Unlock the power of employee feedback. Learn how to analyze survey results and implement meaningful changes with these 8 essential action steps for workplace improvement.
Congratulations. You’ve run an employee engagement survey and received detailed feedback from your people. Now, the real work begins — translating insights into action.
It’s natural to be eager to jump right in and start making changes. After all, your employees took the time to share their thoughts, and you want to show them you’re listening.
However, if you move too quickly without deeply understanding what the results of your employee engagement survey are telling you, you risk creating as many new problems as you fix.
It’s important to approach this with the same thoughtful mindset you’d use when developing your company’s next quarterly financial plan.
By following these eight steps, you can ensure your response to survey feedback is meaningful, well-communicated, and creates lasting, positive change.
1. Review your survey results thoroughly
Start by reviewing your results at a high level. Executive presence when reviewing the data leads to increased buy-in from the leadership team, supporting the organization’s goal and making positive changes based on feedback.
Look at data across demographics to identify disparities in employee experience. A department or location demographic can help you pinpoint disparities in employee experience. When you take this more granular look at data, executives get a clearer picture of what employees are telling them. Demographics extend beyond race and gender to include various unique and creative categories, such as:
- Planned Tenure: How long do employees plan on working for the organization? This can range from “1 More Year” to “5-10 More Years.”
- Employee Net Promoter Score(eNPS): How likely are employees to recommend the organization as a place to work to family and friends, on a scale from 0 to10?
- Employee Resource Group (ERG) Membership: Are employees part of an Employee Resource Group? The options are simply “Yes” or “No.”
- Performance Rating: What is the performance rating of employees? This can be used to assess the experience of top performers and identify patterns among low performers. Understanding whether your high performers are happy and likely to stay, and whether low performers lack visibility or clarity, is crucial.
Ask yourself:
- Do departments or other key demographic groups experience the workplace differently?
- What are the biggest gaps between employee perceptions and reality?
- What strengths can you build upon?
2. Reflect on the feedback
Survey results provide invaluable insight into your company culture and leadership. Some feedback may be difficult to hear, but the most effective leaders embrace it as an opportunity to learn and improve.
Encourage leaders to take time to absorb and process employee feedback before responding. This reflection period allows leaders to process feedback with an open mind and avoid reactive decision-making.
Questions to consider:
- Which feedback aligns with my own observations, and which surprises me?
- How might employees interpret our response — or lack of response — to this feedback? What steps can we take to show we are truly listening?
- What feedback feels most difficult to address? What barriers might be preventing action, and how can we overcome them?
- What strengths are emerging from the feedback? How can we amplify these to reinforce a positive workplace culture?
“The way you communicate your survey results sets the tone for how engaged employees will be in the process”
3. Align leadership & set intentions
Once leaders have had time for reflection, it’s time to align on priorities. What key themes emerged? What changes will have the most meaningful impact?
Key questions for leadership:
- What kind of culture do we want to foster?
- Do our current policies and practices support that culture?
- How do our survey results align with our company’s strategic goals?
Establishing shared intentions helps ensure that your response is strategic and aligned with your organization’s long-term goals.
4. Communicate transparently
Your employees are eager to learn about your results and what’s next. The way you communicate your survey results sets the tone for how engaged employees will be in the process.
Best practices for transparent communication:
- Start with a message from senior leadership summarizing key insights.
- Thank employees for their participation and reaffirm your commitment to action.
- Outline next steps with a clear expected timeline. Including how employees can stay involved.
- Leaders at all levels take the opportunity to discuss results transparently with their teams in a way that encourages open conversations by inviting employees to continue to share their perspectives.
5. Conduct Listening Sessions
Numbers tell a critical part of the story, but change happens through conversations. Conduct listening sessions to deepen your understanding of employee feedback and involve them in the solution-building process.
Tips for effective listening sessions:
- Reinforce trust by ensuring employees that discussions will remain within the group.
- Keep sessions informal and open-ended to encourage honest feedback.
- Ask employees what improvements would have the biggest impact on their experience.
- Gather real examples of when efforts are working well and build on those successes.
These sessions reinforce that employee voices matter and provide crucial insights that survey data alone can’t capture.
6. Identify focus areas for improvement & establish specific plans
Rather than try to fix everything at once, prioritize one or two focus areas. This ensures efforts are targeted and impactful. Often, one area is identified as an organization-wide focus with the second area specifically relating to department/leader level results. The best strategies focus on how management is leading.
For example, survey results that reflect improvement opportunities in communication may indicate a need for meaningful dialogue (asking questions, being present, eye contact) rather than a need for more meetings and emails.
Here are some key steps:
- Define specific and challenging yet attainable goals for improvement
- Document commitments and communicate them clearly
- Assign accountability partners (such as managers or HR business partners) to track progress
- Establish a timeline for evaluating success
7. Take action
Now, it’s time to put your plan into motion. The groundwork you’ve laid ensures that changes are strategic, data-driven, and informed by employee input.
Action leads to trust. Employees will be watching to see if leadership follows through on commitments. Be intentional about keeping your workforce updated and engaged throughout the year.
8. Measure progress and keep the feedback loop open
Continuous improvement is key. You may need to adjust and correct course as you go, and that’s okay. Regularly check in with employees to gauge how changes are landing.
Here are some ways to track progress:
- Conduct pulse surveys to measure targeted areas
- Host follow-up listening sessions to gather ongoing feedback
- Discuss progress in team meetings by asking questions, such as:
- Are you experiencing improvement in this area?
- What is working? What are examples of where this is happening well?
- What additional ideas for improvement would you recommend?
Built on more than 30 years of research and used by every company on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work ForⓇ List, our employee engagement platform will help you drive positive change to your company culture. Learn more today.
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