Effects of Action Planning After Employee Surveys

Abstract

Abstract. Employee surveys are commonly used tools in organizations for the purpose of organizational development. We investigated the post-survey action planning process in 3,091 organizational units (OUs) of one large company in Germany. We expected action planning to lead to improvements on subsequent employee survey scores, with OUs that continuously and repeatedly planned actions showing the greatest improvements. Results suggest that the development of action plans can lead to improvements on subsequent survey scores, but effect sizes were generally small. Furthermore, managers who initiated action planning in the previous year were more likely to do so again the following year. Overall, these findings contribute to the literature on employee surveys by investigating effects of post-survey action planning.