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What Successes Have You Had With Employee Surveys?
What have you done with employee surveys to make them more productive and useful? Share your successes here:
Views: 421
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Herrett on -
Employee Surveys are most effective when actionable data results. Surveys in and of themselves will never be effective. Management must take the data and turn it into action. When taking surveys, only 35% of employees believe the survey will result in change. If employees do not think their opinions will make a difference, they are less likely to take the survey, or even answer it honestly. It is important to take action following the survey, and make it known that the action you are taking is a direct result of the survey.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Carleton on
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Follow best practices when designing surveys. Here's a few:
-Have an intro message, explain what the data will be used for and how they can get a copy of the final aggregate data; tell people their response is important.
-Have a confidentiality agreement as part of the sign-on
-Include a WIIFM for completion (compliance with request) - e.g. draw for a small incentive prize for respondents (e.g. $20 Starbucks card etc) for completing the survey (too small or inappropriate and it won't have appeal, too big and you will have people fill it out for the wrong reasons or enter more than once)
-Thank respondents for their time to complete and reiterate how they can learn more about results or if they have questions.
-Use Qualtrics - high quality, varied question format, analysis included, e-survey tool. Survey Monkey (free version) allows for 200 free respondents but is seen as cheap and data is stored in the cloud (government does not like)
-Balance quantitative and qualitative questions; make demographic ones easy and have at the end when people are tired.
-Test questions with similar people to your group to get feedback on clarity - revise accordingly to improve. No double-barrelled questions, avoid negatively phrased questions (e.g. "when would you NOT...")
-Download Survey Monkey's free guide to survey design best practices; it's actually quite good.
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Permalink Reply by Terence Traut on
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Melissa and Karen are dead on with their comments. The purpose of the survey is to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. If there is no perceived change, the power of the survey is lost AND the next time you ask people to take the time, they'll opt out.
We develop training around the surveys. For example, one of our clients has five leadership comptency areas but wants to focus on only three. The survey we create includes all five areas but has more detail in the three focus areas. The survey results are shared in training where we provide leaders the tools/models they need to improve in those areas.
Most importantly, the training concludes with three key action items:
1) Identify specifically how/who/when you will apply the techniques and what outcome you hope for.
2) Declare when and how you will share your survey results with your team (and what you intend to do with the results).
3) Declare when you're going to meet with YOUR manager to discuss the survey results, the skills learned in training, and your plan for implementing skills that will help you improve the results.
We tell participants that simply acting on the survey results isn't enough; team members sometimes don't pick up on the subtle changes you're making. You MUST share the results!
Terry Traut, Entelechy Inc.
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Permalink Reply by JACQUELINE M. WALTERS on
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Terence, thank you for your detailed explaination. It appears as if every one has a different concept, for the purpose of surveys.
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Permalink Reply by Rey Carr on
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I like all the suggestions for improving the quality of surveys and ensuring that the results are put into action. But there is one key element missing in the discussion so far as well as the TM article, The Problem with Employee Surveys. No one has mentioned the importance of sampling or to what degree the survey responses represent the views (attitudes, etc) of the entire employee group. It really doesn't make much difference how elegant or well thought out the questions are if the employees who complete the survey do not represent the employee group as a whole (or the target group).
Online surveys are inexpensive and easy to implement, score and analyze, but unless every employee or a statistically appropriate number for the overall population completes the survey, the results can be highly biased, yield false conclusions, and worse, lead to action that is inappropriate.
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Permalink Reply by Mischa Myers on
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No survey will serve any amount of good unless, something is done with the compiled data.
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