Over the last couple of decades, we have seen many different aspects of the modern corporation go through a data-driven revolution. The ones of particular note are Sales, Marketing and Customer Success. While leaders leading these functions in the past relied on instinct, today these are driven by data and analytics. For example, Sales has gone through a revolution through the introduction of CRM systems which track all manners of details that might drive a sales opportunity.All of this data in aggregate, when analyzed provide sales leaders with where to expend their efforts to get the best results. Similarly, Marketing and Customer Success teams increasingly use state of the art systems to collect critical data points that enable them to get the best bang for the buck with their efforts.It is increasingly important that People Operations and HR Departments become data focused. But, the most insightful data imaginable, however, only empowers us as far as it is actionable. In the shape-shifting world of modern business, data can provide organizations tremendous insight if it's embraced and properly integrated into operations.While we've written about the intricacies involved in creating the ultimate employee engagement (EE) survey, effectively organizing and acting on the resulting employee feedback data is where the true impact of the surveys and pulse polls are realized. While it's important that HR leaders gather critical data, that is only half the battle; organizing it into a concise and coherent framework is crucial in gaining all of the insights it offers. This is what can enable them to, similar to Sales & Marketing teams, execute actions based on a data driven approach.Collecting Actionable Data from Your EE SurveysThe keys to collecting actionable data is to first collect often so that you gain a continuous picture of what's happening within your organization at the right level of granularity. From a frequency perspective, running EE surveys once every 6 months or 3 months can give you a good set of data points such that you are able to spot trends easily. But, with an increased frequency comes the risk of survey fatigue and hence its important to to reduce the number of questions if you have a more frequent cadence. Furthermore, organize the EE survey, into three distinct sections to enable easy drilldowns.These include company dimensions, category themes, and category questions. By utilizing this general framework, it makes it easy to identify pockets of dissatisfaction. One can easily see if there are issues that span the organization or particular hotspots that are limited to a location, department, performance level, etc.Company DimensionsHaving the right company dimensions can make a survey or set of pulse polls easily actionable since it pinpoints where the hotspots might be. Dimensions such as geography, office location, department, seniority, tenure, employee performance levels, and other similar definable dimensions helps one quickly identify where there might be issues bubbling up. These dimensions help you easily identify patterns that span across these groups through visualizations such as heat-maps, trends, segmentation etc..
Category ThemesThe category themes section contains data points that are less definable and more open to interpretation. They are intended to provide a loose framework to categorize particular themes gathered from the EE survey results. Examples of good broad categories to track include:Collaboration and Communication
Company Confidence
Feedback and Recognition
Leadership
Learning, Training and Development
Social Connection
Teamwork and Ownership
Work and Life Balance
