CPM Employee Engagement Survey Action 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An engagement survey reveals that remote employees score significantly lower on 'sense of belonging' than office employees. The manager's action plan should:
- Require remote employees to come into the office more frequently
- Design targeted connection initiatives specifically for the remote employee experience (Correct answer)
- Note the gap in the report and address it in next year's survey cycle
- Combine remote and office scores to avoid creating subgroup divisions
Correct answer: Design targeted connection initiatives specifically for the remote employee experience
Subgroup analysis reveals experience gaps that averaged scores hide, and targeted interventions address the specific barriers remote employees face in feeling included.
Question 2: What role should employees play in developing the engagement survey action plan?
- None — managers are accountable and should create the plan independently
- Advisory only — employees can suggest but managers decide without their input
- Active co-creators who help identify root causes and shape solutions (Correct answer)
- Approvers who must sign off on every proposed action before it moves forward
Correct answer: Active co-creators who help identify root causes and shape solutions
Involving employees as co-creators increases buy-in, surfaces root causes managers might miss, and builds shared ownership of outcomes.
Question 3: A manager notices that engagement scores have been flat for three consecutive years despite annual action planning. The BEST response is to:
- Discontinue the survey since it is not producing results
- Accept that some teams have a stable low engagement baseline
- Examine whether past action plans addressed root causes or only surface symptoms (Correct answer)
- Increase the frequency of surveys to collect more data
Correct answer: Examine whether past action plans addressed root causes or only surface symptoms
Persistent flat scores typically indicate that prior actions addressed symptoms rather than underlying systemic issues, requiring deeper root-cause analysis.
Question 4: Which metric best indicates that an engagement survey action plan is producing results BETWEEN survey cycles?
- Number of action items listed on the plan
- Observable changes in team behaviors, retention rates, and pulse survey scores (Correct answer)
- Number of emails sent to employees about the action plan
- The speed with which the action plan was completed after survey results were released
Correct answer: Observable changes in team behaviors, retention rates, and pulse survey scores
Behavioral changes, retention improvements, and pulse survey scores provide real-time evidence that actions are moving the needle on engagement before the next formal survey.
Question 5: A team member who participated in the engagement survey later tells the manager they don't believe the survey is confidential. How should the manager respond?
- Assure them confidentiality is guaranteed and explain the data aggregation process (Correct answer)
- Ask them to identify which responses they submitted to investigate the concern
- Dismiss the concern since survey confidentiality is a standard HR policy
- Offer to exclude their responses from the results going forward
Correct answer: Assure them confidentiality is guaranteed and explain the data aggregation process
Explaining how data is aggregated and why individual responses cannot be traced directly addresses the confidentiality concern and rebuilds trust in the process.
Question 6: A manager's action plan commits to 'improving communication.' Why is this a poorly written action item?
- Communication is not a valid engagement survey theme
- It lacks specificity, measurability, and a defined owner or timeline (Correct answer)
- It requires executive sponsorship to be actionable
- Communication improvements are HR's responsibility, not the manager's
Correct answer: It lacks specificity, measurability, and a defined owner or timeline
Effective action items must be specific, measurable, assigned to an owner, and time-bound — vague commitments like 'improve communication' cannot be tracked or evaluated.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes the purpose of a pulse survey in the context of engagement action planning?
- To replace the annual engagement survey entirely
- To check progress on action plan themes between full survey cycles (Correct answer)
- To identify which employees responded negatively to the annual survey
- To measure customer satisfaction in parallel with employee satisfaction
Correct answer: To check progress on action plan themes between full survey cycles
Pulse surveys are short, frequent check-ins that allow managers to monitor whether action plan interventions are shifting sentiment before the next annual survey.
CPM Employee Engagement Survey Action 3
An engagement survey reveals that remote employees score significantly lower on 'sense of belonging' than office employees.
The manager's action plan should: