Leadership is about results and the ability to foster engagement in employees is inherently connected to achieving desired results for any organisation or business. Therefore, evaluating leadership is crucial.

What specific qualities makes a good leader is hard to pinpoint, as there are countless opinions and schools concerning leadership and different leadership approaches are suitable for different organizational needs. Regardless of how one perceives leadership, good leadership is dependant on good leaders.

Good leaders are aware that personal development is key in efficient leadership, but it can be challenging to identify one’s weaknesses and areas of improvement. This makes survey based leadership evaluations a highly valuable tool for leadership development and can pave the way for dialogue for leaders at all levels of the organization.

Survey based leadership evaluations:

Survey based leadership evaluations entails that those working with or for the given leader answers an array of questions concerning how they assess the leader’s ability to solve management tasks. The survey is typically structured in a series of themes, relating to different leadership competences, with each theme generally consisting of 3-8 questions.

The following three distinctions are often made in regards to leadership evaluations:

• 180° leadership evaluation: focuses on the leader’s own responses to survey questions, as well their employees responses.
• 270° leadership evaluation: focuses on the leader’s own responses to survey questions, their employees responses, as well as responses made by the leader’s manager.
• 360° leadership evaluation: focuses on the leader’s own responses to survey questions, as well as the responses from employees, the leader’s manager and the leader’s colleagues.

As with all other surveys, leadership evaluations will only create value if the right questions are asked. Therefore, a leadership assessment has to have the right focus in regards to the organization’s overall values, strategy and goals. In other words, a leadership evaluation will only be fruitful if aligned with the leadership competencies and profile needed for your specific organization or business.

 

Enalyzer Consulting has many years experience in leadership evaluation and has developed a concept based on proven methods. To hear more about the possibilities for making a custom built leadership evaluation or general guidance in this regard, you can get in touch with our consultants here.  

Preparing, executing and acting on workplace assessments is a time consuming task and as an organization, optimizing efficiency and use of resources is crucial. Therefore, it can be beneficial to combine three surveys in one. This way you avoid squandering your own resources, as well as your respondents’ time.

A common combination of surveys is physical and psychological workplace assessments coupled with an employee engagement survey. However, surveys can be combined in many different ways, depending on your organization’s needs. This way, your employees only have to allocate time to answering surveys once and resources can be saved in terms of preparation as well as the actual carrying out of the survey.

Enalyzer’s flexible concepts ensures that you can readily choose survey combinations and tune the content based on your wishes.

 

If you want to know more about how to combine surveys, you can contact our consultants here.

Is there a plan?

The actual value of an employee survey is not the study itself. The value is found when survey results are being used to launch initiatives to improve job satisfaction and the well-being of the individual departments and the organization as a whole.

It is important to have a plan for the follow-up process and that this plan is communicated to and accepted by leaders at all levels of the organization. It’s the leaders at all levels who hold the key to a successful follow-up process. It is, therefore, essential to get the leaders to step into character in terms of driving the follow-up process locally and launch new initiatives.

An employee poll alone provides only a general overview of the organization’s well-being and job satisfaction – in which departments employees are thriving and in which departments there is a deficit in job satisfaction.

A questionnaire-based employee survey can never stand alone. It must always be followed by a systematic dialogue process where both managers and employees take an active role and responsibility to improve employee engagement.

To make the follow-up process respectful and ensure a solid foundation for new initiatives, it’s important to communicate clearly and unambiguously what expectations there are to HR, managers and employees in the monitoring process.

In this context, it’s important that the top management and the working group responsible for the implementation of the employee survey asks themselves:

“What processes should we initiate to create a constructive follow-up process?”

This implies a follow-up process, which on the one hand ensures a performance-based culture, where work is geared towards the department / organization’s strategic objectives. On the other hand, it should be a process that ensures and develops well-being, commitment, and job satisfaction.

An important task in the context of an employee poll is to provide a framework for follow-up work. Having the resources and materials ready makes it easier for managers and employees to make the necessary changes. To ensure that managers and employees take advantage of the time as well as possible, the organization / HR can provide ideas and inspiration for the follow-up work.

