Now that you have your Employee Engagement survey results, it’s important to remember that a survey alone does not create positive change. Involving leaders, faculty, and staff in discussing the feedback and deciding how to take action is what can create positive change in the work environment. Remember that disengagement begins when people who take time to provide feedback or respond to a survey don’t hear back from their leaders, so share the results with your team and plan some actions based on the feedback you have.
The resources below can help you in the action planning.
There is a range of ideas and resources for addressing employee engagement. We have organized them by each engagement driver. If you have identified a survey item that you would like to take action on, please select the corresponding survey driver and explore the action ideas. Most of the suggested actions contain links to additional Leadership and Talent Development resources if you would like more information. Feel free to use these ideas verbatim or edit them to make them more relevant to your work.
Clear & Promising Direction
- Share the "big picture" with team members. Explain the current strategy and goals of your unit and align them to your leadership's strategy and goals. Invite your leadership team to employee meetings to discuss your unit’s strategic priorities, core values, and goals to demonstrate strategic alignment and purpose. See the Quick Guide to Goal Setting for more information.
- Encourage discussion and understanding about the unit's strategy, core values and goals during employee meetings. For more information refer to the Quick Guide to Goal Setting. When onboarding new employees, see the Planning New Employee Onboarding quick guide for more information.
- Communicate progress towards the unit's strategy, core values and goals on a regular basis. For example, how do team members in your work group directly or indirectly contribute to the strategy and goals? See the Defining a Clear Purpose for Team Success quick guide for more information.
- Communicate the large-scale successes of the unit, focusing on work well done and results. Be sure to explain your unit’s role in these success stories. See the Defining a Clear Purpose for Team Success quick guide for more information.
- Develop performance goals with each employee that define the criteria for minimum, acceptable, and superior performance. Create goals that are clear, measurable, attainable, and that align with your unit’s overall strategy. Ask each employee to restate their performance goals to ensure that he/she understands them. Watch the Managing and Evaluating Performance webinar recording for more information.
- Help employees better understand your goals and priorities by providing them with all of the relevant context information necessary to them to effectively perform their roles and responsibilities. Consider sharing announcements, new policies, organizational changes, budgets, new initiatives, etc.
Commitment to Excellence
- Communicate successes and accomplishments, but don’t focus exclusively on them. Focus on work well done, behaviors you want to see more of, innovations, stakeholders that have been well served. See the Establishing Norms and Expectations quick guide for more information.
- Emphasize the importance of delivering high impact, high quality scholarship and service to all stakeholders. When setting goals, clearly define your expectations for excellence. See the Quick Guide to Goal Setting for more information.
- Invite and encourage discussions to identify stakeholder expectations around teaching, research, and outreach and administration that we provide in our department.
- Identify frustrating processes and procedures employees and/or stakeholders encounter and streamline and simplify, if possible.
- Create evaluations for all services delivered and assess data and make adjustments to ensure continuous improvement for department. Address quality issues and subpar performance in a timely manner. Watch the Feedback and Coaching webinar recording for more information.
- Ask employees what processes need improvement and ask for their ideas for effective and efficient solutions. Use your influence, access to relationships and positional power to remove barriers and effect change. See the Quick Guide to Conflict Sources for more information.
Confidence in Leaders
- Adopt and communicate to employees an "open door policy." Make yourself available by being visible and rarely "holed away." Consider maintaining regular "office hours" when you can be reached if you are frequently offsite or away in meetings.
- Determine and use the most appropriate communications channel for each message. Face-to-face meetings are most appropriate to announce sensitive organizational issues such as colleague / management changes. Written communications are appropriate for more routine office announcements. Be sure to communicate in a timely manner.
Invite a member of the senior leadership team to join a regular colleague meeting to discuss company goals, objectives, and values. Ask them to share some of their personal history with and perspective on the unit, the strengths of the senior management team, and current challenges. - Encourage senior managers to interact with your colleagues informally. For example, have leaders walk around the department to informally greet colleagues, acknowledge accomplishments, and thank them for their efforts. See Quick Guide to Conflict: Building Trust for more information.
- Learn from employees what commitments or expectations they feel leaders have not met. Is it possible that leaders took action on a commitment but failed to communicate the message to employees? If you are not aware of the status on a given commitment, seek out the information. See the Quick Guide to Feedback for more information.
- Seek feedback from employees regularly to understand what is working well and what needs improvement. Act on suggestions or honestly explain why you can’t act on their suggestions. See the Quick Guide to Feedback for more information. When onboarding new employees see Planning New Employee Onboarding quick guide.
Development Opportunities
- Create and communicate a clear process for how career development opportunities are awarded. In your process considering including which opportunities will be given priority, how funding decisions are made, any annual restrictions on funding, expectations for utilizing learnings from funded opportunities, etc.
