How to Communicate Employee Survey Results to Staff

To communicate employee survey results to staff, send one short message within about a fortnight of the results reaching you, built in four parts: what we heard, what we still do not understand, what we will do, and when you will hear again. Write it in sentences, with few scores. Keep every detail at a level that points at nobody. End on a date you are prepared to be held to.

Key takeaways

• Use the four parts in that order, and keep the whole thing to a two-minute read.
• Admitting what you cannot explain yet is what makes the rest of the message believable.
• Every promise needs a role, a start date and a sign people could see for themselves.
• Anything that could point at one person or a very small team stays out.
• Follow the note with a conversation led by each team’s own manager.

Why does the first message matter so much?

Because silence after a survey looks exactly like doing nothing. Gallup puts the share of employees who strongly agree their employer acts on surveys at 8%, and the share who cannot say whether it acts at all at 38%. The article gives no sample or survey year, so treat those as a rough picture. Even so, that second number looks like a communication problem.

A 2021 systematic review in Frontiers in Psychology reports a study that followed one organisation over several years. The group saying its results had been shared and acted upon “were consistently more favorable raters across all items and across all years”. Contented groups may simply notice more action, so this cannot show that sharing caused the difference. The review also calls research on survey follow-up scarce and scattered. The four-part structure below is our own, and we know of no study that has tested it.

What do you need in front of you before you write?

Two things a score cannot give you: the reasons behind the result, and an honest list of what you still cannot explain. A message built on “engagement is 6.8” tells people their afternoon became a decimal.

Worked example. Spradley collects the reasons by interviewing. Each person has a one-to-one conversation with an AI interviewer, spoken or typed, which follows up on what they say to reach the why. The report then gives each area one finding in three layers: what people observe, what they believe causes it, and what they propose. Reach and severity arrive in plain words, and plain words travel well in an all-staff note.

Personal Agent, a leader’s own AI agent over their reports, can then build a readout. It scores each sentence against the evidence and re-cites it, weakens it, deletes it or turns it into an open question. Those open questions give you a head start on part two of the message. If your results came from a survey tool, the template still works. Expect more blanks in part two.

What does the first message look like?

Copy this, and replace everything in square brackets.

Subject: What you told us in [survey name], and what happens next

Thank you. [Share] of you took part, and your time deserves a straight answer.

What we heard. The clearest things you told us were [theme in plain words], [theme] and [theme]. You also told us [something that works and should be protected].

What we still do not understand. You told us [finding], and we cannot yet say why. We are going to find out by [how], and we will decide what to do by [date].

What we will do. From [date], [role] will [specific change]. You will know it has worked when [something people can see]. We are not changing [topic], because [honest reason]. We would look at it again if [trigger].

When you will hear again. Your manager will talk this through with your team by [date]. On [date] we will write to you again with [what you will report]. Questions go to [name or inbox].

[Name of the most senior person who owns this]

Now fill it in. Picture a chain of garden centres, made up for this piece. It is a wet Friday in March, and the people director has the results open beside an empty email.

Step 1: Say what you heard

Three themes at most, in the words people used. If the news is bad, it goes first. Softening a hard finding is the quickest way to tell people you were not listening. Include one thing that works, so people can see you heard that too.

“Many of you said the Sunday rota arrives too late to plan around. Many of you also said the plant-care training is worth keeping, and we will keep it.”

Step 2: Say what you still do not understand

This is the part most people are tempted to delete. Keep it. It stops you inventing a cause for the sake of a tidy email, and it shows you read the answers closely enough to notice the gap.

“Seasonal colleagues feel less part of things than permanent ones, and we cannot yet say why. We will ask them directly and decide what to do by 24 April.”

Only write this if you really will ask. When a Spradley report cannot answer a question, Personal Agent writes you a draft follow-up interview: a brief, an intro and no more than three themes. You reword it in plain language or bin it, and it stays unsent until you confirm. It has to reach at least five people. For the seasonal staff it might separate induction from being left out of team briefings. What comes back is a new report, and with it the next message.

Step 3: Say what you will do, and what you will not

Name two or three changes. Each gets a role, a start date and a sign people could see without being told. If you have not decided which findings deserve action, do that first, using our triage for survey findings.

“From 6 April each store’s duty manager will publish the Sunday rota three weeks ahead. You will know it has worked when last-minute swaps fall. We are not changing the staff discount this year, because the budget is set until January. We will look at it again then.”

People forgive a no far more easily than a gap. For the changes themselves, a Spradley report suggests two to five small trials you could launch within a fortnight. Each one says which role runs it, how often, and what success would look like. It will not suggest another survey or a workshop.

Step 4: Put a date in the last line, then keep it

Give one date for the team conversation and one for the next update. If the work slips, write on that date anyway: “The rota trial is three weeks late, and here is why.” A missed date tells staff what their answers were worth.

Promises made in a busy March are easy to lose by May. Save a commitment from a write-up and Spradley emails a reminder at week four and week eight, unless it has been marked done. Set your promised date with those in mind.

Who should deliver the results?

Send the note from the most senior person who owns the outcome, then let each team’s manager talk it through. The 2021 review cites a 1971 study in which “ratings of feedback quality were higher when meetings were held in person by frontline managers”. It is an old finding, so take it as a pointer.

Give managers the note a day early, with the two or three questions you want them to raise. A Spradley report picks the one or two conversations to have first, and suggests questions for the whole team that keep the speakers out of it.

What must stay out of the message?

• Results for a group so small that a reader could work out who said what. Our guide to anonymity thresholds shows where the lines fall.
• Any detail that only one job holds. “The night-shift forklift driver” is a person, however many people took the survey.
• Word-for-word comments. Paraphrase instead.
• Anything about safety, harassment, discrimination or retaliation. Those go to the process you have for them, and the note says only that they have been passed on.

Read the draft as a colleague of the person concerned would. If you could guess who said it, move it up a level. Spradley’s own limits work the same way: no rating or number appears for a group under five, and a separate privacy judge checks every written finding, then rewrites, holds or withholds whatever points at a person.

What can this message not do?

• It cannot stand in for change. If part three is empty, a well-written note makes that more obvious.
• It cannot erase last year. If earlier promises went unkept, say so before making new ones.
• It cannot tell you whether anyone believed it. That takes asking again once the date has passed.

Spradley’s published rules of use set out what its AI will and will not do with what your people say. See how a follow-up interview gets drafted when a report cannot answer your question.

Frequently asked questions