The following best practices can guide a CEO through the other key steps in successfully engaging employees:

Prioritize: While CEOs learn of many issues during an employee feedback process, it is advisable to choose "big bets" (three to five actions with the greatest impact) and focus time and resources accordingly. This way, the organization can plan for such actions and have the capacity to deliver. Key driver and strategic priority analyses can reveal the greatest leverage points across various key outcomes, such as retention, customer service and productivity. These analyses can ensure that the CEO does not focus on the wrong set of issues.
Gain leadership commitment: One of the main determinants of a highly engaged workforce is to have highly engaged leaders. Therefore, engaging leaders must be a central part of a company's engagement strategy. If your leaders are not engaged, how can you expect them to engage their subordinates?
Ensure engagement is on the CEO agenda: The best way to generate momentum and ensure follow through when designing a successful employee engagement strategy is to put it on the CEO's agenda. If the CEO does not commit up front to owning and driving the employee-engagement strategy, the chances of creating one that lasts are greatly diminished.
Gain employee buy-in: While actions following feedback are typically leader led, successful execution depends on employee participation. By incorporating employees in action planning, there is greater likelihood that those actions will resonate throughout the organization and gain momentum. In Good to Great, Jim Collins suggests that openly engaging with employees through dialogue, debate and "brutal facts" helps to create more sustainable corporate performance over time.
Create organizational linkages: Because employee feedback concerns the entire organization, it is vital to integrate action planning into the various organizational systems and processes that it affects, including leadership alignment, training, performance management, recognition and rewards, culture and communication. In this way, actions taken can be communicated consistently and in a way that sticks. Without proper branding, feedback-related actions will get lost in the shuffle among other priorities or day-to-day activities, and employees will fail to see the link between their input and organizational actions.
Monitor progress and adjust: Plan "pulse checks" to gauge progress over time, and take action accordingly. These checks serve critical functions: (1) actions remain visible across the organization; (2) accountability is increased; (3) best practices can be shared across the organization; and (4) action plans can be adjusted in accordance with changing employee/organizational needs and priorities.

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