fbpx

Maintaining engagement during change

3 Lessons 10 minutes completion time

What you'll learn:

How to respond to change in your organization by collecting and acting on employee data.

Measuring employee data and taking action

Measuring engagement isn’t just about identifying low scores or pain points. It’s also important to notice the positives to make sure you don’t lose sight of things you’re doing well during these changes.

No matter what you choose to focus on, the most important thing is that you actually do survey your employees. Without a gauge for how your workplace feels emotionally, you can’t make informed decisions. A company may be doing well today by metrics such as sales revenue or deals won. But this performance won’t be sustainable if people aren’t engaged.

Employee engagement surveys and tools like the PI Employee Experience Survey™ can assist by measuring engagement at both the team and organizational levels. These tools ask questions that map to the job, manager, organization, or team—and even provide customized action plans.

In a steady state, it’s recommended to poll your employees every six months to a year. But in times of major change, you will want to change that to a more frequent interval such as three months. This allows you to see if you’ve made an impact on employee engagement much sooner during a time when morale could be impacted the most.

Prioritize survey answers based on the magnitude, relevance, and breadth of responses. Your team can then determine an appropriate course of action. Document this action plan and update it over time. A formulated plan will help you articulate your rationale and connect next steps. This transparency will often be respected by your employees and will help alleviate major pushback. Check out the activity below to see survey results and setting goals in action.

Once you have your action plan, remember that this plan shouldn’t be considered a checklist but more of a cycle. Organizations must not only come up with these plans but also reflect afterwards and adjust as needed. Engagement is something an organization will have to continuously work on, so put processes in place to check on how teams are doing. Assess if actions are being taken and whether or not they are successful. Empower and support managers to work with their employees and report back on these results. The toggles below list a sequence of actions you should take.

Steps after the engagement survey:

Set up an execution team

This execution team will be responsible for project managing two categories of actions:

  • Actions under the responsibility of managers
  • Actions under the responsibility of the leadership

Initiate actions to support managers first

Once the team is established, their first task is to coordinate the release of Team reports to managers and to set up a good infrastructure to support employees.


Conduct root cause review

Some actions require additional analysis even if taking action quickly is paramount. Gather additional evidence that supports these scores and understand what is causing them so you can address accordingly.


Identify and launch quick hits

Determine easy ways to demonstrate the survey is being acted on. Quick Hits are:

  • Highly visible.
  • Applied to the vast majority of employees.
  • Presented as a direct result of the survey.

Implement the long-term plan

After analysis, develop solutions and plans:

  • Clearly document details gathered.
  • Document the concerns and solutions.
  • Agree on metrics to determined success.

Continue to communicate

It is key to show employees that their input matters. Provide regular updates on actions being taken and the impact that is made.


An organization, just like you, is constantly growing and changing. But without a support system in place, you’re likely to run into conflict. Measure what truly matters and constantly re-evaluate what you can do better for your employees.

Copy link