How do you engage senior leaders and managers in surveys?

They must understand the benefit of the survey and show true understanding, whatever that reason might be. Encourage their involvement and ask them what benefits they might see in the survey as you involve them. They might come up with additional benefits outside those you intended!

Engagement-Befragungen werden üblicherweise seitens der Unternehmens- und Personalleitung initiiert. Da Umfrageergebnisse für das Employer Branding oder für andere Unternehmensstrategien verwertet werden, ist der C-Level immer beteiligt, aber das Mittlere Management wird leider häufig vergessen. Dabei sind es doch die Abteilungs- und Teamleitungen, die den nahen Kontakt zu einer Vielzahl von Mitarbeitenden haben - anders als der C-Level. Um die konkreten Bedürfnisse, Sorgen und Erwartungen der gesamten Belegschaft tiefgründig zu verstehen, ist die Kommunikation über alle Hierarchie-Ebenen hinaus wichtig. Alle Management -Ebenen benötigen Input vor und nach der Umfrage, um vertrauenswürdig mit den Mitarbeitenden zu kommunizieren.

All of that is true but also Senior managers have a key role to play in helping their teams prioritise. So in a busy work world, managers setting the tone and leading by example by being vulnerable and offering their own feedback will encourage their teams to do the same and push it up the to do list. Thus increasing completion

Engaging with and securing the buy-in of both senior leaders and managers is absolutely crucial to establishing an employee survey programme that is set up to drive improvement for your people and the business (surely what everyone wants from it?). Having the active involvement of senior leaders provides credibility and can help build trust in the programme. This group needs to be involved in comms, with a senior figurehead often the best 'sponsor', while others can act as champions in their business area. And line managers are, arguably, the key group to engage with - and do so early on - in an employee survey process. Involve them in the design, explain the process, what they'll get from the insights and acting on results.

Start by clearly communicating the purpose of the survey and how it aligns with organizational goals. Highlight the benefits of participation, such as gaining insights that can drive strategic decisions or improve team performance. Involve leaders early in the survey design process to incorporate their perspectives and priorities, increasing their investment in the outcomes. Ensure the survey process is efficient, respecting their time constraints by creating concise and relevant questions. Share results promptly and transparently, demonstrating how their input contributes to actionable changes. By aligning the survey with leadership goals, you foster meaningful engagement and encourage active involvement.

I think the key to engaging senior leaders and managers in surveys lies in clearly showing them the direct impact their feedback can have on our organization's strategy and performance. By making it clear that their input will directly shape critical decisions and policies, we're not just asking for their opinions; we're inviting them to be active participants in our strategic planning. I think it would be hard for a senior leader to say 'no' to being a key part of strategic planning ;)

Senior leaders are indeed a key stakeholder group to engage when running employee surveys. This starts from the very top - ideally by getting face-time with the CEO/MD up front. We insist on this step before client surveys as, not only does it provide that senior level sponsorship that's so important for others to see, but the context from those conversations can also be fed into the programme design, ensuring the survey is that much more strategic and business-relevant - and so other senior leaders should see greater value in the exercise.

The most crucial element to getting buy-in from senior leaders and managers isn't necessarily involving them in the logistics of the survey, but how it's going to help make their job of being a leader both easier and more effective. The "purpose" is almost always to have a team that is engaged and doesn't require constant supervision. If you make this a clear objective, it will make senior leaders and managers far more likely to "buy-in" because you're taking THEIR time and resources into account.

I do agree with involvement of leaders, however ensure the goals are clear and expectations are managed effectively. Usually your surveys require their input too, does involving them compromise any of the information you're looking to achieve?

Getting buy-in from senior leaders and managers for your employee engagement survey strategy is certainly an important first step if you don't have it. To gain the buy-in, I agree that it needs to be framed around solving a business problem such as elevating performance. Use external research to validate and communicate the benefits, and provide an understanding of the key drivers of engagement. Aligning with senior leaders on the desired outcome and objectives is important. However, I would not involve leaders in defining formats, questions and metrics. Rather, I would engage with experts in engagement surveys and practices to build this based on the desired outcomes. Designing a survey survey well requires specific training.

