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The metal manufacturer and the employee survey

Are employee surveys a powerful improvement tool or a waste of time?

I have been asked my opinion many times in the last few years about employee surveys, a classic HR standby that seems to have a number of purposes. In the last half of the 20th century, surveys were sort of a de rigueur activity of any self-respecting HR department of a large company. Soon employee surveys became a mainstay activity of midsized organizations and eventually found their way into many small companies, even those without a separate HR department. Surveys were simply considered to be good practice.

In the last decade or so, the practice of regular surveys came into question. Some critics said that new management practices, including team-based activities, modern supervision and people management methods, and lean process implementation have (or at least should have) rendered surveys obsolete. Other critics questioned whether the exercise justified its cost. Some asserted that the surveys actually made things worse from an organizational performance and behavior perspective.

This is why many view employee surveys as less important than they once were, though many companies still swear by them. People have wide ranges of strongly held, and often contradictory, opinions on their usefulness. That’s exactly what you’d expect when dealing with subjects related to human beings.

I have seen strong evidence to support the critics and the supporters, but in the final analysis, I tend to like employee surveys with the following caveats:

  1. They must have a purpose.
  2. They must be well-designed for that purpose.
  3. They must be seriously reviewed and acted upon.
  4. There must be follow-up to ensure that actions taken based on the survey actually achieve positive results.

If any of the above is missing, then at least some of the critics will be right: The process is at best questionable. Let’s examine the caveats and see how surveys can at least be beneficial for improving a company’s performance, and why they can become something far less than that.

The Purpose of Surveys

Surveys test everything from the mood or morale of the organization to impediments to improvement to specific causes of poor (or good) performance. The purpose of surveys helps justify them. What’s not to like about a tool that provides managers with all of this critical information? Absolutely nothing, if the survey results indeed provide that information completely and in a form that is at least nominally actionable.

I and others have seen survey results that have not done this and, in fact, have caused more confusion than anything else. This occurs mainly because people are confused about the specific purpose of the survey and therefore its design and implementation. This can render the exercise worse than useless.

Problems with surveys come from mixing the purposes into one long all-inclusive survey. They are difficult to design and really difficult to interpret. There simply has to be a reason for doing the survey. Company financials, either current results or indicators of future results, may be unsatisfactory; managers may sense that things aren’t right; or they may be following up actions taken from a prior survey.

In general, companies cite two broad purposes of employee surveys: to improve employee communications by providing a two-way channel to what is usually a one-way, top-down channel; or to enlist and support “engagement” by giving employees a voice in company improvement.

Both are useful byproducts of surveys but are very general. They are not really purposes but benefits. Actual purposes should drive action, and real benefits come in two distinct categories. If you haven’t done a survey in a while, or ever, I recommend starting with the first category. The second category then will provide actionable results.

1. Surveys test the mood and morale of the organization and its components. I call this a search-mode or baseline survey. In general, it asks what is wrong and what is right about how we operate?

2. Using the results of the baseline survey, you can home in on specific areas to provide direction on what improvement actions should be taken and why.

The latter is of course where the rubber hits the road. Where do problems lie? Policies, procedures, management, supervision styles, or elsewhere? While results do not always point to perfectly defined issues, they usually provide enough information to zero in on exactly what needs to improve.

Designing the Survey

You can find prepackaged surveys online and from HR consulting firms, and these can be useful. (If you would like to see a search-mode survey I did recently as part of a turnaround, just send me an e-mail.) But whether you use a survey off-the-shelf or write one yourself, be sure that the survey design fits its purpose. Critical design criteria include the following:

  • Surveys must provide results with minimal ambiguity with respect to the purpose. The best surveys have simple, declarative sentences with a limited range of choices for the response. For example, in the baseline survey, the sentence “Acme is a great place to work” has the response choices of Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Somewhat Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. Notice there is no middle allowed.
  • The question or statement the respondent rates should not be biased or leading. This is one reason that simple, declarative sentences work so well. The sentence “My supervisor always listens to my suggestions” is far better than “Knowing the time constraints and pressures my supervisor must deal with, I feel that he/she does a reasonable job of hearing my suggestions.” The latter is leading and biased toward a cause for not listening. I actually saw the second sentence used in a survey. In truth, it was less a survey than an appeal for employees to agree with how the company operated.
  • The survey should be short. Eight to 12 questions on one page generally should suffice. Short surveys tend to reduce ambiguity caused by too many questions or statements that add nuances that are unnecessary or even conflicting. Second, a short survey can be done in a short amount of time—10 minutes maximum. This means that it can be done at one specific time for everyone, eliminating biasing feedback from respondents who had already taken the survey, as well as collusion where multiple respondents team up for their responses.
  • The survey should be anonymous, encouraging honesty. However, it should require that the respondent choose at least a broad description of his or her job function, though only if this doesn’t compromise anonymity. Obviously, employees who fill out the survey need to be assured that there will be no retribution or negative consequences of any form.

Examine and question the survey’s design, especially for ambiguity and bias. Some of each will always be present, but it is critical to minimize them.

Review and Follow-up

By the act of doing a survey, you already have created a lot of goodwill, but all that goodwill can rapidly turn into cynicism if certain things are not done.

First, review surveys carefully and with an unbiased eye. Do not dismiss results you don’t like and rejoice in the ones you do. Instead of treating results you don’t like as your enemies, treat them as your friends; they’re really opportunities for improvement. Also, do not let trivial responses smother the true meat in others. Dismissiveness is the death of a survey’s value.

Second, publish and communicate the results. This simply acknowledges that you heard the respondents and are fairly noting their responses.

Third, form action plans and execute them based on a Pareto analysis, focusing on solutions that will have the greatest impact. Simple, right? It actually is. But a surprising number of companies don’t do this because they don’t like the results or they interpret them to justify the status quo.

People who take surveys generally are pleased to have the opportunity. Reviewing and following up make surveys useful. They tell employees that you’re actually doing something with their survey responses. And when you take action, you’ll discover that employee surveys can fuel change. That’s their real purpose. If you need to change things, surveys can be very useful. If you don’t, then don’t bother.

About the Author

Dick Kallage

Dick Kallage was a management consultant to the metal fabricating industry. Kallage was the author of The FABRICATOR's "Improvement Insights" column from May 2012 to March 2016.