Thousands of companies conduct employee surveys each year.  My suspicion is that very few of them know why.   It sounds like a good thing to do.  A lot of competitors do it.  So it seems like my company should too. Right?  Maybe. 

But if you want your employee survey to actually deliver value and relevant insights, there are a few key questions you need to answer:

1.  Why are you doing it?  What are you trying to learn?  Is there a specific issue/problem you  are trying to solve?  Do you just want a pulse of how employees are thinking and feeling at this moment in time? The answer to these questions will help you to (1) decide whether to do the survey and (2) how to frame the communication to your employees.

2.   What are you going to ask?  Don’t ask overly generic questions just because they can be easily benchmarked.  The survey questions need to be relevant to your organization. 

3. What will you do with the survey results? If you are not prepared to act on your employees’ feedback – do not conduct a survey.  There are few things as frustrating to an employee as being asked to provide input and feeling like your input was completely ignored.  Failing to thoughtfully follow-up on the input you receive in the survey will cause what you intended as an “engagement” activity to backfire.

4. What resources (time, effort, money, personnel) are you going to dedicate to survey follow up?  If you’re going to do something with the information – which you absolutely need to do – you need to dedicate the resources to follow-up effectively and meaningfully.