Employer and Employee Attitude - why most staff surveys suck and how to make them a little better

8/4/2019 Employer and Employee Attitude - why most staff surveys suck and how to make them a little better

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Employer and Employee Attitude

Why most employee surveys dont work and how (if you feelyour company must have one) you can make them a little

better

By Doug Shaw


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Introduction

I recently gave a talk to a large organisation on the subject of service leadership.The subject of employee surveys came up and I asked how many people in theaudience got to the end of their 90 question employee survey and wished therewere still more questions to answer? Id love to tell you the answer was none, butsomeone did raise their hand. It turned out this person commissioned the survey.

Objections

Further discussions with this group revealed that the large number of questionswas not the only thing putting them off having their say. Other things peopledidnt like included nested questions, questions which people couldnt make aninformed choice about (e.g. pay and reward related), and delays in making the

results available. People also felt coerced to participate, they were hounded bymanagement and often reflected this sense of coercion in their responses. Whatput people off most of all was the lack of action taken after the survey resultswere analysed and published.

Trends

A lack of action frequently caused people to comment I dont know why I botherwith this, nothing changes around here. This reaction is understandable, andwhilst working in a large telecoms company I sought to analyse survey data forthe global division over a five year period to see if people were right. Worryinglyit was extremely difficult to track down the data, but I did. The graphs on the

following page show the percentages of people strongly agreeing and disagreeingwith the following statements:

1 - I feel it is safe to speak up in the company2 - I am clear about what is expected of me in my job3 - I feel that change is well managed in this organization4 - Our systems and processes help me do my job effectively5 - The company keeps things simple

Question 1 was chosen because it linked to a sense of trust. Questions 2 and 4were good matches for the first two most important questions of the Gallup 12.Question 3 was included to see if this case was similar to lots of research showingus that low levels of engagement adversely affect change. Question 5 wasincluded as simplicity has a big impact on service.

As you can clearly see from the charts on the following page, the number ofpeople strongly agreeing with these statements was broadly unchanged,reinforcing the nothing changes feeling. Interestingly the strongly disagree datashowed a very different picture. It wasnt so much that things werent changing;they appeared to be getting worse.


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Strong Agreement

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Safe to Speakup

ClearExpectations

ChangeManaged Well

Systems &

ProcessesKeep ThingsSimple

The last two questions recorded identical scores on the strongly agree graph soonly one line is visible.

Strong Disagreement

0

5

10

15

20

25

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Safe to Speakup

ClearExpectations

Change

Managed WellSystems &Processes

Keep ThingsSimple


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Deconstruct and Reconstruct

The existing survey had 97 questions, each with 7 possible answers. Filling it inwas arduous, interpreting it was dull, and when managers received their reports,they were at best cascaded down with a request to do something to improve thescores, or just put away in a drawer. How uninspiring.

Why should we care about this? Engaged people are more profitable, thats why.Not only that, 85% of engaged employees believe they can directly, andpositively impact the customer experience. Only 42% of disengaged employeesbelieve this. Similarly, 63% of engaged employees believe they directly andpositively influence the profitability of the organisation. Only 20% of disengagedemployees believe this. The following data gathered by Towers Perrin from their2008 Global Workforce study vividly shows the powerful financial benefits to be

gained by an organisation, its people and its customers from having an engagedworkforce. We needed to act quickly in order to simplify and improve thereputation of what should be a vital tool in the organisational armoury.

Acknowledgement. Exhibit 2A and 2B Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study

We combined our own analysis and the Towers Perrin data then proposed a

radical approach to the company. We asked that the survey be reduced from 97questions to just 20, and that the number of possible responses per question bereduced from 7 to just four. That would give people a choice of 80 total possibleresponses, down from the current 679.

We gained support from the top to review and change the survey. More and morepeople were pointed our way (worth noting that whilst senior sponsorship isuseful it can also attract a lot of unwelcome interest if expectations are not clearlyset), and we were asked to include more questions. In the end we had to settleon 50, and a five point scale. This was disappointing but we had achieved a bigreduction and we gained commitment for further reviews.


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Show Me Dont Tell Me

The new survey was launched and once it closed we published the results. Fromthere we invited random groups to come together and discuss the results andhelp to write a powerful, simple proposal to senior management. In brief wegained a commitment to involve people in planning and use the results to informbusiness decision making. This was a fundamental shift away from the previousfailed attempts at specific survey based action planning (almost for the sake of it)and for the first time, we began to link the employee attitude directly to businessresults.

We created two way communications using our blog to get messages out quickly.This also had the advantage of giving us quick fire feedback rather than wait forthe next survey window to open; we could get on with priority ideas quickly. We

used a lot of you said, we did in our communications which demonstrated topeople that they were being listened too.

We encouraged people to team up, beyond the traditional sense; beyond silosand business as usual into teams who came together to make improvementsbecause they believed that was the right thing to do. We encouraged people topractice, practice, practice, and we encouraged people to be mindful of the rules,and at the same time, proceed until apprehended. We displayed these values inour work which helped the encouragement enormously. And we used a simpleimage to help us with this important communication.

This team is racing flat out. Each rider following inches behind his team mate.This high speed train functions beautifully as a result of honesty, practice, trustand attitude. And the team delivers its performance by stopping the clock as thelast rider crosses the line. Not the first, the last.


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Action

We saw some great action taking place. Here are a couple of specific examples, inaddition people came together to improve processes and deliver significantlyimproved response times for customers, and efficiencies for the business.

A small group of people came together to create and deliver a mobile phonerecycling scheme which removed hazardous waste from landfill, saved 3m overthree years, involved tens of thousands of employees and customers, and thecompany agreed to donate the net proceeds from the scheme to their chosencharity ChildLine. None of the people in this team worked together. They cametogether to meet a need.

We saw a team work with one of the companys biggest customers and engage

with the customers supplier performance management programme to deliver asustained performance improvement from 71%, the customer classed this scoreas good, to 90%, an excellent result in the customers own words. This had theeffect of pushing the company into the top 15 global suppliers to the customer forthe first time.

Conclusion

We made a few mistakes along the way. Lots of practitioners were involved withthe survey changes and we should have co-created these changes through awider consultation with employees. We should have delivered an even numberedscale for people to respond to, effectively doing away with the fence sitting

option. It feels slightly disrespectful to ask people their opinion and then givethem dont know as an option. We should have had a break from surveyingaltogether before starting with the new approach. The new survey was almostdefinitely contaminated by its past.

What did we get right? We significantly reduced the number of questions on thesurvey. We delivered survey output faster than ever before and made them easilyavailable to everyone, no secrets. People got their results quickly and were ableto play with them, analysing much more effectively and easily than before. Mostimportantly, we co-created some relevant action and we told people about it.

Survey scores improved 4% in the first six months, a small acknowledgementthat things were beginning to change.

Documents

Employer and Employee Attitude - why most staff surveys suck and how to make them a little better