You’ve gotten your data. But have you benchmarked it?
Say you’ve just completed launching and collecting responses for an employee survey. You’ve gotten some pretty good insights with cool analytical tools like a key driver analysis and management now has a good sense of where your company stands in terms of employee satisfaction and engagement. Now you should be data benchmarking employee surveys. Example: your employees might not be completely happy with their compensation, but they’re satisfied with their managers and invested in your company’s mission.
These are great insights, but almost inevitably, you start to wonder about trends. Did my company always have this problem with compensation? Is this problem new? Have I been steadily improving over time? Or not?
LEARN ABOUT: Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
To trend, you must have historical data that is relevant to the existing problem. It’s tempting to run different surveys–the industry is always coming up with a new magic bullet–but I strongly recommend finding one survey template and sticking to it for at least several years. Even if it isn’t exactly perfect, if the survey covers the core components (and let’s admit, almost all employee engagement surveys are identical, give or take a period and an adjective), then the ability to compare and contrast is infinitely more useful than chasing after the latest HR trend.
Learn more: employee engagement survey examples
Data is like wine–it almost always gets better with age. Sure, you’ll get the odd vinegar, the odd data point that is no longer presently relevant. But more likely than not, if you are conscientious, you’ll begin to identify core behavior trends over time. This is key to identifying what had and has not worked or your unique corporate culture historically, which will help current management make better future decisions.
Alright, I get it. I should be benchmarking employee surveys. But how?
You could export your data to Excel and SPSS and hack it out. Or you can input our old data into our scorecard generator and let our tool do to the work for you.
Creating a visually pleasing and easy to understand report is one of the most time and labor-intensive parts of the employee opinion survey process. With QuestionPro Workforce, our employee feedback-specific tool, our scorecard generator comes with the ability to import data for benchmarking purposes.
