When we at Perceptyx look for the elusive “story” embedded in our customers’ employee experience survey results, we often follow a framework of three critical questions:
- What’s going well?
- Where can we find opportunities for improvement?
- How have we shaped employee experience over time?
While this is an extremely effective approach for creating presentations based on employee experience data, I wanted to share some of the more innovative and strategic approaches that my customers have used to uncover not just insights, but compelling stories.
Storyboarding
Over the past few years, one long-time customer has taken a different approach to storytelling with data. This customer exhibits elite-level employee experience scores, with most areas improving and far outpacing multiple benchmarks. While they recognized that they consistently have great results, they knew there was an opportunity to approach their storytelling in a more innovative way. They came to me with the idea of “storyboarding” their results, and it has been a huge success within their organization.
Storyboarding entails identifying a handful — usually 3 to 5 — strategic business challenges that your organization has faced over the past year. These challenges can range from those faced by many organizations to those that are unique to your organizational context, and might include topics such as retention of key groups, the experience of new hires, the future of work, DEIB, or employee well-being.
Once these topics are identified, multiple questions and/or hypotheses can be brainstormed and searched for using the employee experience results. Questions might be similar to the following:
- Of those employees who left between administration of surveys, how did their experience differ from those who remained with our organization?
- How are drivers of retention and engagement similar or unique for newly-tenured employees, and do those drivers differ from the broader workforce?
- Do employees feel psychologically safe to share their opinions, ask questions, and challenge the status quo?
- Are there intersections of identities we need to be paying close attention to, such as senior leaders who are women, or underrepresented groups having a much different experience than overrepresented groups?
The sharing of results can now shift from a descriptive review of data to rich, storyboarded feedback that speaks directly to the organization’s most pressing talent issues.
Connecting Moments That Matter Across the Employee Lifecycle
Another unique way that best-in-class customers have evolved their results presentations is by connecting moments that matter across the employee lifecycle. Instead of simply looking at point-in-time data, customers are using our Sense product to discover insights that connect onboarding, engagement, exit surveys and more into a compelling, holistic narrative. Based on our State of Employee Listening research, integrating insights across listening moments is also a common characteristic of some of the most mature listening organizations.
One organization found growth and development to be a primary driver of engagement for multiple years. Once lifecycle surveys were launched, we were able to identify that not only is growth important for engagement, but the desire for growth is a primary employee value proposition. Furthermore, when employees leave, their top reason for leaving isn’t pay — it’s a perceived lack of advancement and growth. Instead of relying on a single piece of information, such as exit survey feedback, the customer was much better positioned to show how the growth and development thread was central to their talent efforts, and to improving engagement and retention.
Perceptyx Can Prepare You to Share Your Employee Survey Results
There’s often an inclination to let the data speak for itself, but presenting employee survey results to executives requires careful analysis and creative interpretation. If you use the strategies discussed above, your presentation can enable world-class action planning that allows employees to feel their feedback has been heard and valued. Working with an experienced listening partner like Perceptyx, who can analyze the data and prepare a successful executive presentation, ensures you’ll maximize the insights and lessons contained within your data.
For more information on how Perceptyx helps customers implement a comprehensive employee listening program, schedule a demo today.