Survey says
It seems every company I've worked for likes to give employee surveys in the spring. Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly mind. I firmly believe that people and organizations can't fix what they don't know is wrong, but I do think that some surveys are more effective than others.
While surveys can be an integral method of compiling data about employee satisfaction, procedural issues and areas where corporate culture can be fleshed out, they can also be seen as time-bandits if they aren't executed properly.
Often in my participation in surveys with larger companies, I've been asked a number of questions about satisfaction, perception of morale, what could be improved and personal views of the overall organization. The problem was that they would ask in multiple choice format, with the standard zero (never) through five (always) as options. This leads to many employees believing that these surveys were wasting time because they never asked questions with specific answers, nor was there a place for open comments.
If your organization is thinking about engaging in a survey, co-operating with a number of groups that work together to create the survey can be an ideal method to implement change and encourage participation. Working together, you can determine the types of questions that will get to the root of what you are trying to discover. Regardless of whether you're trying to determine employee satisfaction, develop a common ground from which you can measure progress, or determine how change has impacted an organization, once you've decided that a survey is the ideal method of compiling this information you then need to focus on specifics.
Once you've determined what you want to know and you've formulated the questions, it's a good idea to test the survey on a pilot group. This would be a group that, in general, would be indicative of the larger group of survey respondents.
In an attempt to promote privacy, most companies prefer to have surveys conducted via telephone, internet or mail. The problem with this is that most respondents won't answer if you make the process difficult. Creating a survey that is fast, user-friendly and requires minimal effort on behalf of the respondents will help ensure maximum participation.
Once your survey has been completed, you then need to assess the results. Along with attaining a 100 per cent participation rate, this can be the hardest part of conducting a survey. In one of my jobs, one team was so dissatisfied with their manager that they answered 0 to every question. When the results came in, dismally lower than the previous year, senior management were perplexed. They had not believed that morale was so low. Morale wasn't so low; however, if there had been questions on the survey relating to specific managers, the survey might have helped management understand the real issue.
Furthermore, providing an opportunity for employees to express themselves anonymously will go far towards helping you determine the issues, as well as come up with solutions. We would always review our surveys in a room with our co-workers, managers, and senior managers. While we were encouraged to respond in an open fashion, most people remained silent. Despite discussing areas that obviously meant a lot to the staff, no one would speak for fear of being branded as a troublemaker by their supervisor. Therefore, providing on the survey an area for anonymous feedback, combined with the multiple choice questions, may help you get better results from your employee surveys.
Ultimately, working with your employees to implement change and progress is the best way to go.
However, open communication is vital to this being successful. With the help of a well-formulated survey you can open up two-way dialogue and get results that everyone can measure and be proud of.
Sara Ritchie has worked for the past 10 years in the finance industry in Saint John, Montreal and Toronto. She can be reached at sarathewriter@gmail.com. Her column appears on Saturdays.
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