Gallup finds only 8% of employees strongly agree their organization acts on surveys. Here is the six-step plan for the Monday after an engagement survey.
Only eight employees in a hundred are sure a survey leads to anything. The last piece in The Second Finish Line series.
Each week for six weeks, I've left you with one thing to do.
I never put them side by side.
Side by side, they turn out to be a plan for one particular day: the Monday after an engagement survey.
That's the day Gallup finds only eight employees in a hundred are sure anything will happen.
So this last piece isn't a seventh idea.
It's the first six, in order, pointed at the one thing nearly every company already measures.
I saved the survey for last on purpose. It's the closest most organizations ever come to the second finish line.
Once a year they stop and ask their people how it's really going.
And then the asking gets treated as the finish.
Here's the day I mean.
The score comes back up two points. Somebody builds a slide, and the room is pleased.
Then it's Monday.
Same people, same meetings, same manager, and nothing they wrote in the comment box has turned into anything they can see.
I know what that teaches people, because I was the one who answered honestly.
Two weeks ago I told you the short version.
I spoke up once, it came back on me, and I got quiet. Here's the rest of it.
By the late eighties I was a general manager at Marriott, with an area manager I could not connect with no matter what I did.
She played favorites, and it was obvious.
Her boss had heard the rumors.
So he sat down with every one of her general managers, one at a time, and asked for feedback. I remember how open and honest I was.
It came back to bite me.
What I took from it wasn't "don't be honest."
It was that what you say, how you say it and when you say it all carry a price, and you'd better know the price before you open your mouth.
Years later I ran into her at a conference, and she greeted me like I was her best friend.
Nothing had changed. I had just learned to be careful.
In the first piece I called that borrowed compliance: behavior that looks like the real thing and isn't owned by the person doing it.
A careful answer is the survey's version.
Your people don't stop filling it in when nothing happens.
They get careful, and careful answers add up to a very nice number.
That's the number I opened with.
Only 8% of employees strongly agree their organization takes action on surveys. Gallup goes a step further.
Run the survey and do nothing more, it says, and engagement is likely to go down and turnover is likely to go up.
So the survey isn't neutral.
Last week I said asking and doing nothing is worse than not asking. A survey is that conversation with everybody at once.
That's not an argument against measuring.
You need the benchmark, and I want that black and white data as much as anyone.
But it's not the checklist that becomes your culture.
It's what you do with the checklist.
Here's the idea this whole series has been built on.
Every change has two finish lines, and only one of them ever gets a date.
A survey has a launch date, a close date, a response rate and a score. When the score comes in, everybody exhales.
Whether anything is different for the person who filled it in has no date, and most of the time it has no owner.
Leaders aren't blind to this. Back in 2019, McKinsey wrote that some 95% of executives call cultural fit critical to the success of an integration, and 25% cite the lack of it as the primary reason integrations fail.
In week one I shared Gartner's number: only 32% of leaders said the last change they led achieved healthy adoption. Two-thirds already know.
What they're missing is the part between knowing and Monday.
You already have that part.
Here are the six, side by side, on the Monday after a survey.
Then come back in thirty days, ask whether it's different, and listen to how they answer.
"They never do anything with these" is distance. "We fixed that" is the ground taking water.
An owner, the authority, a baseline, a date, five minutes, the questions.
Every one of them is somebody's job. In most companies, not one is in anybody's job description.
In the first piece I said the seat exists, it's just almost never on the org chart. Seven weeks later I'll say it plainer.
That seat is the work I do.
A Fractional Chief People and Culture Officer is somebody on your team, not a piece of your team, holding the second finish line for as long as the work takes.
Sometimes that's ninety days. Sometimes it's three years.
It starts with the baseline, and it ends when your own managers are carrying all six without me in the room.
If this series has sounded like your company, that's the next step.
See how a Fractional Chief People and Culture Officer works.
Two other ways in.
If your managers were never taught to stand in front of their own team and say "here's what you told us, and here's what I'm doing about it..."
That's what the Leadership Development Academy is for.
22 workshops across four tracks, from first-time supervisors to senior leaders.
