Most companies regularly use the measurement tool known as a climate survey. Once a year, -sometimes every two years-, companies are immersed in a logistics that requires a good part of resources - time, money, creativity-, and that concentrates the messages that circulate in their communication system. It is a very good opportunity to strengthen formal and interpersonal channels.
When defining the application of a climate survey, a relevant decision is the communication strategy to be implemented.
It represents a budget ten times less than the survey itself, and allows the tool to be synergized by enhancing participation, quality of response, and willingness to take future calls.
In general terms, we optimize resources through a comprehensive strategy that: -is deployed before, during and after the event; -It involves appropriate channels (formal media and interpersonal relationships), -Displays clear messages both for the call and for the return of results.
Strategy in Context: Background and Leaders
With a campaign to disseminate a climate survey ahead, the first thing that we reveal in -in the initial brief- is the context, the background: it is about knowing if there were previous surveys, and what happened with the return of results. This information on prior communication tells us about the culture of the company, the place that communication occupies as a management strategy. It also tells us about its leaders. It is information that will be part of the campaign for the new survey, and the search for concepts –and tactics- to leverage for dissemination.
In many companies, the return of results is made before the first quarter of the data collection. This movement is of vital importance since it returns energy –information- to the system, after having extracted it in the survey. In other words, time and commitment were required from the employees, and the counterpart is the offer of information (beyond the fact that the action plans may lack more work time).
In other companies, due to different circumstances, the results were not communicated to the staff, or they were reported with such delay that they fell into nonsense.
In both cases (with or without a good communication record), the best strategy is to communicate. The tactic varies, as it results from the correct choice of channels and concepts for each situation. The aim is to achieve the best combination of formal means - billboards, house organ, intranet, mails - with the interpersonal communications possible in each company, according to the skills and dispositions of its leaders. In terms of content, we will try to achieve leverage concepts that respond to the real process of the company, since it is impossible to escape the circuit that refers to previous surveys and situations (the mental circuit is carried out by most of the employees).
What happens when there is no explicit information? Many times, the absence of communication is completed by the staff with partial pieces of information, coming from other sources. That is, communication -as a general strategy- begins to circulate in remote spaces, with greater difficulty in achieving the objectives set. And since there are no listening spaces, this shift is not even perceived by the leaders.
Specifically, -and regarding the climate survey-, companies find –then- little participation, high suspicion, fear, and low quality of response.
In short, the communication strategy - call, support, return of results - results in a space that can be transformed into an opportunity, although the concepts of leverage vary. The qualitative difference lies in the communication of the leaders, in the quality of their cascade, in their listening offer (skills that can well be developed as part of the strategy). It is not about doing "proselytizing" at the last minute, but about positively favoring a space for communication: that of the leaders with their reports.
Beyond the situation in front of the information –which can be more or less complex, with better or worse antecedents-, the climate survey provides a relevant agenda item to be exploited.
A space to review the formal channels, but fundamentally, one more dialogue with the reports that allows –when the skills are developed- to optimize listening and upward communication. It is - well managed - an opportunity to build fluid channels, suitable for subsequent communications.
Information survey document that details the communication objectives, the audiences, the background of the case.
