From annual employee survey to continuous listening: growing in four phases

In March everyone is busy with it for a while: the invitation, the reminders, the response rate. A few weeks later a report lands with the management team and HR draws up an action plan. Then it goes quiet, until the next invitation. Sound familiar? Then your organisation is in phase 1. Nothing wrong with that, it is a start. But if you want to grow towards continuous listening, above all you need to do something other than measuring more often.

Continuous listening is not a matter of asking more often

Many organisations think of pulse surveys when they hear continuous listening: more often, shorter, faster. But the difference between an annual employee survey and continuous listening is not in the number of questionnaires. It is in what happens between two measurements. In phase 1 the measurement ends in a report. From phase 2 onwards, every measurement leads to something teams see, do and measure again. Only then does asking more often make sense.

The growth model: four phases, four dimensions

Deepler’s Knowledge Centre describes growth in four phases. You look at each phase along the same four dimensions:

• Ask: what do you ask and how often?
• See: who sees the results, and when?
• Do: what happens next?
• Measure: do you know whether it works?

Three rules make the model usable. Your phase is your weakest link: asking a lot and doing little is not phase 3, but phase 1 with more questions. You grow one step at a time: if you skip a phase, you get more data and the same report. And phase 4 is not an obligation. The best phase is the one your organisation can follow up on.

Why follow-up makes the difference

In a field study spanning eleven years, groups that saw something being done with the results judged more positively. Those who took part and saw nothing come back even judged more negatively than those who did not take part (Church et al., 2012). A review of 53 studies shows that outcomes usually improve after follow-up, although the effect varies by organisation (Huebner and Zacher, 2021). More feedback is not automatically better either: in over a third of cases performance actually declines (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996).

Also read why survey fatigue rarely has to do with the questionnaire.

Where do you stand? A short self-check

For each dimension, tick what is already true now, not what you are planning:

1. See: did every team receive its own results within a month?
2. Do: did teams choose actions themselves, with an owner and a deadline?
3. Measure: have employees heard what was done with their input?
4. Ask: between two broad surveys, do you briefly follow up on a few themes?

If the answer to the first question is no, that is where your next step begins. The full self-scan in the whitepaper has sixteen questions and lets you draw a profile. Hardly any organisation is in the same phase on all four dimensions, and precisely that imbalance tells you where to start.

The biggest step: from report to conversation

Moving from phase 1 to phase 2 does not mean measuring more often. The results go from the management team to the teams. Three steps help:

1. Choose questions that teams can act on themselves. Drop questions nobody can or wants to do anything with.
2. Give each team its own results, within a month. With a short conversation guide for the team leader.
3. Let teams choose one or two actions. And schedule the feedback as firmly as the measurement.

How to approach that feedback is explained in how to report employee survey results back to teams. Then comes the rhythm: actions as small projects, short measurements on the teams’ themes, and often a first moment in the career journey, such as onboarding. Unsure whether you are ready for pulse surveys? Then read are you ready for a pulse survey?

Five ways to grow too early

Most problems do not arise because organisations measure too little, but because measuring grows faster than follow-up:

• Measuring too often too soon. Build up the rhythm along with your follow-up.
• Measuring without follow-up. Plan the feedback at the same time as the measurement.
• Skipping a phase. Grow your lowest dimension first.
• Feedback without conversation. Link every outcome to a conversation and a goal.
• Works council and privacy too late. A system that continuously processes data may require works council consent. Involve them before you choose.

Get started

With Deepler Research every team gets its own results and actions become projects with an owner and a deadline. With Deepler Journeys you listen at fixed moments in the career journey, such as onboarding. See how a logistics company switched to continuous feedback.

Sources

• Church, A. et al. (2012). Is there a connection between survey action and employee attitudes? Research in Organizational Change and Development, 20, 223-264.
• Huebner, L. and Zacher, H. (2021). Following up on employee surveys: a conceptual framework and systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 801073.
• Kluger, A. and DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254-284.