And if you're inside a transaction, decide before you send a survey what happens the Monday after, then put the next one on the calendar for year two.
In week four I shared why: that's when leadership turnover in private-equity-owned companies spikes, long after the systems went green.
That's a conversation to have before the close.
Most leadership teams look at survey results and ask, "What's our score?" Here's the question I'd put in its place.
What can one of our people point to that's different because they answered?
If you can name it, you're closer to the second finish line than most.
If you can't, they can't either, and they've noticed.
This series started in a hotel lobby where the scorecard was green straight down the page and the word "family" was framed on the wall.
That word was on the wall. But it was not in the room.
A general manager told the truth once and learned to be careful.
You can teach your people the opposite, and it takes one Monday.
The first finish line already has a date. Go put one on the second.
Best,
Shelley D. Smith
CEO, Premier Rapport and author of Thirsty
P.S. This is the seventh and last piece in The Second Finish Line. Here they are in order: the two finish lines, responsibility without authority, the baseline, the second calendar, the first drop and what holds people when you can't win on pay. If one of them sounded like your week, reply and tell me which.
P.P.S. In week two I mentioned that we've been building a record of who is buying companies in Hampton Roads. It's nearly finished. It lists the deals, the buyers and the dates, which makes it a record of first finish lines, because those are the only ones that leave a trace. If you'd like it when it's out, reply and I'll make sure you get it.
Gallup, "So You Administered an Employee Engagement Survey. Now What?", Louis Efron, January 4, 2023. Carries the 8%, and the statement that a survey with nothing more is likely to lower engagement and raise turnover. The article does not give a sample size or survey date. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/467504/administered-employee-engagement-survey.aspx
McKinsey & Company, "Integrating cultures after a merger: Addressing the unseen forces" (first published as "Organizational culture in mergers: Addressing the unseen forces"), Oliver Engert, Becky Kaetzler, Kameron Kordestani and Andy MacLean, March 26, 2019. Carries the 95% and the 25%. The article does not describe the survey behind them. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organization/our-insights/organizational-culture-in-mergers-addressing-the-unseen-forces
AlixPartners, 11th Annual Private Equity Leadership Survey, March 2026, as cited in the fourth piece in this series. Carries the finding that CEO turnover spikes around year two. https://www.premierrapport.com/blog-posts/post-merger-integration-second-calendar
Gartner HR Research, as cited in the first piece in this series. Carries the 32%. https://www.premierrapport.com/blog-posts/why-culture-change-doesnt-stick-the-second-finish-line
Why do employee engagement surveys fail to change anything?
Most engagement surveys fail because the survey is treated as the finish line. It has a launch date, a close date and a score, but the change employees asked for has no date and no owner. Gallup reports that only 8% of employees strongly agree their organization takes action on surveys. When nothing visible changes, people keep answering, but they answer carefully, and careful answers produce a flattering score that hides the real problems.
What should leaders do after an employee engagement survey?
Six steps for the Monday after a survey: give every manager one thing to own for their own team; name the specific behavior that should change; treat the results as a baseline and compare them to last year out loud; give the one thing a measure and a date; use the first five minutes of an existing meeting to say what you heard, what you are doing and when; and keep asking between surveys. Then come back in thirty days and ask whether it is different.
Can an engagement survey actually hurt employee engagement?
Yes. Gallup warns that if an organization runs a survey and does nothing more, engagement is likely to decrease and turnover is likely to increase. Asking people for honest feedback and then doing nothing visible with it teaches them that honesty is not worth the risk, which can leave a company worse off than if it had never asked.
What is the second finish line in culture change?
The second finish line is the point where a change is actually different for the people living it, as opposed to the first finish line, when the system, announcement or survey is complete. Every change has two finish lines, and usually only the first one gets a date and an owner. An engagement survey score is a first finish line. What an employee can point to as different because they answered is the second.
What does a Fractional Chief People and Culture Officer do?
A Fractional Chief People and Culture Officer is a senior culture leader who joins a company part time to own the work between measuring culture and changing it. At Premier Rapport, that work starts with a culture baseline and continues until the company's own managers can carry it without outside help, which can take anywhere from ninety days to three years.
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