- Set an example by actively pursuing your own development. Meet with your manager to develop your own career plan. You can use this experience to create a good career planning experience for your colleagues. See the Quick Guide to Goal Setting for more information and watch the Feedback: Ready, Set, Go! video.
- Create a developmental plan and identify critical competencies for each of your employees. Communicate these competencies to employees to empower them to take charge of their careers and personal development. See the Quick Guide to Goal Setting for more information. Check out this example from Academic Support Resources Using an IDP for Employee Development. When onboarding new employees, see A Conversation Guide for New Employees for more information.
- Promote development by providing constructive feedback. Deliver feedback when the employee is in a comfortable environment and has had the opportunity to reflect on how they can change their behavior in future scenarios. See the Quick Guide to Feedback for more information.
- Frequently provide coaching and mentoring to help employee reach their potential and achieve their developmental goals. This will also help to maintain motivation and interest in improvement. See the Quick Guide to Coaching for more information.
- Promote continuous improvement and learning within the department by encouraging employees to seek methods for improving processes. Recognize employees for their ideas by sharing the improvements that were implemented during team meetings through employee bulletins, unit updates, etc.
Respect and Recognition
- Publicly recognize/reward employees or teams whose behaviors exemplify your unit’s core set of values. Always check in with colleagues to ensure they understand specifically what the praise and recognition is for– this is crucial to help colleagues and the whole team understands what good performance looks like. See the Employee Engagement Drivers and Self-Reflection Questions for a deeper understanding.
- If possible, grant employee requests for time off, unless there is critical work that needs to be done and can’t be assigned to others.
- Act as a role model for treating all others with respect; reflect on interactions to make sure you treat all employees with the same level of respect.
- Meet with employees, both individually and in groups, to understand their perception around whether their organization has care/concern for its employees. Collect details from them in regards to what ways they feel valued as employees and what causes them the most concern. See the Employee Engagement Cycle: Discussion quick guide for more information.
- Evaluate and seek input on the inclusivity of your unit’s norms and processes. Are there any team members that feel unable to fully engage because they have different values, customs, or needs? Try to identify two things that you can do to make your work environment more inclusive and respectful. See the Employee Engagement Cycle: Input or the Quick Guide to Organizational Culture and Onboarding for more information.
- Encourage your employees to regularly engage in University or unit sponsored U of M Wellbeing Program (e.g. earn wellness points visit the farmer’s market, attend financial literacy programs, etc.).
Sense of Belonging
- Communicate and model the expected behaviors that help create and maintain an inclusive culture. See the behaviors identified in the University of Minnesota Leadership Challenges.
- Schedule time during the next team meeting to discuss what might be preventing a strong sense of belonging within the department. Use the Sense of Belonging discussion questions from the Quick Guide to Employee Engagement Drivers and Discussion Questions.
- Dedicate time during an all-employee meeting to discuss people’s experience around inclusion in your organization.
- Reinforce the importance of building an inclusive culture. Share how inclusive teams outperform others in key areas such as decision-making and innovation.
- Increase understanding of how people’s awareness of social and cultural identities can impact talent management, engagement, productivity, teamwork, and innovation.
- Communicate the university’s DEI strategy, goals, and vision for creating a diverse and inclusive culture. Reference the MPact 2025 and how your department/campus/college aligns with the goals.
Authority & Empowerment
- Provide greater autonomy to employees by examining the way work is done. This will help to identify opportunities to redesign processes, change technologies, simplify procedures, eliminate repetitiveness, and change authority structures. See the Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities quick guide for more information.
- Assess your openness to ideas. Recall a situation where you were not open to an employee’s suggestion, analyze why you took that position, and evaluate the outcome of that decision. Take a moment to think about what might have happened had you agreed with that employee’s suggestion. Evaluate whether you routinely encourage or discourage your employees to provide input. See the Employee Engagement Drivers and Self-Reflection Questions quick guide for more information.
- Allow selected colleagues to "test" increased authority by asking a colleague to represent you at a meeting or work with you on a project. See the Assessing Performance, Potential and Readiness quick guide for more information.
- Clarify and come to agreement with team members on the types of decisions they have the authority to make without team leader/management approval. See the Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities and Establishing Clear Decision-Making Processes quick guides for more information.
- Establish a formal and/or informal employee suggestion program. Consider the most meaningful way to recognize creative and innovative ideas.
- Develop an agenda to proactively seek team members’ ideas. Reserve time in meetings for brainstorming. Ask for feedback and comment on all ideas - including your own. Make sure your questions are open-ended to draw out full responses. Watch the Leading Teams webinar recording for more information.
Clear Expectations and Feedback
- Schedule regular meetings with your direct reports throughout the year to discuss progress on previously identified goals, provide feedback on recent work, and to clarify expectations for future work. See the Quick Guide to Ongoing Check-Ins for more information or when onboarding new employees see Organizational Culture and Onboarding and Planning New Employee Onboarding guides for more information.
