. Listen to feedback with humility. Keep employee feedback channels open and show you are acting on what they have to say. Look at employee listening tools as more than just a way to get an engagement benchmark or kick off change efforts. Give your people the opportunity to tell you what they think of the changes and make suggestions, so you can adapt and improve where necessary.
2. Make change visible. Employees don’t get survey fatigue, they get lack of action fatigue. Take an agile approach. At first, make changes that are visible and tangible, then communicate milestones on the way to bigger goals.
3. Get in front of your people. It’s easy to have poor communication undermine your change efforts. Create meaningful interactions with face-to-face meetings and walkthroughs, during the initial roll out of change programmes and after. Tell people what you are going to change, why you’re doing it and celebrate when you have done it.

What is HR’s role in cultural change?

Across organisations, senior leaders are recognising the value of improved people data, recruitment and employee engagement. They increasingly look to HR to influence strategic change. Both Nottingham Building Society and Vinci Construction UK demonstrate the impact of this.

Nottingham Building Society were ahead of the curve. They appointed their Head of People and Development to the Executive Committee to raise visibility of the People and Culture agenda and align business objectives with their company culture and employee experience.

Getting stakeholders outside HR involved with your survey programme and action planning is key to creating long term change. For instance, The Nottingham engaged their CEO to share high-level survey results and key themes at a company-wide event; their People and Development team also organised a range of action planning workshops with managers to brainstorm action ideas and involve managers in post-survey follow up. .

HR can help sustain action planning momentum by embedding it into business behaviours. For example, at Vinci Construction UK accountability for action is shared across the business. Their engagement programme is led by HR but owned by MDs at business levels.

When creating their HR business plan, Vinci’s HR team incorporate survey feedback to commit to what they will do differently. However, they also specify how they want people to behave and engage e.g:

• You said: You wanted more regular feedback.
• We will: promote 1:1s with managers and hold ½ day manager training on what good 1:1s look like.
• We expect you to: engage with 1:1s proactively.

Smart employee engagement action planning examples

Sturrock and Robson’s engagement and cultural change programme helped achieve an amazing 16% engagement boost by their next survey, reaching a score of 90%.

Once their survey results were in, detailed reports were shared with leaders and key headlines were communicated to employees. The leadership team appointed a team member, Amalie Lyneborg, to run the programme and act upon survey feedback. Over a 2-year period, Amalie delivered a face-to-face action planning and change delivery roadshow at each business site to make sure everybody felt heard and included.

After the roadshows, there was a long-term follow up plan. Amalie regularly checked in with sites to assess progress, carried out further visits to discuss with employees how changes were going and ensured that action progress was included on the agenda of every senior meeting.

As Sturrock and Robson demonstrated, change works when you get in front of your people to create personal, meaningful interactions. When combined with consistent communication about what changes happening as a result of employee survey letter feedback, people genuinely feel they’ve had a say in changes that will impact them.

Learn more about Sturrock and Robson‘s post-survey programme.

Help with employee engagement survey action planning

Our organisational psychologists are specialists in helping organisations deliver post-survey action that makes a substantial, meaningful difference. On average, we find that clients see their scores for ‘belief in action’ increase by 20% after working with us.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help spark change in your organisation.