Not a long time ago, Employee Engagement Surveys were a new thing and each and every company explored it. Today, I don’t know many companies that not at least every 2-3 years run an engagement survey through their organization. And some of these organizations are actually doing something with the results – although still not all.
Some companies use the results to understand the pulse of the company, to understand what employees feel and think – and subsequently are starting initiatives to improve things. Other companies use the results also for performance management and leadership development. Both ideas and actions are not wrong, but I suggest that they are outdated – no longer valid in the way they work currently. Why?
We live in a constantly faster spinning economy, but not only the economy is spinning faster – also employees are. The young generations that just have or about to enter the workforce require a different speed, faster action taking and overall handling to keep and motivate them. Engagement surveys of the past were excellent to measure engagement, motivation, retention, satisfaction, etc. at a specific point in time. In other words, they were an excellent reactive tool. But what they are lacking is pro-activeness and ongoing information and pulse measurement. I believe that because of the changing workforce and economy such pro-activeness and such real-time understanding of workforce needs, feelings, satisfaction and ideas is key to stay successful.
Engagement surveys as we know them today are not capable of delivering against these requirements. They are too slow, too big, too heavy, to expensive…But, there is a solution. A change in tool, scope, approach is necessary as this solution is not delivering on a 100% employee scope – but it delivers on real-time assessments and feedback, ready to be immediately actioned into results. The new class of online feedback apps. Check out CultureAmp or tinypulse or cultureIQ…and many more
I believe that this is the engagement app of the future and the days of the heavy, expensive, reactive Employee Engagement Surveys are counted. Of course, these new tools need to be run different and you can no longer set up projects that deliver on engagement surveys every 2 years. Standing engagement teams are necessary, but these should be an important part of a company’s HR function anyway.
The real-time feedback that these new feedback apps enable supports HR work in many ways:
- a real-time understanding of engagement helps you understand the health of your workforce – every day
- feedback requests can be focused in areas where attrition is high to better understand the underlying reasons and act on them – before everyone leaves
- real-time engagement scores can be used in manager performance and coaching sessions and are more reliable and accurate than the 2-year engagement survey cycle new HR processes, tools, organization structures, etc. can be piloted and assessed fast and without adding any complexity
- training success on leadership can be measured focused and in a proper time-frame from the training course or coaching session a leader had
- And many more
The Engagement Survey is dead – long live the engagement app.
Chief HR Officer 