When the organization, or team you worked so hard to build starts to plateau for whatever reason, it’s important to find out the cause and how to fix any issues. Is it sales slowing down? Is it a poor economy? Or, could it be a staffing issue; even something wrong with the management? There’s a simple way to find out that takes a little bit of thought on how to conduct; the time has come to survey your employee’s opinions.
An important thing to consider before beginning this process is making sure your managers and department heads are not only okay with what the results may be, but if they’re okay with implementing the necessary changes when the time inevitably comes. You’ll need the complete agreement and trust of your upper staff so that the appropriate Proactive Insights survey and corresponding results gets to where it needs to go. The only way change can be accomplished and growth can flourish is with trust, organization and agreement; the importance of this cannot be stressed enough.
Once the Proactive Insights survey has been carefully chosen, sent out, filled out and all have been received, it’s time to pour through the data. The best guidelines for how to handle the results in a timely manor is to have the person at the top dedicated at least 1 to 2 hours a month to look at results and provide guidance. Lower level managers should give about 2 to 4 hours a month to work on the best changes to implement according to the data. After all that is said and done, it’s the Human Resource department’s job to give 6 to 12 hours a month to communicate and administer the new process.
Once these steps are all complete, the question to ask yourself, is whether or not you should share the results to your staff and how much information to divulge. It’s important that if you’re going to share information, you should share both positive and negative thoughts. If you’re looking for trust in your employee’s, they need to be able to trust you as well by divulging all results to them. This practice also helps create a more honest environment when it comes to additional surveys.
The final step in the equation is if everything else above falls in place, how will you proceed? Will you be able to cut away the necessary extra’s in order to allow growth? Do you need to hire additional and better talent to bring your company to the next level? Is it possible that minimal changes need to be addressed? What happens if the biggest change that is necessary is for you, as the top level, to step down and let someone take over? All of these questions and realities will need to be faced and addressed in order to make what you build, long lasting.