How engaged are your people in your journey of continuous improvement? The irony is that all too often employees disengage from the engagement process. They suffer from ‘survey fatigue’ when insights don’t manifest into actions and improvements they can see.
You can understand their apathy if they answered a similar set of questions last time and didn’t see change happening as a result.
Want to know the key to driving genuine engagement and progress?
Unite your people on a journey of continuous improvement
Show them you’ve heard and value what they’ve got to say. Not some of your people – ALL of them.
At AskYourTeam, we’ve notched up over ten years experience in helping to drive a turn around in genuine engagement in councils across Australia and New Zealand. In fact one of our customers, Ōtorohanga District Council recently achieved a whopping 100% participation rate!
Here are some strategies to consider for getting your people and your leaders to lean in, so you can drive meaningful, measurable ongoing cycles of continuous improvement.
Put the ‘Why’ front and centre.
Get clear on what you need to know from your people to inform and deliver on Council’s long and short term goals. Design your process around this. If your people believe and can see how their feedback will make a difference, you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll be more engaged.
Get your leaders on board.
You need them as active champions on the journey with you. Make sure they’re clear on how the process will drive progress towards their goals, and make sure they're clear on their role in the process and what they need to do, by when.
Involve leaders in driving action.
All too often HR / OD / P&C teams become an unintentional bottleneck in turning insights into action. If your people don’t see their feedback being used to shape change, they’ll disengage. So share the load. Give your leaders access to the insights they need. Give them a star role in identifying, prioritising and driving actions. Give them accountability.
Find the quick wins.
Identify changes you can put in place quickly, as well as longer term improvement plans. It’ll help drive momentum and provide rapid evidence to your people that their feedback is having real-world impact.
Keep your people in the loop.
Share a summary of key insights as soon as you can and set expectations about what they’ll see happening, when, so they know what they’ve shared hasn’t fallen into a black hole. Share the action plan with your people so they can see a path forward. Be sure to link actions to insights. “You said, we did” is a great mantra to follow.
Commit to a retest date.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Being able to demonstrate measurable improvement is something everyone can celebrate. Pick a handful of key questions that link to the goals and actions you’re undertaking. Lock in a date when you’ll retest so those who are assigned actions have a clear deadline for implementation.
