Leapfrog's 2013 Employee Comms in Employee Engagement survey is now open

This is another cross-posting from insideleapfrog.com, my relatively new business blog. However, I still get traffic to this site, so it's worthwhile posting the information here too. However, the results/follow-up will be posted on insideleapfrog.com.

Two years ago I ran Leapfrog's first survey for Employee Communicators looking at their role in Employee Engagement. Now it's well nigh time to run the survey again to see what, if anything, has changed. So, if you're involved in employee communications, why not grab a coffee and fill in this year's survey.

The last survey drew responses from the UK, US, Canada, Australia and much of continental Europe. Can we spread the EC in EE word wider this time round?

The survey will run for the next two weeks and I'll publish the results before the end of the month.

The key findings from 2011 were:

Over 40% of respondents told us their organisation still had no engagement strategy

11% of respondents stated that Employee Communications was solely responsible for engagement in their organisation while a further 72.2% said they had a defined role in their engagement strategy/process and/or activities

More than a third of respondents' organisations really didn't see a difference between communication and engagement, while a further 25% were firmly on the fence

HR was still the primary owner of 'engagement' and the most popular home for the day-to-day management and delivery of the engagement agenda

Employee communications was playing a leading role as a contributor to the development of the engagement strategy in organisations

Just over half of all respondents considered their workforces to be relatively engaged (scoring 7+); but 36% stated their workforces remained largely disengaged with their employer

Electronic tools dominated the employee communicator's toolkit; with email and intranets virtually ubiquitous. Face to face communication was regarded as vital - but print appeared in decline

Social media was a planned part of the communication mix in more than 70% of respondents' organisations

The most effective employee communication tools in delivering the engagement agenda ranked as:

1. Face to face meetings (four times more popular than any other suggestion)
2. Communication Champions
3. Line managers
4. Intranet
5. Annual engagement survey

The top three factors that would make the greatest beneficial difference to the role of Employee Communication in organisations' employee engagement came out as:

1. A joined-up approach across functions
2. Effective line management support
3. Active buy-in from the CEO/Top Team

So, have we evolved in the past two years? Are we still locked in the world of email? Has print finally disappeared? Fill in the survey and make sure your voice is heard.