Bright Ideas by ColorVizion Lab is the go-to newsletter for people leaders transforming the talent experience. We answer the tough questions people leaders face daily—with straight talk and real solutions. Cassandra Cassillas, Senior Consultant at ColorVizion Lab, answers this week’s question.
❔How do I make engagement surveys less performative and more actionable?
Every year, companies put significant time and thought into designing employee engagement surveys. They choose questions carefully, hope to get honest feedback, and plan to act on it.
But by the time the survey hits their inbox, most employees have already tuned out. Over time, they learned a difficult truth:
Most feedback goes nowhere.
In fact, only 38 percent of people believe that change will come from sharing critical feedback and 37 percent have left a job because they felt feedback wasn’t taken seriously, according to an AllVoices survey.
When trust is gone, surveys stop feeling like an opportunity for change and start feeling like another performative gesture.
And in today’s workforce, where retention is critical, hiring has slowed, and employee confidence is fragile, that kind of disconnect is costly.
If you’re a people leader asking your employees for feedback, you’re promising them their voices matter and will help shape what happens next.
That’s why this week, we’re digging into what it takes to design surveys that don’t just collect feedback, but actually lead to meaningful action and change.
Let’s talk about it.
🚮Why most engagement surveys fail
Imagine spending 30 minutes thoughtfully filling out an engagement survey. You talk about the projects you’re proud of, the moments when your team really clicked, and the manager who helped you grow.
You’re honest about the hard stuff too: the roadblocks that never seem to get solved, the promotion that felt out of reach, the meetings where your ideas were overlooked.
You hit submit, but then… nothing. No follow-up. No acknowledgment. By the next survey, you already stop believing your feedback matters at all.
That’s how surveys lose their power.
If you want people to trust the process (and trust you), you have to do it differently. Here’s where most surveys break down:
One-and-done listening
In a fast-moving company, relying on one big annual survey is like trying to drive using last year’s map. Employee needs shift quickly and when companies only check in once a year, they miss the real-time signals that could help them adapt and retain top talent. Engagement becomes reactive instead of proactive.
Survey sprawl
Long, complicated surveys filled with dozens of questions create noise instead of clarity. Leaders are left sifting through overwhelming data without a clear focus, and employees feel like their time was wasted. When the effort to respond feels disconnected from any real impact, people lose trust in the process.
HR owns the data, but not the levers
When HR is responsible for gathering and reporting survey results but doesn’t have the authority to act on operational or cultural issues, feedback stalls. For engagement efforts to succeed, accountability needs to live across the organization, not just in HR’s hands.
Spin doctoring the results
Highlighting only the positive survey results while ignoring the hard truths damages credibility fast. Employees notice when leadership spins the narrative, and once trust is lost, it’s hard to rebuild. Transparency, which is acknowledging both the wins and the challenges, is essential to keeping the conversation real.
🎯What to keep and what to ditch in your engagement survey
Not all survey questions are created equal. Some questions open real conversations. Others just add noise or distract you from the insights that actually reveal the truth.
If you want to design a survey your employees take seriously, start by asking the right questions and letting go of the ones that don’t move the needle.
✅ Questions worth keeping
“Do you see a clear path for growth within the company?”
Employees leave their jobs when they stop seeing a future. Asking about growth clarity is one of the fastest ways to spot whether people feel invested, valued, and motivated to stay.
“Does your manager recognize and celebrate your work in a meaningful way?”
Recognition isn’t about perks or prizes, it’s about being seen. Employees who feel genuinely recognized are more likely to stay, contribute, and advocate for the company’s culture.
“Do you feel safe speaking up when something isn’t working?”
Without psychological safety, honest feedback disappears. If employees don’t feel safe raising concerns, everything else you measure will be filtered or withheld.
🚫 Questions you should retire
“Do you have a best friend at work?”
Friendships are powerful, but they can’t be forced and they don’t belong at the center of an engagement strategy. Focus instead on relationships employees can actually influence, like manager support and team collaboration.
“Do you plan to stay here for the next three years?”
If someone’s already questioning their future, the real opportunity to retain them has passed. Focus on what’s happening now that influences their decision to stay or leave.
“Is your work environment comfortable?”
Most answers to this question focus on facilities complaints (like thermostat wars), not true engagement drivers. Save survey space for what shapes the employee experience long-term.
“Does our mission inspire you?”
Mission matters, but if scores here are low, the issue runs deeper than engagement tactics. A better question is, “Do you understand how your work connects to our mission?”
