Tool: the Before You Survey Checklist

ILRHR556: Strategic Engagement

Cornell UniversityILR School

Tool: The “Before You Survey” Checklist

Before you launch your next employee engagement survey, think about the readiness of senior leadership to own this process. You will want to think ahead of time about the kinds of questions they’re going to want to answer with the data. The following list of questions will help you ensure that you are ready to survey.

As a Leadership Team, Have We Asked Ourselves: / ✔If Yes
What are some of the demographic differences we might want to look at?
What are some of the organizational groupings we might want to look at?(There are many possible groupings that could be of interest, for example: job function, organizational level, business line, facilities, branches, departments, acquired employees, survivors in a downsized unit, employees with the same versus new managers, client-facing vs. not, employees who utilize flexible work arrangements vs. not, members of employee resource groups vs. not, etc.)
Are we interested in using engagement data to assess the impact of new practices or initiatives that have been put into place? In other words, are we thinking about how we could use engagement data to examine differences in employees’ pre- versus post-intervention experiences?
(There are many possible practices or initiatives that may be expected to influence engagement, for example: new technologies for enhancing employee communication, the launch of a new “career planner” tool on the company website, new mechanisms for enabling employee feedback to senior leaders, supervisory training on how to support employees on flexible work arrangements, implementation of team effectiveness tools, etc.)
In the past, how have our survey results been used?
What are some of the ways that employee engagement data has influenced management decisions?
In the past, have we reported survey data to employees?
Have we taken direct actions in response to employee engagement data?
(And if that answer to the previous question is “No,” then can we trust the quality of data being collected?)
Have we built in the capability to analyze engagement level at the workgroup level and share results with relevant managers so that they can take ownership of engagement within their workgroups?
Do our employees take the process seriously and provide candid responses?
Are our response rates sufficiently high to provide us with good data?
Do we want the survey to be anonymous or confidential? (And why?)