Deciding to improve your employee engagement requires a commitment. A commitment to finding the things that will improve engagement, and the willingness to make the changes.

Many businesses begin improving engagement by sending out a survey or questionnaire of your employees before you send it out you need to be committed to making changes. This might seem self-evident, however, some business executives say their companies make no real effort to improve their engagement, even after they take an employee survey.

There’s a real problem with that.

Commit Or Don’t, There Is No Half-way

If you send out a survey asking for opinions on how to improve engagement you are setting a level of expectation. First, they expect you are interested in improving the culture of the company. They will have an expectation that your executive team is progressive and take the initiative to change things when they need changing.

Second, your employees expect that something positive is going to come out of the survey.

They expect some type of a action from their input.

If no action is taken, you and your management team are going to lose credibility. Your line supervisors may bear the brunt of employee’s disappointment and frustration because of the lack of action.

If you want to change anything to your company, you need to commit at the beginning, don’t go half-way.

If You Need Help, Seek Help

If you are a smaller company or a start-up, and you don’t know how to begin an employee engagement survey consider asking for help. Here are three avenues of information:

• If your company is small enough, go out and talk to the employees directly. Host a lunch, host a work/idea party or ask them at their workstations. Get their input about the state of the company culture, employee engagement, what is good, what they think they would like to see change.

• Create your own survey there are examples on the internet. You can do this with the help of an employee committee so the questions are relevant to your employees

• Hire an outside human resources company to help you create a comprehensive plan to improve employee engagement. Sometimes, an objective viewpoint will shed new light on areas you may not have considered.

These suggestions assume you are committed to comprehensive change and will follow through with recommendations. Again, if you are simply “seeing how the troops are doing”, with no real plan to make a change then don’t bother sending out the questionnaire.

Create Your Roadmap To Success

So, if you are interested in sincere change, make a plan then start asking questions. Your plan should be fluid and responsive to the circumstances, but as you receive feedback from your team, make decisions about what changes you are willing to make and make them.

Additionally, any changes you do plan on making should be timely. Don’t let unnecessary amounts of time slip away. The delay will only cause employees to think the changes were made grudgingly.

Equal Parts Consulting is a premier human resources company helping small businesses in San Diego County to meet their full potential. If you would like to learn how we have assisted other companies with improving their employee engagement, we encourage you to contact us.