Can you be Master of all you Survey?

Surveys have come a long way in the last few decades and used properly can have a profound influence on the performance culture of an organisation, to quote Elaine Robertson, Employee Insights Manager for Vodafone "Our leadership team really does believe that employees will make or break us. So we need to know what they think" *

Surveys are a significant investment for any company both in terms of both time and money. To get the most out of a survey the following basic rules should be followed;

- Know why you are doing the survey, tailor your questions to find the answers to this
- Select a supplier, if you want to benchmark against the rest of your industry you should choose a major research firm
- Sell the idea to the managers by linking the survey to performance - without their buy in and enthusiasm the uptake is likely to be poor
- Timing, consider how long it will take to generate action plans from the survey and when you will need to put in applications for budget to implement these actions
- Consider how you are going to feedback to the staff in a timely and open way Who will deliver the feedback, when and how will they deliver it.
- Consider how you are going to develop action plans from the survey, and who is going to be accountable for delivering these action plans

One 0f the best survey tools to enhance team performance, which is being offered in Wiltshire, is Extended DISC® Team Alignment, which has already helped numerous organisations to understand their strengths and weaknesses and improve the performance of teams of varying sizes and functions. As well as offering the survey tools based on the most up to date leadership and people management theories, the offer includes consultation with experienced executive coaches in both the planning and facilitation of team workshops where the results are fed back to the team and action plans are made.

These workshops are an ideal way for small to medium sized businesses highlight areas of team performance that can be rapidly and easily improved.. By running the survey with the help of experienced executive coaches you can avoid many of the pitfalls many companies, both large and small often fall into.

You could potentially get funding for your survey through the Government's Train to Gain initiative.

So why not have a look at finding out what the most valuable resource your company has is thinking, and look at what this means for your company in the present economic climate? In these times of great change and uncertainty, one thing you can be sure of is that those companies with staff showing greater creativity and commitment will do better. A great starting point for this is to find out what they are thinking, you never know you might just become a master of all you Survey?

* People Management 12th February 2009