MemberXP offers two types of employee surveys - engagement and interaction. Employee engagement surveys are designed to capture feedback from your staff on their experience working for your credit union. Employee interaction surveys allow staff to provide feedback on their experience interacting with other internal departments within the credit union.
Whether you are conducting engagement or interaction surveys, it's essential to adhere to best practices to ensure high levels of engagement and maximize the value derived from your surveys. Below are some best practices for each phase of the employee survey process.
Communication & Planning
When preparing to launch an employee survey, communication and planning are both essential to achieving high levels of engagement. If employees aren't aware of the survey or why it matters, they aren't likely to participate. We recommend sending communications to your staff about the upcoming survey on multiple occasions and through multiple channels (I.E. Email, Intranet, Manager) to raise awareness of the upcoming survey.
Your employees should know when the survey will be conducted, how they will receive the survey, why they should complete it, and if their response will be anonymous. It can also be helpful to share the purpose and intention of the survey so employees understand why they should complete the survey and how the results will be used.
To encourage participation, you should set clear expectations of what you hope to achieve. Are you aiming for 100% participation? Perhaps you want a certain number of responses. Share your expectations and, if needed, offer incentives if that goal is achieved. An incentive can be lunch for your staff, a drawing for an extra PTO day or gift card, whatever best suits your team.
Survey Launch
Once your employee survey has launched, there are other best practices that you can follow to continue encouraging participation.
You can send reminder communications and have your managers remind their team about the survey and encourage their participation. It may be helpful to reiterate the timeframe of the survey and how they can access it. Managers could even help employees set aside time during their workday to complete the survey.
If you've established a goal, we suggest providing regular updates on your progress toward achieving it. For instance, if your aim is to reach a specific response count, communicate milestones such as being "halfway there" or "we require 50 more responses to reach the target." If an incentive is part of the equation, this is an opportune moment to reinforce to your team that meeting the goal leads to the incentive. This approach can motivate more team members to participate in the survey, thus aiding in reaching the threshold necessary for the incentive.
Follow Through
After the survey concludes, your responsibilities are far from over. Follow-up actions are one of the pivotal phases in conducting an employee survey. This stage is critical for credit unions as it can significantly impact their prospects for future survey engagement.
It's important to share high-level results from the survey with your team and your plan of action based on the results. Communicating the outcome of the survey affirms to your staff that you took the time to read their feedback and care enough about them to make improvements. This practice promotes transparency, trust, and can help your employees feel heard and encourage their participation in future surveys. Failure to follow through and communicate the results could leave employees feeling ignored and might dampen their enthusiasm for participating in future surveys.