💡How to get employees to take engagement surveys seriously
You can write the perfect survey and ask all the right questions but if employees don’t believe anything will come from it, they won’t engage.
At this stage, it’s about how you invite people into the process and how you prove that their input leads to something real.
Here’s what people leaders can do to build that credibility:
✅Pre-commit to action
Before the survey launches, let employees know when results will be shared and what kind of follow-up they can expect. Setting expectations up front signals that leadership is serious about turning feedback into change.
✅Win fast, and publicly
You don’t have to fix everything at once. But fixing something small, like a clunky system or broken coffee machine, within 30 days of closing the survey shows that leaders are listening and acting, not just collecting input for later.
✅Hold managers accountable
Engagement lives closest to the manager. Equip every leader with a scorecard and a dashboard of their team’s results. When improvement goals are tied to bonuses or performance reviews, managers are held accountable and action becomes a requirement, not a suggestion.
✅Tell stories, not just stats
Skip the 50-slide data decks. Instead, use “You said / We did” visuals at town halls, team meetings, or in internal comms. Employees want to see the connection between their feedback and the change that follows.
Cassandra Cassillas, Senior Consultant at ColorVizion Lab, partnered with a regional community bank that shifted employee listening from HR’s job to everyone’s job.
“They layered bite-size pulse surveys with team-led action plans and rocketed participation to 95 percent, even during a year of rapid acquisitions,” Cassandra says.
📝How to turn survey results into action, even when you’re stretched thin
Most people leaders aren’t sitting around waiting for more things to do. Between retention efforts, team dynamics, and culture priorities, it’s easy for survey results to become another to-do list.
But if you want to build trust, what happens after the survey matters just as much as the questions you ask. Here’s how to make follow-through manageable and meaningful, even when time and resources are tight:
Use an Impact × Effort matrix
Don’t try to fix everything. Prioritize two or three high-impact themes you can realistically move in the next quarter. Park the rest in a backlog for future cycles.
Assign non-HR owners
HR may facilitate the survey, but they can’t solve every problem alone. If employees cite “tooling friction,” hand it to the CTO. If meeting overload is an issue, the COO should lead that fix. Ownership needs to live where change can actually happen.
Co-create the solutions
Form small task forces of employees to design and propose fixes. When employees help shape the outcome, and execs support by clearing roadblocks, buy-in grows fast.
Work in 90-day sprints with visible checkpoints.
Don’t wait six months to report back. Track progress in executive meetings and all-hands. Close out initiatives when goals are met and celebrate the win, no matter how small.
Automate lightweight follow-ups
After implementing changes, use short 6-question pulses to track progress and flag new issues. Once a theme is truly resolved, retire it. Then move on to what’s next.
“I worked with an insurer that had a lumbering 60-question annual survey,” Cassandra says. “It was bleeding credibility, so we tore it down and launched monthly five-question pulses with 72-hour dashboards.”
Each month, a volunteer “quick-strike” squad tackled one key pain point, like redundant logins, lack of peer recognition, or meeting overload. They had 30 days to test a fix where ownership shifted out of HR and into the business, and success metrics were embedded into team OKRs.
Here were the results:
- Regrettable attrition fell from 19% to 7%
- Belonging scores jumped 18 points
- eNPS rose from +6 to +31
- Survey participation climbed to 91%
- Estimated $4M saved in turnover costs
When listening becomes a living, breathing part of how you run a company, engagement surveys are moments to reconnect, realign, and reinforce that employees are in a workplace where people are heard, valued, and supported.
That’s when engagement becomes more than a number on a dashboard. It becomes the way you lead.
📘Download our playbook and strengthen your executive presence this year
ColorVizion Lab’s People Leader’s Playbook will help you better connect with senior leaders, execute your people strategies, and prioritize your own professional development in 2025.
Download your free copy today and share it with others in your organization.
📰 Story of the week: If AI screens candidates, who’s assessing their soft skills?
A new report from The Harris Poll and Insight Global found that nearly half of job seekers would be less likely to apply to a company that uses generative AI in the hiring process. If companies aren’t careful, they may speed up hiring, and miss the very traits that build strong teams.
When algorithms take the lead, what happens to the human moments that reveal a candidate’s attitude, resilience, or values? Read the full story here.
📢Is your engagement survey actually leading to change?
Every survey is a chance to listen better, act faster, and strengthen the connection between your people and your culture.
At ColorVizion Lab, we help organizations design smarter surveys, decode the data, and turn feedback into real, visible action.
🛠️Learn more about our services
📘Download the People Leader’s Playbook