The primary reason employees fail to complete surveys is that they receive no acknowledgment of, and see no progress toward, addressing their feedback. This could apply to senior leaders and managers as well unless they simply don’t care about employee feedback. To gain their participation, highlight the correlation between low team participation and managerial engagement. Instead of using incentives, prioritize fostering a culture of open feedback and transparency, where participation is seen as a demonstration of commitment and engagement in the organization's success. For employees, their managers represent the company, and if they aren’t interested in how their employees feel, their role in management should be reevaluated.

To encourage participation, consider who your target audiences are. If you have a mixed workforce (ex: some frontline folks, some corporate folks, etc.), a customized roll-out plan is required. The tactics you use to gain frontline participation (ex: scheduling time for them to do the survey) will not be the same approach you would take with corporate teams. You also need to build confidence that responses are indeed confidential, and their leaders will only see responses on the aggregate. You must also be mindful of not creating the perception that answering honestly will impact pay or bonus - a common concern when engagement is on departmental or corporate scorecards.

100% disagree with rewarding the completion of surveys- especially from managers or senior leaders. A simple method is to encourage some light hearted competition amongst teams and leaders. Showing leader boards of completion rates by departments could drive some healthy competitiveness- not prize, just bragging rights

One powerful way to engage leaders in surveys is to replay their own collective feedback in a facilitated workshop. Leaders' answers can be very revealing and leaders themselves are very interested in them. For example, if leaders are not highly engaged themselves, how can they possibly engage others? How do leaders view the pace of change? What obstacles do leaders view as holding people back? What opportunities do they see? You can use surveys as an opportunity to engage leaders and build a more effective broad leadership team.

Employees of all levels deserve to see the results of a survey they participated in - particularly if you want them to do it again. But following through with an actionable plan is critical. The biggest mistake I see often is trying to affect change across the board. Don't set yourself up for failure - pick 3 things to improve upon and tell everyone the plan & the expected outcomes. If it didn't improve as much as you like, get more feedback and apply it. Communication is 90% of the effort.

A great way to do this is to present the findings to senior teams and then ask them to go away and present to their teams at a local level. This shifts the accountability onto the senior leaders to take it forward and they are often best placed to answer any questions that arise from their teams. Holding managers to account is then crucial...HR should gently nudge and remind them to keep moving forward with their agreed committments and can help them not try to do them all at once. Prioritisation is crucial

Without first building trust, surveying becomes ineffective. I would refrain from implementing any new survey if senior leader/manager participation is low. Instead, focus on addressing unresolved issues from prior surveys. Hold leaders accountable for openly communicating, acknowledging employee feedback, developing action plans with employees, and sharing post-implementation results. This fosters trust and demonstrates dedication to improvement. Such transparency establishes a foundation, encouraging honest feedback in future surveys. It's through this feedback that leaders know they've gained employees’ trust, and there's an expectation that future feedback will be openly addressed.

Marketing is key when it comes to employee surveys. And yes, you have to [internally] market to your employees. Having the execs + top leaders participate in creative marketing will make this successful. There's always at least 1 who is a champion and willing to help out wherever needed. Finding different ways to include leaders in the marketing will 1) allow them to have a hand in the successful outcomes of the survey 2) get a higher participation rate from employees 3) allow leaders to add something to their list of wins. Make their participation concise, simple + tied to success.

Assuming you have the support of senior leaders, it's important to make use of that commitment. With so many teams working remotely, consider having a video message from an executive or department head explaining the importance of the survey and what will be done with the results. Encourage employees to be open and honest. After the survey, a second video expressing gratitude for participating can be effective. This video could be a compilation of key leaders simply saying "Thank you!"

Results. Thats it. Do you want people to share their perspectives and participate in research? Show how their insights will be applied to their benefit. Otherwise, why should they participate?