Below you can search for inspiration for the organization and implementation of an effective monitoring process in four steps:

Step 1: Reading the report and interpretation of results

The leader reads the report. When the manager has read the report and considered the results it can often be a good idea for the leader to use his own immediate supervisor for interpretation and dissemination of the results. If it’s some of the same challenges that occur in other departments, it would be natural to discuss these challenges in the management team.

Step 2: Presentation of results and dialogue with the operation of the results

Assuming the background above, the leader presents the results to the department. The presentation of results finishes with a dialogue on the results and especially the reasons behind the results. Where are we performing well and why? Where are we performing less well and why? This dialogue is essential to ensure a common understanding of the strengths and challenges the department faces. As well as the efforts to be undertaken to create an environment in which the keywords are job satisfaction, commitment, and job satisfaction.

One of the keys to a successful dialogue is to focus on solutions rather than focusing on problems. Rather than spending energy on what is wrong, the focus should be on what promotes job satisfaction for the individual employee on a daily basis. It is always easier to point out errors than it is to tell what you really want. This is why such a process is demanding for employees and their involvement in the follow-up process.

Step 3: Preparation of plan of action: From abstract wishes to concrete actions

Based on the dialogue of the results of the department, managers and employees prepare a plan of action for what the department wants to improve and how it should be done. In this process, it’s a matter of remaining focused and prioritizing the most important areas. Select 3-5 plans of action and focus solely on them. The plan of action should develop cooperatively between management and employees. In the context of the plan of action, the golden rule is the following: Achievable targets rather than an over-ambitious, overreaching plan of action, where only half of the stated objectives can be achieved. Finally, the action plan must be drawn up so that it forms an integral part of the “daily operations” in the department. Please be specific in relation to the challenges the department faces and integrate the plan of action into daily operations. This makes it easier to implement and monitor the action plan.

No matter how inclusive and acknowledged a process is, it’s important that the process never undermines the manager and their right to lead.

Step 4: Follow up – Stay focused – Follow up – Keep the focus

Once the plan of action has been prepared, you have to stay focused. One way is to hang up the plan of action of the department or put it on the agenda at the monthly departmental meeting. In a hectic schedule where the daily operational tasks take up a significant amount of space, it requires efforts to maintain focus on job satisfaction, commitment and the general well-being of the employees.

Good luck with the follow-up!

Employee engagement surveys can give your organization valuable insight into how happy and engaged your employees are, as well as how they thrive in the workplace. Understanding and actively working to improve employee engagement is key, as engagement is a vital driving force for the innovative ability of a company. In other words, employees’ well-being and engagement simply reflect in their work.

Employee engagement surveys looks into different aspects such as, motivation, satisfaction, leadership, loyalty and engagement, depending on the specific organization’s needs. Information gained through employee engagement surveys is crucial, as numerous studies have shown that there is a direct relationship between employee satisfaction/engagement and the financial success of the given company. This is amongst other reasons due to follow up initiatives made by the organizations, decreasing sick leave and increasing employee motivation and engagement.

Furthermore, Enalyzer’s Employee Engagement (E3) study, a benchmark study we conduct every year, has shown that there is a positive correlation between employee engagement and organizations that perform employee surveys.

 

In for a penny, in for a pound

However, this improvement in employee satisfaction is not exclusively achieved by performing employee engagement surveys. Instead, these surveys have to be followed up by concrete plans of action in an attempt to create better working conditions. If this is not done, the organization risks a negative effect in employee satisfaction. By participating in the study, the individual employee shows trust and interest in improving their workplace. If this interest is not met by the organization in the form of follow up initiatives, the employees will inherently feel a sense of indifference, which can ultimately result in a deteriorated impression of their employer and work satisfaction overall. The logic is simple: employee engagement can be seen as important tools providing insight needed for action. However, without this following action, the full potential of the tool is not obtained, which is also evident in the findings from the E3 study.  

 

Our consultants offer employee engagement surveys tailor made for your needs. Get in touch with them here.

 

About the study

The study is based on a representative sample in regards to gender, age, region and industry and includes responses from more than 5.000 Danish employees.

Note

The study is based on a scale from 1-7, where 1=”Strongly disagree” and 7=”Strongly agree”. The respondents have also had the option of answering “do not know”.