There are few concepts in organization development that run as hot and cold as the employee survey. Many organizations try them for a year or two then drop them. Why is this? This article discusses some of the potential problems with such surveys. Some we can avoid and some we just have to live with if we are to reap the benefits.

Many years ago, a senior consultant with over 30 years experience said to me, “You know in tough economic times, the only thing that’s cut from the budget faster than management development is an employee survey. And the reason is that many managers don’t think they’re worth the aggravation.”

Looking back now after managing dozens of employee surveys, I must admit that his sweeping statement had some validity. I’ve carried out employee surveys for clients who were determined to do them every year come what may. Then, after a year or two, they’ve been discontinued, sometimes for cost reasons, sometimes for other reasons less clear. Most of my consulting colleagues have similar experiences, and it seems rare (but not unheard of) for a client to continue the survey year after year.

In looking back at my own experiences, and talking to colleagues and clients I’ve come up with a list of points that anyone thinking about initiating an employee survey should take into consideration. Some address issues that are easily managed. Others are in the nature of the beast, that we should expect if we choose to go the survey route.

1. Conducting surveys for the wrong reasons:

• Communication: It’s very tempting to use a survey purely to give employees a chance to speak their minds. Communication is good isn’t it? Yes, however, when employees tell you what they think, they expect to see something done about it. So if you ask questions about their satisfaction with pay (something we seldom do in our surveys) they expect you to do something about it (when, as you might expect, they tell you they want more). In an employee survey ask questions about those issues on which you’ll be willing to take action. If there are issues such as “pay” that are causing major dissatisfaction, let employees write them in a “comments” section at the end.
• Motivating Employees: One thing you should realize before you make a commitment to conduct a survey is that employee satisfaction isn’t the same as either employee motivation or employee productivity. There is a correlation, but many of the important satisfiers, do nothing to motivate employees, and can sometimes act to decrease productivity.
• Executive Vanity Exercise: Executives are sometimes drawn to the idea of a survey in order to get feedback about what a great job they’re doing. Most are disappointed (which may partly explain why surveys don’t have long organizational lives). Employees, particularly those in larger organizations tend not to have a high regard for senior leaders. This is mitigated by the fact that they don’t really know who is responsible for many of the decisions that directly affect their working lives. In focus groups, I’ve heard senior executives blamed for local management decisions, and vice versa. When you ask many employees, especially those in field locations who they see as senior management, they say “whoever it is that’s making these dumb decisions.”

2. These survey results present more questions than answers:
Whenever I bid on a survey project, I tell the client that after the survey they should anticipate doing focus groups in order to give them more detail. Surveys are great at giving general information about things employees see as problems. But they seldom give enough information to identify the causes of specific issues and to generate solutions to perceived problems. Having said that, there are several other issues that are manageable that may give you more valuable information. Here are a few.

• Beware of low response rates: Obtaining a decent response rate has always been a challenge when conducting employee surveys. However, since the popularity of on-line surveys, it has become more pronounced. It’s a bit of a mystery why companies will insist on using online surveys, getting a low response rate, and using the results to form action plans. Similarly knowledgeable vendors of surveys will tell clients that a response rate of 30% is acceptable, when they know it isn’t. Think about it! Who are the thirty percent? Are they the employees who are already committed to the organization? Are they the ones who want to complain? A combination of the two? Who knows? But they certainly aren’t representative of your employee population. There are ways to get a good response rate. They take more time and effort, but are worth it.
• We don’t trust you: I never cease to be amazed, even in organizations in which employees have little reason not to trust management, how low trust contributes to low response rate. Even more troublesome, low trust leads to employees giving exaggerated positive responses, “just in case someone can identify that I made this comment”. The key here is to guarantee anonymity. Particularly during the first couple of surveys, you must take every step possible to convince employees that no one (either within the organization or the company conducting the survey) can make this link. Many employees, who haven’t completed these surveys in the past, will not trust, Human Resources, and they won’t trust the “reputable company conducting the survey for us”. If they don’t believe their responses are totally confidential then it will have an adverse effect on the response rate and you’ll never know the extent to which it skews survey results.
• What does this number mean? Whenever I conduct a survey for a client, I’m very clear in my own mind how I’ll add value. Certainly I can advise on practical issues such as format and methodology. But the greatest value added is my ability to help interpret the results. Based on experience with literally hundreds of surveys, I can give some context to the numbers and lead management to cost effective action plans. With the advent of easily accessible on-line surveys, companies can do nearly everything in-house, but they miss that experienced voice in helping interpret the numbers.
• Can we make the survey one page? The key to designing surveys is to make them efficient as possible. We want questions that don’t overlap with others, questions that cover all relevant topics and a survey brief enough so that the response rate and the quality of the data are not compromised. I’ve often been asked if we can keep a survey to a single page. The answer of course is yes. In fact you can make it one question; “How satisfied are you with your employment here at XYZ?” The issue is, will one question or one page give you the information you need to meet your objectives? Seldom in my experience can the most effective survey be accommodated in one page. It’s a simple rule of thumb. The more information you get, the more likely you are to identify specific issues and ideas for resolution. Start out without a limit on survey length, identify the major issues, and then ensure all questions are adding value to the survey. You’ll usually find that the survey length is more than one page but no more than three.

3. After 2/3/4 Surveys, nothing has changed!   The perception that nothing has changed, despite repeated surveys is the most common reason why surveys are seen to fail. It is also an issue that is impossible to avoid completely, although it can be mitigated. Here are two reasons why this perception is so prevalent.

• Employee expectations: It is important to keep in mind that employee opinions about work are a function of the gap between what they expect from work and what they perceive they’re receiving. Therefore low satisfaction means their expectations are higher than their perceptions of current reality. High satisfaction is the opposite. Therefore it follows that low satisfaction is the result of either unrealistic expectations or truly unfair treatment. And in a surprising number of occasions it is an issue of unrealistic employee expectations. I can think of one example of a very dissatisfied group of government employees. When the root cause of their dissatisfaction was investigated in focus groups, it became quite clear that their low job satisfaction was because their employee representatives had unsuccessfully lobbied for a four day week, (they currently worked a 9 day fortnight)). Many would consider that expectation to be unrealistic, but to the employees it was their perception of reality, and resulted in a negative “halo effect” which impacted their overall job satisfaction.
• Management Expectations: In many cases management believe that they are making changes, and for some reason appreciation of these changes isn’t reflected in subsequent surveys. Usually the reason for this is that the type of change most often expected by employees is not the fine tuning of a few issues. It is in fact a total overhaul of the organization’s culture. The most commonly desired new culture is one where employees feel truly valued and respected by their managers at every level. If the current culture approaches this, then fine tuning may suffice. But in most large companies whose culture cannot be described in this way, management must realize that, in order to improve employee satisfaction, they must embark on a long difficult journey of cultural change. (This is where one most often hears the comment “are these surveys worth the trouble.”)

Our conclusion to this article will reflect the question asked in the title; are employee surveys worth the trouble? The answer is one that could be a template for an answer to this question about any organizational initiative. If expectations are realistic; if the company is willing to do it properly; if you are in it for the long haul; then yes, it can be worth it. If the answer to any of this three prerequisites is no, then you would be advised to think twice before you do it.

For more information contact Bob Power