How To Interpret Employee Engagement Survey Results In 5 Easy Steps

Everyone in HR knows they should run employee engagement surveys, but many struggle to know what to do with them afterwards. And if you don’t do anything with your engagement survey results, there’s not much point in doing the surveys in the first place.

In fact, running an employee engagement survey and doing nothing on the other side of it is likely to do your business more harm than good.

So what should you be doing with your employee survey results?

As a Senior and Talent People Partner at Charlie, I use employee surveys to drive meaningful change. Our employee engagement survey results help me identify areas for improvement and evidence the need to create or update people processes and policies.

These employee survey results come from two main channels:

• A yearly engagement survey to assess alignment on company values, mission, workload, and overall employee experience
• Monthly engagement polls to track motivation and time effectiveness, allowing us to monitor trends over time.

When you know how to interpret employee engagement survey results, you avoid it becoming a tick-box exercise for both you and your team. And knowing what to do with your employee survey results will demonstrate that you genuinely want to listen and act on feedback from your employees — which is ultimately the most important part of the whole exercise.

To help you do this, I’ve broken down employee engagement survey analysis into straightforward steps. All you need to do is follow them.

Why employee engagement survey results matter

Many new business owners make the mistake of thinking of the survey as the end result, when it’s actually just the first step — it’s what you do with your employee engagement survey results that really counts. 

But don’t let that overwhelm you, as you can break this action into three chunks:

• Analysing employee engagement survey results 
• Communicating employee engagement survey results
• Interpreting employee engagement survey results

A lot about analysing, communicating and interpreting employee engagement survey results is common sense, but in the busy world of small business having some steps to follow means you won’t accidentally miss anything important.

Let’s look at why we need to do this, before getting into the nitty gritty of how.

Analysing employee engagement survey results

Analysis often gets missed in many aspects of work. We make space for the doing, but often forget to set aside time for reviewing what we’ve done. But analysing your employee survey results has to be the first step. This is because:

• You can look for trends (both good and bad)
• You can spot inconsistencies (is one team having a different experience to another, for example?)
• You can start to understand what to do next (and why).

Communicating employee engagement survey results

Before, during, and after an employee engagement survey, it’s vital to communicate with your team.

• You want them to feel appreciated
• You want them to feel informed
• You want everyone to understand what the survey’s for (and why it’s worth their time).

A successful employee engagement survey needs to feel meaningful and worthwhile to those involved, so set the scene early to help your employees understand that their feedback matters (and that you plan to do something with it!).

The survey’s about them, after all.

Interpreting employee engagement survey results

Interpreting employee engagement survey results is the most common stumbling block and where many stall altogether — they’re not sure what to do or what exactly they’re looking for.

But interpreting your employee survey results will help you:

• Create and nurture a culture of open feedback
• Celebrate the good, and use anything negative to inform positive change 
• Avoid your team becoming disillusioned — they want to know that something’s being done in response to what they’ve said.

The good news is that you don’t have to figure out how to interpret employee engagement survey results on your own — because we’re here to help with that. 

Employee engagement survey analysis: 5 step guide for small businesses

And here’s how! Our five step guide will show you how to interpret employee engagement survey results:

1. Collecting and organising responses

This is how we run our employee engagement surveys at Charlie. You are welcome to do the same:

• We launch monthly and annual surveys directly through Charlie, using a mix of rateable 5-point scale and free text questions.
• We allow three weeks for the completion of each survey.
• We segment the data to help spot department-specific trends, breaking it down by tenure and department.
• We provide an option for anonymous feedback, but our employees can also choose to share their names, allowing for any individual follow up.

As we consistently conduct employee surveys at Charlie, we have an average response rate of 95%. You could achieve this too if you adopt the same regular approach. (But if you employ over 200 employees, aim for a lower response rate of 80%.)

2. Identifying trends and patterns

This is how we begin all of our employee engagement survey analysis:

• Quantitative vs. qualitative data
  
  • We look for data patterns to identify any urgent concerns that need immediate attention.
  • We highlight positive trends to celebrate wins and maintain momentum.
  • We pay particular attention to neutral responses, as they might indicate uncertainty around important topics like salary decisions or company objectives (and a lack of clarity can lead to disengagement or attrition).
    
    
• Benchmarking against past surveys or industry standards
  
  • We compare results year-over-year to identify areas of progress or decline.
  • We track trends to ensure that any improvements are sustained over time.
  • We stay informed about industry benchmarks (like Employee Net Promoter Scores) and include these in our analysis wherever relevant.
    

3. Spotting areas for improvement

One really important part of employee engagement survey analysis is being able to spot what you need to improve on:

• Identify gaps between expectations and reality
  
  • Neutral responses shouldn’t be ignored. A high number of neutral responses to one or more questions could indicate miscommunication or lack of clarity.
  • Following up (through focus groups or one-on-one conversations, for example) can uncover the root cause and help to guide any corrective action.
    
    
• Pinpoint the departments or employee groups that need attention
  
  • Through department-level insights - for example, at Charlie we identified that some of our teams were overworked, which prompted discussions with managers to find solutions.
  • Through tenure-based insights - long-term employees might be less engaged than newer hires, for example (making it essential to proactively address their concerns before they consider leaving).
    
    
• Recognise strengths (to maintain and build on)
  
  • Ensuring that any successful initiatives continue to receive investment and attention.

4. ‍Communicating employee engagement survey results

Sharing employee engagement survey results is really important, but is often overlooked because of a lack of confidence or knowledge about how best to communicate them:

• Share results transparently
  
  • Your employees should always receive honest updates, even if some feedback is challenging.
  • The only exception is if the data could potentially identify individuals (particularly in smaller teams).
    
    
• Frame negative feedback constructively
  
  • Negative feedback is valuable when approached with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
  • Encouraging open discussions fosters trust from your team and a culture of continuous improvement.
    
    
• Encourage dialogue and feedback loops
  
  • Engaging managers and their teams in conversations about key issues.
  • Normalising sharing feedback through surveys and other avenues.
    
    

5. Taking action on insights

Without action, employee survey results are pretty much meaningless. So the final step is all about what you do with your employee engagement survey results:

• Create an action plan
  
  • At Charlie, I select two key areas from the survey results to focus on every year.
  • Examples might include improving retention in the development team or introducing a clearer career progression framework.
    
    
• Assign accountability and set timelines
  
  • Goals should involve managers and their teams, ensuring shared responsibility.
  • Setting clear timelines prevents survey feedback from being ignored or deprioritised.
  • Taking action is essential — if employees don’t see follow-through, surveys risk becoming empty gestures.
    
    
• Follow up with your employees to show progress
  
  • Regular updates and presentations keep your team informed of the impact of their feedback.
  • If you also run monthly engagement polls, track score improvements over time to help measure success.

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Employee engagement survey analysis with Charlie

If you use Charlie for your surveys, you’ll be able to quickly and easily analyse employee engagement survey results straight from your Charlie dashboard.

The dashboard displays your latest employee survey results as a visualisation, so you can see your team’s feedback at a glance. (You can also export the full results to use in communications, presentations or reports.)

Over time, you’ll build up a bank of feedback and be able to compare past and recent employee survey results to measure how happy and engaged your team is — and how this has changed, or is changing, over time.

As a result, the decisions you make and the actions you take will be based directly on your own employee data. You’ll be able to communicate this back to your team and demonstrate that their feedback really matters.

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