Annual Crew Survey
What is your crew thinking? What do they want to do?
That’s important to know!
Every year right after the holidays, I send out a digital, fillable form and annual crew survey. It’s a list of questions I’ve gathered from mentors over the years about what you want to find out from your people to better help plan the next year based on their challenges, recommendations and goals. It is sooooooo interesting to get their insight. Especially if you are removed from the daily activities or the front line interacting directly with your customers.
It provides different perspectives other than your own which is powerful. You can keep this private or in my case, I let them know that this will be shared with the management team. If you do plan to share, make sure that you create a safe environment first where they know their ideas are openly welcomed and their criticism too. That they will not be penalized for their honesty, but will be honored for their courage to share truth.
Here are some of the questions I ask:
What specifically went well this Christmas that you are happy about?
What specifically do you think we can improve on for next Christmas?
What do you think we did well together as a company in 2022? Anything you want us to do again?
What do you feel personally most proud about that YOU learned/accomplished in 2022?
What lesson(s) did you learn in 2022? Professionally and or personally.
What would you like to see improvements in for 2023?
What products/flavors/experiences/events/collaboration partnerships etc would you like to see us try in 2023 and why?
What kind of professional development or training are you interested in?
How else would you like to be recognized and rewarded for your results?
If you were in my position what would you do differently?
Anything else you'd like to share?
Some of these questions are very generic and that’s because I just want them to write whatever comes to mind. Whatever they are thinking as it’s fresh in their head. Though we meet monthly and have strategic meetings about 1x per year to a just if needed, this catch all general survey helps me to help us shift if we need to make major changes for the upcoming year. It also gives the team hope that things they did well are recognized and repeated and the things that they struggled with, we can look at changing, and the things they want to try, really do get implemented.
So get excited for 2023! A lot of what will be happening at Choco le`a is coming from their hearts!
erin’s tip
Listen to your people. Google Forms makes this easy to do. Don’t wait. You’ll want to hear what they have to say and then implement what you can together.
