Action Planning to Action Taking

Every company wants to flourish. But the companies often remain in silos when it comes to polishing the factors of such flourishment. In fact, how do companies identify the areas that need refinement that help them to get to such a level? What helps them to know what are actually missing and what needs to be focused?

The organizations should turn to their employees for the clues as they are the ones who have been driving the company. Employees of any company are the crucial factor that can help the company to progress without falling back in the market. The internal problems of an organization are to be dealt to run it effectively. Such issues can only be focused when the feedback of the employees is considered. This is why employee feedback is crucial for any organization to flourish.

Surveys and Assessments

The traditional surveys are collected once in every year, from all the employees. These surveys were done mostly during the appraisal time and the strenuous process of aggregating, analyzing and submitting the synopsis of the reports used to be a herculean task for the management. However, such tiresome collection of feedback, when reduced to a short form by different levels of managers, used to lose the significance of points highlighted by employees.

This used to create a feeling in the employees that their viewpoints have fallen to deaf ears. When organizations annually gather information through a lengthy survey, taking action on it gets drawn out. This affects the employee engagement process and makes the employees wonder if anything ever happens with their feedback.

As time passes by, the priorities change and it feels irrelevant and unnecessary to take actions on the feedbacks. Also, once-a-year surveys inundate the organizations with the collected information which makes it difficult to analyze where to focus for betterment. The managers on the other hand, have to refresh their conversation skills and basic interpretation skills for every 12 months to build good people management relationships so as to meet the requirements. This gap persists and it makes difficult to meet the on-raising demands. Hence once-a-year surveys just hamstring the organizations.

Contradicting to the stereo-typical methods, the organizations are now-a-days adopting frequent survey methods to collect feedbacks. Short, crisp and frequent surveys let the management know the pulse of employees on various topics and issues in the work environment. The modern ways of performance management include employee wellness and employee engagement as the main agenda.

The various kinds of surveys that are created on different basis, and the periodic assessments, the ease of collection and analyzation of the data that are done based on scientific approach help the organizations to know the pulse of employees and the issues that are hindering the progress of the company. Not only mere collection of data, but the action plans that are to be implemented, should also be understood by the company.

Suggesting the appropriate action plans is half-success as the solution to break the hurdles is known. EWA, the flagship product of Wellness Hub, helps you with the surveys, assessments, feedbacks, and action items on a continuous basis to make your employee engagement hassle-free. But remember that proposal of action items is only half-success whereas implementation brings you the remaining half
of it.

The main reasons that some companies hesitate to implement the solutions to the feedbacks given by their employees, though they know them, could be like unclear ownership on taking actions, inadequate support from managers and the hard way the employee feedback hits them. Such problems can be overcome by the modern scientific method of periodic surveys, assessments, their results, analysis, and advisable action plans that EWA provides. Action-taking is more important than action planning and the confidence of taking a certain action can be obtained through this scientific approach.

Action-Taking

Taking necessary action on the feedback received is as important as gathering more frequent feedbacks. After a survey is released, it remains open for the employees to answer until the active period is completed. After that, the results will be calculated immediately and the report is delivered to the concerned manager, or probably HR manager. This manager can also forward it to the higher management. As soon as the survey is conducted and the results are obtained, either that manager or the higher management has to react by planning on the action items regarding that feedback.

Now, if the mails are just being forwarded between the HR manager and the management thinking that someone would act on them, there’s no use of the survey conducted. Such authorities should be made clear between the manager handling the surveys and the higher authorities. Any delay or postponement caused in the process of taking action would reduce the effect of it. This further reduces the value on your efforts.

While thinking of bringing out a change with the feedbacks received, going for too much planning takes much time and you keep on assessing again and again, finally losing interest on the planning and then on implementing. Planning to do more things like coming up with a list of some 6-7 things after a survey would feel cumbersome and lose the essence after a few months and you would end up wondering why you picked all of them in the first place. Instead, you may short it out and prioritize the first two or maybe the top one to implement and that too rapidly, would bring a great change like making a shift. It will bring a meaningful impact.

An agile approach also involves checking in on the process and the course of the work done as a result of the feedback. If you don’t feel like meeting the targeted result, you may still adjust the work and check again.

Conversing with employees also gives some idea on how the things are going. A quick pulse can be sent on gathering the feedback after a few days of implementing the required change. This enables to get the pulse of the employees and the management can realize the importance of quick action or the need to correct it too. As the feedback can be given anonymous, no employee can get worried and the real truths come out rather than those fake appreciations. It is this process that ensures a better employee engagement in your organization.