Getting More Out of Employee Surveys
Many companies have made employee surveys a standard business practice. However, managers and employees are often skeptical about how valuable those surveys are. From employees we hear: “They ask us the same questions every year, but nothing happens”. We hear managers inquire “How we can freshen up the survey to make it more useful?” After 25 years of experience helping organizations create surveys and deliver feedback, we offer ten insights that may enable you to improve your company’s employee survey and provide a better return on the resources invested in the process.
1. Link results to outcomes. Our work in a variety of organizations reveals strong relationships between employee survey results and other organizational outcomes such as profitability, customer satisfaction, turnover, and productivity. These linkage studies help to answer the question, “Are positive survey results related to, or correlated with business success?” In companies where linkage studies have been done, there is an increased enthusiasm and commitment toward the employee survey effort. The reason is that people don’t mind doing something that has a proven tangible benefit. However, they hate busy work with no discernable relevance. While linkage studies are easier in some organizations than in others, we strongly encourage all companies to consider doing some linkage research.
The graph below shows the results of a study demonstrating a link between a critical safety measure and employee survey results in one company. This study looked at reported safety incidents (RIR) in a variety of different plants, and found that less safe conditions (higher RIR) were related to less positive employee survey results. Likewise, safer conditions (lower RIR) were associated with more positive survey results.
Survey details can also provide insights into what activities are most likely to help in creating a positive change.
An oil company was concerned about the turnover of professionals. In discussions managers argued that the only reason why people were leaving was their pay and the only way to retain good performers was to increase their pay. While it was clear the compensation was a motivating factor, they turned to the employee survey results to understand what other factors were influencing retention. The analysis of data showed the top three factors were, 1) pride in the company, 2) recognition, and 3), a clear career path. These results provide a different perspective on employee retention planning. While compensation matters, employees might leave in spite of the increased pay if the company ignores other less tangible elements of organizational life such as opportunity, recognition, and reputation.
Joe Folkman, President
Would you like to know more? To receive the full article, Getting More Out of Employee Surveys: 10 High Leverage Steps, click here
|
More From Our Thought Leaders |
July 2007
Appreciative Inquiry as an Approach to Leadership Development
The practice of appreciative inquiry has gained attention and interest over the last few years as a way to examine and learn from past experiences and leverage the things that went well in those experiences. For many, this concept of looking at what went right is different from the more familiar or common practice of fixing what went wrong.
Imagine what might happen if organizations focusing on improving their customer service took this approach. If organizations were to ask their dissatisfied customers “what could we improve?” the inquiry would undoubtedly yield a list of items to fix. However, these same organizations would likely receive an entirely different list of items if they were to interview their most satisfied customers and ask them what the company was doing to delight them. What if the company did more “right” things, rather than putting all of their efforts into “fixing” the things that aren’t perfect?
Now let’s connect this practice of looking for what has worked well—and leveraging those areas—to leadership development. If leaders were to seek a list of areas for improvement, they would likely find a plethora of items where they could focus their attention. However, if leaders instead were to study their greatest successes and determine what could be leveraged from these experiences, their actions would likely be very different.
Think about the best leaders you have ever worked for. Did they have weaknesses to improve? Of course. However, the best leaders we’ve studied also have profound strengths. In fact, it is because they identify and leverage their strengths that they are so successful. The other thing we’ve discovered is that extraordinary leaders aren’t great at everything. Extraordinary leaders tend to exhibit 4 – 5 competencies at the 90th percentile when compared to others. If these leaders were to take their weaknesses and improve, they would likely not reach the 90th percentile. However, if these leaders take their relative strengths and leverage them further, they have a chance of being extremely good in those areas. The lesson? Moving from “good” to “great” requires focusing on what we are already doing well. Let’s apply the appreciative inquiry approach to our leadership development efforts, recognizing the best in what we do, and building upon those successes.
Kathleen Stinnett, MCC
June 2007
The Extraordinary Leader Meets Positive Psychology
I recently became more aware of a powerful movement in the world of psychology. “Positive psychology” is a movement led by Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He successfully challenged the past decades of psychological theory and research and turned them upside down. Seligman argued that psychology had succeeded in helping people to feel “less bad”, but hasn’t done much to help them feel good. His work has recently migrated to the business world and is now being championed by the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan.
What excited me about this work was the obvious link to our research on extraordinary leaders. Quite independently we concluded that much of leadership development had focused on leaders being “less bad”, but really hadn’t set the target for them being extremely good. Most of development invariably focused on discovering people’s weaknesses and then trying to find way to remedy those faults. It reminds me of my wife’s reluctance to see her physician. “He’s always trying to find something wrong with me,” is her lament.
By helping people to identify their strengths and providing creative new ways to work on strength development we appear to be in complete harmony with this well-researched and strong new current in the psychological world.
Seligman’s research confirms the incredible benefits of focusing on the positive side of the equation. It proves that people are happier, more optimistic and actually a good deal healthier physically when they set a lofty positive target versus attempting to chip away at something they aren’t very good at.
Jack Zenger
