Hi Annie

It isn't fun or quirky, but the one message you cannot stress enough is that people's responses will not be identifiable.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, I think: if they don’t or won’t respond to an engagement survey, then they’re clearly not engaged

So, a very low response rate may in itself be a significant and useful outcome of the survey, and at least stand as a marker / baseline for measuring the success of future actions aimed at promoting employee engagement.

People won’t bother to respond to surveys if they believe they won’t lead to anything beneficial to them, so suggest it’s often vital to spell out the potential benefits to them: eg that their responses will receive fullest possible attention and be acted-upon if at all possible.

Then, even if you end up with a very poor response, if you then demonstrate to everyone that you’re determined to act upon the findings, however unpalatable that might be to ‘the management’ then that may well promote in itself far better credibility - and employee engagement.......

Some people won't fill it in because they may well think its a waste of time. Nothings going to change.

Have you told them what the purpose of this exercise is?

If your CEO has any credibility then a well drafted note from him saying how much he values this and how he personally commits to doing something with the results is probably as good a place to start as any.

It also comes down to how much this is a HR enterprise or how much line managers take ownership and pride in driving responses in their areas.

Something that isn't top down - do you have any consultative group or employee reps? If so, could they be the people that are championing the survey right now? If they've been involved in shaping the questions and ensuring the anonymity behind it, they'd be powerful advocates for what you're trying to achieve.

In reply to Nina Waters:

I think Nina has highlighted a key lever here. Surveys are often perceived as "what the company would like to knowabout its staff". If you can include elements of "what the staff would like to know", and include staff in identifying the subjects of interest plus the formulation of the questions, then IMHO you'll get a higher return rate, because it becomes perceived as being (in part) "for them and by them".
Let us know what you do and how it goes?
Ray

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

Hi
I recently conducted a similar exercise and gave the snr manager team a % of responses for how their division. It was an incentive for each manager to want to get 100% response rate and ask individuals had they completed the survey.

Hi Annie, we had one here at the CIPD this year and it was a big one! I thought the HR team and internal comms lead did a good job on promoting it as there was a prize draw (vouchers for two people) for submissions and also they kept communicating percentage completions and what the target was so we could see we were getting closer to the target and there was that effect of wanting to help out with reaching it. The other thing they did was encouraged line managers to keep mentioning it to their teams. Agree it's really important to stress it's anonymous. People sometimes think they can be identified by a process of elimination eg part-time, female, length of service!