Three Strategies to Secure Leadership Support for Your Upcoming Employee Engagement Survey

I was working with a recent client, and they were having trouble gaining senior leadership buy-in on conducting an Employee Engagement Survey.  They were a small size manufacturing organization with less than 250 employees.  Previously, they conducted engagement surveys and felt there was minimal information gained from the survey.  The HR leader reached out for SOS help.

Provided below are a few tips we used to gain their buy-in and support.

• Focus on what there is to lose vs what there is to gain. This is an Organizational Psychology term called Loss Aversion, where people are 2x times more likely to act when they are going to lose something vs gain something1.  For example, we showed the risk of not doing the employee engagement (i.e., early detection of employee/customer concerns, increased turnover, and inability to track progress).
• Quantify the cost and link to key business KPIs. A simple way to quantify an employee engagement is to link to the cost of lost productivity or employee turnover.  We used my newly developed cost of disengagement calculator2. 
• Design a simple process to gather and respond to survey feedback to foster positive change. Roughly 70% of behavioral change initiatives fail due to the absence of a plan and insufficient support (note the use of loss aversion here)3. Creating a simple, detailed strategy will build trust among senior leaders and employees.

When we met the executive team, we asked what would happen if we skipped the employee engagement survey. What if customers start leaving and the Board questions if there were any early warnings from the survey results? 

By using the cost of disengagement calculator, we discovered that disengagement was costing the organization almost $250,000 per year.  Finally, we outlined a detailed plan, created an effective survey tool, and streamlined and monitored our actions.

In the end, we obtained enough backing to launch the survey. Although a few leaders remain skeptical, I believe we will win them over as we fulfill our commitments.