It is Students’ Union staff survey Season. As the annual results make their way to the inboxes of SU CEOs this month, you are not alone if you are feeling a bit of anxiety. My WhatsApp is filled with amusing messages between CEO’s expressing this very fear:
“I took a peek, and it was horrendous! I’m putting it in the ‘tackle after Easter’ box” is my current favourite.
The survey question I personally dreaded the most as CEO was always "How confident are you that the senior team will act upon the results of this survey?" I knew from experience that even with early intervention by senior management, the urgent day-to-day demands of the students’ union would quickly overtake our intentions to fully address the survey feedback.
Thankfully moving from being a charity CEO to a solopreneur means I don’t have to worry about annual staff survey results this year. (My only full-time colleague is my cat, who doesn’t require a survey to express his immense dissatisfaction with my work.) For those of you who are still navigating this critical process though, I thought I’d share a quick story of a medium-sized charity I worked with last year to design a more collaborative approach to working with their survey results.
The Charity had undergone significant changes in the previous 18 months: a new strategy; substantial reorganisation; fluctuations in income sources; a revised membership offer; a new senior team; and shifting responsibilities among the existing management team. (I know – they could be a students’ union, right?)
I'd worked with them for a year by this time, and so I knew the Charity’s approach to change management was excellent. Prioritising open communication with staff and directly addressing their inevitable fears and emotional responses as far as possible. So, when they asked me to work with their staff representative group to squeeze maximum value from their staff survey, I knew it would be a positive experience.
Summative vs. Formative Feedback
As I scoped the project, I was impressed with the proactive attitude of the senior team. They acknowledged that the data reflected a challenging year for the charity, and made no ego protecting excuses. Their primary focus was on how to work with staff to leverage the data to enhance satisfaction. It wasn’t just a report card to them; it was an encoded map of how to do better this year!
Navigating Bias: Unpacking Feedback Together
With decoding the feedback in mind, I facilitated a session with the staff team and a senior representative designed to help them set aside their instinct to “cherry-pick comments and ignore the rest.”
[If you are wanting to design your own workshop, I broadly followed a “What, So What, Now What?” form for the workshop. Moving from the raw data, translating into insight and finally prioritising action]
The team carefully listened to expert analysis of the data, and identified the challenges presented in the narrative as they emerged. We avoided the temptation to ditch some of challenges early by constantly reminding participants to imagine “What if what we are hearing was true for all staff?”
Once we had collected all possible challenges voiced in the data, we moved on to prioritisation of our new insight. Selecting those issues that the team believed, if addressed, would create the greatest positive impact on staff satisfaction. A few hours of discussion, brainstorming and another round of prioritisation later and we had generated a focused list of actions that staff felt could make a difference.
The team presented their proposed action plan to the full senior team the next day and agreed a prioritised set of actions that the organisation felt it could implement. The whole process was wrapped up and ready for implementation less than a week after receiving the completed survey data.
It was so powerful that I have modified the session several times since. First to make it available as an online workshop and then by separating out the senior team and staff team sessions to allow more candid thinking. The key insights remain though:
Maximising Staff Survey Data:
- Set Aside Your Ego: Focus on genuinely understanding the challenges presented in staff feedback without personal bias about how it reflects on your leadership.
- Collaborate on Solutions: Remember, you don’t have to come up with all the answers. Work together with staff to explore how best to address issues raised.
- Assume if It’s True for Some, It Might Be True for Many: Acknowledge that individual experiences likely reflect broader sentiments across the organisation.
- Prioritise High-Impact Actions: We are busy organisations, so collaborate with staff to determine which actions to prioritise, focusing on those that will create most meaningful change.
- Consider an Independent Facilitator: I hope I've given enough here to help you have a go on your own. An independent, experienced facilitator can help you squeeze deeper insights from the data and encourage more open dialogue among staff.
For those in my students’ union network if you would like me to support you and your staff team by running a similar exercise, then get in touch. I currently have capacity for another two unions (possibly three) and will be dm-ing you all later this week if spaces still remain. For everyone else I’d love to hear the different techniques you have used to squeeze maximum value out of staff feedback in the comments below and best of luck navigating your feedback!
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