What to do with your belief in action survey score

Belief in action is one of the first scores we encourage people to look at in their employee survey results. If you improve employee belief in action, you will usually increase employee engagement. 

What does ‘belief in action’ measure?

For employee surveys based on People Insight’s PEARL^TM engagement model, belief in action measures how employees respond to the question ‘I believe action will be taken as a result of this survey’.

Employees’ responses show how much faith people have in your organisation taking their feedback on board, and is a good indicator of how engaged people feel with the survey process. You might also see this reflected in your survey response rate. After all, why spend time completing a survey if you don’t feel that anything will change?

Why does measuring employee belief in action matter?

We always recommend including the ‘I believe action will be taken as a result of this survey’ question because the act of asking shows real transparency from your organisation. It also creates a benchmark for future survey results.

A low score for employee belief in action is usually reflected in a low employee engagement score. Perhaps your people do not trust the survey process, or may feel disheartened by a previous experience of sharing feedback but not seeing any change. Either way, a low score for this question is usually a good indicator of a company culture challenge.

On the other hand, positive ratings for this question suggest that your employees trust your organisation’s ability to take on-board feedback and act on it. As a result, you will usually experience a culture of listening beyond the survey. Employees will feel encouraged to approach managers or leaders with feedback on other occasions, confident that this will be taken on board and spark a positive change.

What can we learn from People Insight’s ‘belief in action’ benchmark data?

The first time you run a survey, employees may be sceptical or positive. You are setting a baseline expectation.

Our benchmark data suggests a notable improvement in the results of first-time and repeat surveys:

• First-time surveys: Just 46% of people believe action will be taken as a result of the survey.

• Repeat surveys: 55% of people believe action will be taken as a result of the survey.

We quote this as a 20% difference (9 percentage points being 20% of 46). This is a big, significant improvement and shows the importance of implementing post-survey change.

Additionally, we see the ‘belief in action’ score vary across sectors with the private sector paving the way:

• Public sector: Only 45% of people believe action will be taken as a result of the survey.

• Private sector: 51% of people believe action will be taken as a result of the survey.

Learn how our client Zeelo established employee surveys with our help.

How can you improve your score for employee belief in action?

While every organisation hopes to see their score for ‘belief in action’ increase with each survey, it can decrease if no visible action is seen by employees. To tackle this, or further boost a ‘good’ score, you need to create a meaningful post-survey action plan:

• Firstly, design a survey packed with actionable items. An experienced employee survey partner like People Insight will customise your survey to make sure the questions elicit feedback that you can actually do something about.
• Take time to understand your survey results; you should be clear about the issues before you start action planning. Use focus groups and manager-led discussions to dig further into feedback. Our dedicated guide to post-survey action planning has templates, advice and workshop ideas to get you started.

• Prioritise 3 action areas to tackle and work out the quick wins you can get started on straight away. Share updates at team meetings, town halls and on your intranet/messaging channels to show what’s changing and vitally – how it relates to their feedback.
• Communicate your plan for change and make the change process really visible to people. Great post-survey comms also share what you have achieved or actioned since the last survey as a reminder of the progress already made.
• Sustain momentum and show you’re serious about change. Be clear about accountability for items in your action plan. Equip action owners with the tools they need to deliver change and celebrate milestones along the way. Consider adding survey action delivery into line managers’ performance reviews to ensure progress is top of their mind.

How Sturrock and Robson increased belief in action by 22%

Sturrock and Robson’s engagement and cultural change programme helped achieve an amazing 16% engagement boost by their next survey, reaching a score of 90%. Additionally, their post-survey efforts prompted a 22% increase in score for ‘I believe that action will be taken as a result of this survey’.

Once their survey results were in, detailed reports were shared with leaders and key headlines were communicated to employees. The leadership team appointed a team member, Amalie Lyneborg, to run the programme and act upon survey feedback. Over a 2-year period, Amalie delivered a face-to-face action planning and change delivery roadshow at each business site to make sure everybody felt heard and included.

After the roadshows, Amalie regularly checked in with sites to assess progress and carried out follow-up visits to discuss with employees how changes were going. Action progress was included on the agenda of senior meetings and consistent employee communication tied back changes to the employee survey.

As Sturrock and Robson demonstrates, change works when you get in front of your people to create personal, meaningful interactions.

Read more about Sturrock & Robson‘s post survey change

Local action is vital for improving belief in action

Post-survey change will become unstuck if line managers are not kept engaged or informed with action planning. For the greatest impact on belief in action, involve managers throughout the survey programme and equip them with the training, tools and support they need to deliver effective post-survey action.

How LSBU empowered managers to create change 

London Southbank University found that People Insight’s iDeck, a dashboard feature that turns survey data into results presentations at the click of a button, enabled their line managers to embrace action planning.

It meant managers could quickly share results in team meetings, identify the areas most in need of change and focus on action planning without the admin of creating countless presentations.

“The iDeck is such a time saver! My team no longer have to pull together countless presentations. Line managers can do it easily, and get on with sharing results and action planning with their teams.”

Samantha White, OD Programme Advisor

Read the full story: How LSBU empowered line managers to deliver change