Employee survey data is great for learning how employees feel about the workplace and what they need to do their jobs. But, you can’t just send out a single survey and expect it will provide the insights you need to make your company more efficient. It’s important to properly analyze the results – and contextualize the results within your workplace – to clarify the path to improvement.
In this guide, we’ll explore the value of employee survey data, how to analyze it and how to use it to drive business efficiency. We’ll also talk about why Worklytics is the best people analytics tool to enhance your surveys and provide invaluable insights into your workforce. Let’s dive in.
Organizations have been using traditional employee surveys for some time now, and they can be effective to a degree. However, technology has allowed us to drastically improve how we conduct employee surveys and the insights we can get from them.
If you’ve distributed or taken a traditional employee survey before, you likely see a list of standardized questions that gauge metrics like job satisfaction, engagement, etc. This can give you some rudimentary data, such as seeing that a large percentage of employees are dissatisfied with the workplace environment. But these insights fall short of giving you a real plan of action.
For surveys to be actionable and effective, you need in-depth and real-time quantitative and qualitative data. This allows you to see why employees are feeling the way they’re feeling, giving you a better point-of-view of their perspective. To achieve this, you can augment your surveys with people analytics.
People analytics refers to collecting and analyzing HR data related to metrics like employee satisfaction, engagement, productivity and much more. This data can then be used to identify opportunities to improve your business. Since people analytics, as the name suggests, is so people-focused, it pairs perfectly with employee surveys. If you combine the power of people analytics software with employee surveys, you can get even more detailed insight into what’s important to your employees, what they need to succeed and areas where your organization can improve. Let’s take a deeper dive into why it’s ideal to augment your surveys with people analytics.
Employee data gives you a comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of your organization and your workforce. It provides you with invaluable information about how employees are performing, how they feel about their roles, the effectiveness of leadership, the work environment and much more. Using this data effectively is key to significantly improving various areas of your business. Let’s take a look at some of the key metrics you can observe by collecting and analyzing employee data.
Employee data can help give you insight into operations and productivity. You can uncover bottlenecks and different engagement metrics that may be affecting productivity. For instance, you can conduct a survey asking employees if they feel they’re able to be productive in their roles. From there, you can compare answers to employee data like focus time, time spent in meetings, communication trends and other metrics to show you what may be causing their productivity issues. This helps to optimize your operations, reduce waste and enhance productivity overall.
Employee data can give you insight into your leadership and management. Effective leadership is needed if you want your employees to thrive. Survey results can gauge if employees feel like their team leaders are effective and supportive. You can then analyze this survey data and compare it to people analytics data like manager engagement, performance, feedback and more. This allows you to identify where the strengths and weaknesses lie in your leadership, so you can improve upon the strengths and address the weaknesses. This is invaluable for creating better management practices and promoting an efficient workplace environment.
Survey data can help measure how engaged employees feel they are at work, and then you can compare that data to people analytics data you collect related to engagement. For instance, you may see that employees are expressing they feel burned out at work in their surveys. You can then see from people analytics data that half your workforce is working long hours. You can dive deeper to find out why these long hours are happening and address the problem at the root to reduce burnout, improve morale and increase job satisfaction.
So, we know the value of survey data and augmenting those surveys with people analytics tools. But, how do you implement surveys into your regular processes and use them to create real action plans that make a difference? Here’s a step-by-step guide that will help you get started:
First, you need to create your surveys. Decide what kind of surveys you want to send out and what you hope to learn. This will help guide your process. You should also make sure your surveys aren’t overwhelming and sent out too frequently. For instance, sending out long surveys every week would eat into productivity and likely lead to lower completion rates.
The next step is to unify and organize survey responses. Your data should be cleaned to remove duplicates and irrelevant responses, and then organized in a way that allows you to analyze and gain insights from the data. You should also organize your feedback by relevant categories such as department, job role and more. This will make your data easier to read and will allow you to fully understand what you’re working with.
This is difficult to do manually, so it's best to have software and survey tools to help you send out surveys and collect the data. Just make sure to consistently use the same survey format, so your team knows what to expect.
Quantitative survey data involves numerical data, giving you a measurable way to gauge employee sentiments for various segments of your business. For instance, you can send out a scale-based survey asking employees to rate their job satisfaction on a scale of 1-10. If most of the responses are in the mid-range or low-range, then you know job satisfaction is an area you need to focus on.
Qualitative data provides long-form, open-ended responses. They can provide deeper insight into specific issues. You can use text analysis to identify common problems and suggestions your employees have. Qualitative data is important because it gives additional context that numbers can’t always provide. Of course, this doesn't mean quantitative data isn’t worthwhile, as quantitative data can help direct your qualitative data questions. Using the same example we did earlier, let’s say that half your employees rated job satisfaction below 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. From there, you can send out a qualitative survey to ask employees what would make them happier with their jobs and where things can be improved to make them more satisfied.
As we've established, augmenting your survey data with people analytics can save time and provide you with more detailed insights. That’s where platforms like Worklytics can help. Worklytics is a people analytics platform that can help you better understand your workforce.
With Worklytics, you can connect third-party survey tools like Qualtrics, CultureAmp, Peakon and Lattice. From there, Worklytics anonymizes, cleans and aggregates your survey data into actionable metrics and visualizations. This makes it easier to get a comprehensive view of your workplace and identify the root causes of issues and areas for improvement.
Once you’ve connected your survey tools with your people analytics platform, you can start analyzing the trends and themes that emerge from the data. See where patterns are forming that indicate system problems. For instance, you can see if multiple departments are reporting burnout.
Once you identify your patterns and themes, you can begin identifying insights and initiatives. From our earlier example, if you see a pattern of burnout, you can determine what the cause of the burnout is. Your survey data may reveal that employees feel like they don’t have a work-life balance due to long hours, lack of support from leadership and not taking vacation time.
From the identified trends and themes, extract actionable insights. These insights should be specific, measurable and aligned with business objectives. Develop initiatives that address the root causes of identified issues. For example, if survey data indicates a need for better work-life balance, consider implementing flexible work hours or remote work options.
Finally, you have your insights in hand and you can make an action plan to improve these weaknesses. If your employees need a better work-life balance, you can implement initiatives like remote work, flexible hours and unlimited vacation. If they’re working long hours, you can determine if additional hires are needed. If leadership is lacking, you can implement management training programs.
It’s important to continually monitor and evaluate the action plans you put in place to ensure they’re successful and solve the initial problem. Track progress and gather ongoing feedback to assess the impact of these changes and make adjustments as necessary. Taking an iterative approach ensures improvements are maintained and that your organization continues to work toward success and excellence.
Modern workplaces can take advantage of platforms like Worklytics to get better employee data, which creates a better workplace for everyone. By understanding and acting on the survey results from your employees, you can show your employees you support their needs. This leads to more productivity, less turnover and a more positive workplace culture overall. If you want to collect better employee data for a better workplace, Worklytics is here to help.
Worklytics is a comprehensive people analytics platform that can help you take employee data analysis to the next level. Worklytics provides real-time, actionable insights into crucial metrics like work engagement, inclusion, leadership effectiveness, employee life cycle, collaboration and much more. Worklytics also anonymizes data, respecting the privacy of your employees. Ready to see how Worklytics can help you build a better business? Book a demo today!
