Identify the People to Receive Reports and Understand the Report Layout

The Steering Committee will identify the people who should receive reports and what should be included in their reports. These could be unit heads, direct reports to the executive office, various levels of management, supervisory management, and selected staffs.

If this is your first Organizational Survey, we recommend you do not ask for reports generated for the lowest supervisory work group level. We feel this is advisable because it is your first time, and because your supervisory managers may not have the interpersonal or communication skills to conduct group problem solving meetings for feedback and action plans.

The Steering Committee will review the report formats so they understand what their people will be receiving. The committee can determine if modifications need to be made to report formats. Committee members must be able to interpret and use the reports as well as counsel others in their organization to do the same.

The survey reports. There are two kinds of reports, the standard report and the summary report. The standard report is actually a subset of the summary report. The exact distribution and content of these reports will be determined by the Steering Committee or the project manager. (See also, Sample Survey Reports in Demos, Downloads and Freebies.) You should insist that the Survey Consultant have reports that are highly customizable to your organization. The content and layout should reflect the reporting needs of your organization.

The standard report. This report is for the lowest level of the organization for which survey data can be generated. The organization coding does not allow for any sub-units below this group. The report would typically contain: A summary; A category scan with comparison to the total organization; The ten most favorable and ten most unfavorable questions; and, Item detail within categories. History data are reported if they are available. Demographic breaks, and written comments are not usually part of the standard report unless the number of respondents is large.

The summary report. This is intended for higher levels of management who have several sub-units below them. These sub-units can be identified in the organization codes and have enough respondents to produce statistical data. Typically, the summary report has everything the standard report has with the addition of demographic breaks, sub-unit breaks, and written comments. However, if the total number of respondents is not large, these additional sections may be omitted. History data are reported if they are available.

Special reports and analyses. Insist that your Survey Consultant have the facility to produce special reports that are requested by your organization. These might be anticipated in the planning for the project, or may come up on an ad hoc basis at any time after the initial processing of the data. These might be unique combinations of organization codes, or special cuts of the demographics. The report formats would be similar to those in the standard and summary reports.

An example of a special analysis might be a factor analysis of the total survey questionnaire, an interaction analysis on the demographics, or an analysis of the drivers of important outcomes. These analyses would be conducted with descriptive and inferential statistical tools and conform to usual practice in the social sciences.

eXpertOpinion(tm) Reports. eXpertOpinion is a new generation of employee survey reports. (See also, Sample Survey Reports in Demos, Downloads and Freebies.) Going beyond numbers, percents and bar-graphs, eXpertOpinion makes it easier to identify your issues, assess the consequences, highlight the causes and recommend actions, using plain English in a narrative form.

No more "X percent unfavorable" leaving you to guess what's going on. The numbers and percents are translated into words and ideas you can use right from the start. Plus, there are discussions about possible consequences and, best of all, recommended actions, from an elaborate database of expert knowledge and published research, on which you can take immediate action.

Your leaders can focus on improving the organization to gain competitive advantage. They don't have to waste their time interpreting mountains of raw statistics and graphs; they focus instead on the issues and actions to take.