Typical Action Planning process

EMERGE International can serve as a direct supplier or second tier survey provider for any type of survey.  Surveys can be the EMERGE International brand or we can customize any survey to your organization’s brand. 

There are a number of models and tools we have designed around organizational culture.  Some of our products measure components of an organization’s human system; such as, employee engagement, internal branding, customer satisfaction and six-sigma implementation readiness.   

We constantly review our internal quality systems and implement technology upgrades as needed.  These changes continue to greatly reduce the cost to run employee surveys.  The latest enhancement to our suite of tools is in the development of a self-service feature that provides clients with access to their specific data once individuals within an organization have experienced our systems and processes.

Steps in a typical client engagement are as follows:

• Support you in the development of a communication document and customized welcome letter.  Communication plans are essential to the survey process.  We have found that a well thought out communication strategy has a significant impact on the level of participation and also on the quality of the responses.  We provide samples of successful plans that you can shape and craft as your own.
• Collaborate in the development of data sort categories to determine the best approach for gathering meaningful data.  These sorts can vary from division, location, leader, level, function, job category, job classification, and years of service.  We have the capacity to sort the data however you choose.  The key is to determine the most powerful and useful ways to review the results.  We typically advise clients when creating data sorts to create groups that contain a minimum of 20 employees.  Our goal is to ensure we protect the employee’s anonymity.  In doing so, we have found the level of participation rates are higher.
• Ensure a high level of anonymity to increase the level of trust with the process.  Our web-based platform generates a unique password for each employee who signs on, ensuring a high level of anonymity.  This unique password is auto generated and can be used by the employee to sign on and off of their survey multiple times in the event they cannot complete the survey all at one time. No data are lost, all answers are captured and stored until the full survey is completed and sent.  This technology feature is beneficial for employees who may get frequent interruptions.  Our technology also allows for “open field” responses to the qualitative section allowing employees to share as much as they would like in their open-ended responses without being stopped by character restriction. 
• Ensure the quantitative survey statements are 100% targeted, customized and developed to capture the data you require to formulate significant action plans.  Customize the Cultural Descriptor Section with elements from your vision, mission and values statements that will measure and provide you with an instantaneous gap analysis of the “current state” and “future desired state” of the descriptors.  Review the three standard open-ended questions and determine what other data are important to collect.  We have the ability to offer up to six open-ended questions with unlimited data entry fields.
• Define the languages for the survey.  We currently offer: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Flemish, Korean and Mandarin.  We have the capacity to offer our surveys in any language.
• Provide a test period.  Our commitment to quality is further exemplified by our mandatory three-day “test period” before the survey “go live” date.  We have found this to be a mission critical component that has contributed to flawless survey launches.  This is exceptionally helpful to global companies and multi language survey processes.  We have the capacity to process hundreds of thousands of survey participants at any given time.  There is no issue with bandwidth.  We typically host a survey for 14-21 days on our secure server; however, we can host a survey for any defined period of time.
• Inform you of progress.  We keep you informed every step of the way.    Employee response rates are checked daily.  We also monitor the actual number of responses from any given data sort category or segment of the population on a daily basis.  This feature is extremely beneficial since it provides you with the ability to target ongoing communication to those areas that show a low response rate.  Due to this structured monitoring approach, the average participation rates our clients experience have been from 70% to 90%.
• Provide you with on going support.  We will support you every step of the way.  Any and all of our on-line survey assignments include a “help desk” system.  Employees are given an email address and phone number for technical support.  The response time is within a 24-hour period.  They are provided with a phone number for our California based technical support team, available 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, Pacific Standard Time.
• Create results on the fly.  We can generate and email reports within one hour of closing the survey. We are about speed! Within 5 minutes after the close of the survey the overall raw data report, in the form of a PDF document, can be generated, emailed or posted to a URL.  All data sort category reports can also be generated and posted in usually less than an hour depending on the number of data sorts being requested.  The data sort category reports contain two sections.  The first is a PDF report containing a graphical representation of the quantitative data of each dimension being measured.  This PDF report also contains the “current state” and “desired future state” of the Cultural Descriptors Section (these data points will provide you with an instant snap shot of the gaps between the two states).  The second section of the report is a word document, which provides you with all the responses to the open-ended questions.
• Provide the description and prescription of your results. Quality and in-depth report capabilities are the cornerstones of our success. A distinct and significant differentiator between our survey and any other survey processes is the fact that our reports are both -- descriptive and prescriptive.  (More information)  Our built in technology provides the data in a PDF graphical format and includes, for each statement, the ‘implication’ of the score. In other words we explain the implications to your business if the score is healthy and what the implications are if the score is unhealthy.  We also provide with you recommendations called “raising the bar” to support you as you begin to develop action plans for meaningful change.  These features are standard elements of our reports and they are what make us unique in the marketplace.  Also, providing you with the ‘implications’ and ‘raising the bar’ can save you significant money in consulting costs.

Survey Process is complete

The survey is complete - now what?  Depending on the organization’s bench strength in HR or OD, we can partner with you to review, analyze and interpret the data for all or a portion of the data sort categories.  We can provide executive summary reports, recommendations for interventions, support you in developing action plans and support you with the implementation phase. 

EMERGE International has an exceptional action planning process that ensures continuity of plans and builds in accountability.  We can also support the action planning process to include a monthly action plan tracking system and “reminder” emails to responsible leaders.

Typical Action Planning Process:

• Ensure understanding of survey data results distribution methodology and time frame expectations.
• Develop an action-planning template that will ensure data results can be transferred, manipulated, understood and articulated in a very simple format.  • The action planning process is communicated and distributed by the client.
• EMERGE International will collect, monitor, track, remind and communicate the action planning process.
• Create tracking mechanism that is easy to review and identify completion of plans from all data sort categories and report to client on a weekly basis.
• Develop an accountably matrix for tracking of plans and deliverables by division or location and submit to client on a weekly basis.
• Roll up one action plan composite document from each division.

So now I have action plans and data, when do I survey again?

How often you resurvey, many times, is dependent on the findings.  Many organizations choose to implement programs and return in 14 to 18 months to resurvey.  This is an acceptable approach to measurement.  We do recommend that once you have collected data, conducted the analysis, prioritized key findings, developed action plans and begun the implementation phase that you build a process step to track progress.

We can assist you in creating stand-alone quantitative pulse checks that will specifically measure the progress of interventions for the overall organization, specific areas or data sort categories.  These pulse checks will give you a quantitative metric on the effectiveness of the resources you may have expended and help you identify the ROI of the interventions you choose to deploy.  The pulse checks are not as invasive so employees do not feel like they are being “surveyed to death”; however, they do produce an increase in satisfaction.  Employees get to provide the pulse data; and, once communicated to them, they can see the progress being made.

Creating Benchmarking Reports

For those clients who are interested in comparing their results to others we can:

• Develop a benchmarking report from our normative database for each division or large functional data sort categories we agree on.
• Create best practice reports from industry standard information that is available to us through professional organizations.
• Review data from past surveys to look for data sort categories or areas of significant growth and development and compile a comprehensive positive growth report.
• Benchmark past survey results against prior year results by data sort categories.Create internal best practice approach for future years of survey data collection.  Set the bar for quantitative metric score enhancement for each division or large functional data sort categories.

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502 Huntington Street
Huntington Beach, CA 92648
Phone (480) 595-9874
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