Organizations who are innovative enough to know the value of conducting surveys and assessments are one step ahead of other organizations who are mired in the here and now.

Organizations who are all about status quo, not rocking the boat, “we’ve always done it this way” just aren’t willing to engage in this kind of assessment.  They don’t want to know; they’re afraid of the information, if they’re even conscious of potential issues.

To be sustainable – and successful – into the future, an organization must look outside and beyond today, or even the past.

Setting goals and objectives and creating strategy isn’t enough either.  Of course, it’s better than NOT doing those things, but there’s more.

What is the current status of your workforce?  What’s missing?  What’s going well? 

That’s where a survey comes in.

Great surveys allow you to determine what’s going on now, to get a temperature reading of the organization.  To know if your employees are engaged, happy, unhappy.  More in-depth surveys can reveal what they see as the biggest challenges, which perhaps can light the way toward solutions.

So, congratulations! You’ve conducted a survey.  Now what?

You’ve collected great data, but what to do with that data can be a challenge. The worst thing an organization can do is to take the results and file them, as a completion on the checklist.  DONE!

A slightly better option would be to file those results with the hope to bring them out again next year to compare to the next set of results.

The best scenario, rather than filing the results away, is to do something with that data.

What we’ve found here at The Shuler Group is that the analysis of the data you get is an art in and of itself.  Asking a manager to determine what the data means – and then to design a solution – is like asking the manager of the lumber section at Home Depot to design and build a fine table out of cherry.

All data tell stories.  There are trends, nuggets of information that could be invisible to the untrained eye, and even insights that come from reading between the lines, so to speak.

If reviewing the data is simply one more to-do on a manager’s list, that valuable data isn’t going to yield all the results it could.

Our flagship product is our proprietary Company Climate Inventory, and our services go beyond simply delivering it.  First, we customize our basic 80-question survey with up to 10 unique questions for our clients, based on their current needs, and what they’re hoping to learn and achieve with the survey.  Then, after the survey has been completed by all staff and employees, we thoroughly review the data, looking for those trends, nuggets, and insights.  Because we are objective observers with more of a 360-degree view, we make suggestions that truly move the organization forward so it can be sustainable well into the future.

We have our systematic method, yet it’s a very human process.  Because this is what we do, day in and day out, we are that fine craftsman that creates meaning out of raw materials.