- Meet with the entire team to clarify and reinforce individual and group performance expectations. Be sure expectations align with organizational goals and objectives and that they are specific, measurable, and attainable. See the Defining a Clear Purpose for Team Success quick guide for more information.
- Seek team member input for opportunities for team training. An opportunity for training can be any process or procedure where each team member has a different way of completing the task or a process or procedure where team members vary greatly in how well they perform. See the Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities quick guide for more information.
- During a team meeting, raise the topic of feedback and ask for colleague ideas about ground rules to set when providing feedback to each other. Record these ground rules and hold team members accountable for following these rules. See the Quick Guide to Feedback and the Quick Guide to Establishing Norms and Expectations for more information.
- Promote development by providing constructive feedback. Deliver feedback when the employee is in a comfortable environment and has had the opportunity to reflect on how they can change their behavior in future scenarios. See the Quick Guide to Feedback for more information.
- When providing feedback on an individual’s behavior, be specific about the behavior and explain why a behavior is effective or ineffective. Provide enough information so that the individual can understand the positive or negative impact that their behavior made. See the Quick Guide to Feedback for more information.
Collaboration
- Encourage and support individuals who you see attempting to demonstrate collaborative team behaviors, especially when their attempts are less than successful. Comment on their need to continue promoting collaborative working relationships for the benefit of the team. See the Establishing Norms and Expectations quick guide for more information.
- Meet with team leaders or employee representatives from other groups to discuss improving collaboration between groups, identify ways to work more efficiently, and share internal best practices. See the Defining a Clear Purpose for Team Success quick guide for more information.
- Identify groups that employees perceive as "hard to work with," explore to understand why this is the case, determine the impact, and approach the leaders of these groups (if appropriate). See the Conflict Sources quick guide for more information.
- Discuss and agree upon a set of behaviors to guide team member interactions, shared decision making, and shared goal achievement. Ensure that all team members have a clear understanding of what the behaviors mean in their day-to-day jobs. Watch the Managing Conflict webinar recording for more information.
- Promote a more collegial atmosphere both within and across teams/groups. Meet offsite on occasion to establish team cohesion. Also consider social activities outside of work or involving employees in community activities.
- Communicate your team’s goals and objectives to the teams that you provide support for and those that support you. Establish formal cross-group teams with the responsibility of identifying ways to increase levels of collaboration, efficiencies, and share best practices. Watch the Leading Teams webinar recording for more information.
Support and Resources
- During regular one-on-one meetings, ask colleagues if there are any information bottlenecks within the team. If there are, raise this with relevant colleagues, explaining the impact of withholding information from others.
- Seek input on where and when employees have difficulty accessing information or resources. Then, identify creative ways to alleviate these issues and help others do their work more efficiently. See the Employee Engagement Cycle: Input quick guide for more information.
- Construct an inventory of information, tools and resources (e.g. names of key contacts for department tasks) that staff members need to perform their jobs. Discuss this list with staff members to ensure it is accurate and complete. Rank resources in order of importance and determine the feasibility of adding/changing/replacing inadequate resources. When onboarding new employees see Quick Guide to Planning New Employee Onboarding for more information.
- Periodically (e.g., monthly, quarterly) hold joint meetings with the work groups, teams, or leaders you work with most often. Use this forum to clarify information or address any resource issues or concerns. Watch the Managing Team Dynamics video to help keep the team productive.
- Establish a working group that is tasked with identifying ways in which the work could be better organized and/or managed. Have this working group present its recommendations at your regular staff meetings. Watch the Building Teams video to learn more about how to establish this group.
- Ensure that your colleagues understand standard operating procedures for any tools and equipment they use. This will help to differentiate frustrations with tools and equipment that arise from misuse, rather than failure or fault with the tools and equipment itself.
Work, Structure, & Process
- Have a discussion about how to more effectively and efficiently distribute the workload amongst the team. Consider if there are any roles or responsibilities that could be adjusted to improve workflow. See the Quick Guide to Facilitating a Discussion or the Quick Guide to Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities for more information.
- Examine the way work is done to identify opportunities to redesign processes, change technologies, simplify procedures, and eliminate repetitiveness. Involve employees in this process.
- Meet with other leaders to share and discuss workflow procedures and ways to help employees get the support needed.
- At staff meetings, regularly discuss changes to work processes and procedures that directly or indirectly impact the way employees work. Don’t forget to explain reasons behind decisions when changes have been made. See Establishing Clear Decision-Making Processes quick guide or when onboarding new employees see the Quick Guide to Planning New Employee Onboarding for more information.
- Establish a working group that is tasked with identifying ways in which the work could be better organized and/or managed. Have this working group present its recommendations at your regular staff meetings. Watch the Building Teams video to learn more about how to establish this group.
- Address recurring issues by soliciting input from others about the source of the problem. Gather input from employees as well as peers. Be sure to take action on the input that is gathered and communicate the changes that you make to relevant groups. See the Quick Guide to Facilitating a Discussion for more information.