Introduction
Sapling helps you visualize the “hidden org chart” in your company through the use of organizational network analysis (ONA). This article explains how you can use Sapling Surveys and an ONA visualization and analysis tool like kumu.io to start exploring your working relationship networks.
Before getting started, check out our Sapling Surveys help article or our Organizational Network Analysis Playbook.
*note: We’ll assume your company is leveraging Sapling Surveys and already has an account on kumu.io for the remainder of this article. IMPORTANT: if you want your data to stay private, you’ll need a paid subscription for kumu.io.
In this article we’ll cover:
Gathering data with an ONA survey in Sapling
Structuring your survey results
Visualizing and analyzing your data in kumu.io
Gathering data with an ONA survey in Sapling
Navigate from Home > Workflows
Create a new workflow in the Other category
Add a survey-type task to the workflow, selecting the Organizational Network Analysis survey
Click Save
5. Assign the survey task to your entire company or the subset you want to include in the analysis
6. Once the results are in (keep in mind you should aim for high response rates in the 75%+ range for effective ONA surveys), navigate to Reports > Surveys
7. Create a new report based on the Organizational Network Analysis survey and open the completed results to a Google Sheet (CSV also works)
8. Finally, also open the results of a report that includes any of your team member demographics you’d like to include in the analysis (at minimum, name and email address, but also fields like Department, Location, Manager, and Hire Date could be useful)
Structuring your survey results
You’ll end up creating a single Google Sheet (or CSV file) with two sections:
A list of your team members (called Elements)
A list of your ONA results (called Connections)
Follow the guidance from kumu.io here to structure your Sapling data to be ready for import or connection to your kumu.io project.
Visualizing and analyzing your data in kumu.io
Depending on the number of team members you’re analyzing, you’ll likely want to use either the Stakeholder template or the Big data template when creating your kumu.io project
Connect (or import) your structured Sapling data to form the basis of your Elements and Connections in your project
Kumu.io will automatically visualize your data
Run a series of pre-built Metrics or make other data and styling changes to your project
Finally, complete your own analysis of the data for sharing or building an action plan for your company
Optionally, if your data is safe for viewing by others in your company, you could add a link to the kumu.io project to your Company Links in Sapling for easy access