Hello…curious if anyone has implemented a policy on how you intend to share results of engagements surveys with the company. We just completed our first all employee engagement survey with Culture Amp, and we have several people requesting to read all the comments:) thanks!
We don’t have a written policy, but we’ve typically shared results of all questions but never shared comments. We’ve always explained that we don’t share comments to make sure that anonymity is fully protected – so when sharing results, we might share one or two comments that have been vetted to make sure it’s not obvious where they came from, but if sharing all comments I think there is too much of a risk of people scouring through to try to figure out who said what (and in some comments it’s clearer than others).
You could also poll people on whether they would feel equally comfortable writing comments if they were going to be shared, and then if the answer is more yes than no you could let people know in advance next time that comments will be shared publicly. And you could do something like add one question that you wouldn’t share that says “please add anything here that you didn’t feel comfortable adding in the publicly shared comments.” But I would be firm that it is not fair to share comments that people wrote when they expected they would be kept confidential.
Hi! I would say at Culture Amp, we have more of a process than we have a policy, specifically that we use for how we share results (and this has evolved a bit as we’ve grown as a company).
First, we cascade result-sharing, starting with our Exec team and People Partners, then to Leadership (VPs/Directors), and then to all Campers (employees), typically over the course of a week. The reason we do this is just because we want to give Leaders a minute to digest anything that they as leaders might want to be across. I think of this really as just enabling them to be better leaders by having a moment to reflect on the data before they might start to get questions.
Over the course of that first week, I have sessions with our people partners as well to help them make sense of the data and think through actions, or where they might want to follow-up.
Re: Comments: The very first thing I do is a very quick pass at all of the comments to make sure there isn’t anything that I’d deem a red flag, or want to give someone a heads up on before comments are shared. Assuming there isn’t (usually isn’t), I would proactively reach out to leaders if a comment names them, or would be something they might want to proactively consider. Once we do that, we share all of our comments with all Campers, which we find builds trust. We typically do our comment filter by Practice, as that’s often where we expect action to be driven out of.
A typical timing plan for us might be like:
Day 0: Survey close, I review results comments
Day 1: Share results with Exec Team / People Partners (including comments)
Day 3: Share results with Senior Leadership Teams (including comments)
Week 2: Share results with All Campers, (without comments)
Week 3: Share comments, manager reports, and team-specific reports
Week 3/4 (depending on schedule): Host results sessions
That works for us typically… might not be right for everyone based on the cultural norms around transparency!
I agree with Elana, it’s always good to let people how/if their comments will be shared in the survey itself so people can take that into consideration when they choose to leave a comment.
Hope that helps,
Josh
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As others have stated, we do not have a written policy. We do share all questions for the whole organisation and team specific results with those teams only. All comments are shared with executives and we try to pick a few comments to share with all staff that reflect the overall sentiment of the outcomes (the good and otherwise!). Comments shared with staff are vetted to ensure nothing is included that may identify the author.
Similarly, no policy but an approach. As an organisation of 12,000+ even sharing all comments with line managers would be counterproductive!
HRBPs manage the relationship with them and they start with the question ‘what is your people problem?’ For example, L&D scored low: what is driving this? They will then use the comments to identify the main issue or issues across the population, and provide a few comments to the manager to illustrate the themes emerging. Then solutions can be agreed to improve the situation, wherever possible.
Appreciate all of the responses. We are a growing company of 500 people, so very small in comparison to some of you. This is our first survey using Culture Amp, and as leaders have witnessed some of the power of the platform, they instinctively want more. I’m an L&D department of one, so trying to lay the foundation with proper expectations for a group of leaders and employees that have not experienced a survey like this at our company.
I believe I will create a basic policy that makes it clear to employees and leaders how the results will be used and made available.
Thanks again!
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