Employee Surveys: Are They Effective and How Do You Get Employees to Engage Seriously?

Hi, I'm interested in your views on employee surveys. The research done on their validity and usefulness is somewhat worrying, yet they seem to be even more popular now. How do you get employees to take them seriously? Any success stories?

Many thanks,

Col

www.colbrown.co.uk

Surveys are almost never welcome, but they are an extremely useful tool to judge an employee's attitude towards work and also overall organizational development.

I don't have any experience in conducting surveys, but from what I understand, a good way to make surveys welcome would be by letting the results be known to the employee and discussing the potential changes that the survey might have triggered. [Just an idea] It's similar to when we take a poll—right after clicking our choice, we want to know the percentage of the votes each option received or who said what.

Perhaps another important aspect would be to make employees realize that the surveys are conducted to improve the overall organizational structure and not to judge any single person. Viewing it as an anonymous way to voice their opinions might encourage them to participate in surveys.

Any other views?

Regards,
Sid
CiteHR Team Member

Strategies for Effective Employee Surveys

1) Empower employees to influence the survey content to include issues of interest to them.

2) Give a choice of anonymity when taking the survey.

3) Share results.

4) Discuss implications.

5) Follow through on findings.

Hi! Organizations need to pause and assess their situation when problems start to show up more frequently; when production targets are missed; when operating costs start to balloon; when bad orders and quality defects increase; and when sales and revenue targets are not met.

The role of organizational study and diagnosis

An in-depth organizational study and diagnosis by external consultants equipped with the appropriate tools can provide the company with objective feedback that can put the organization back on track, especially when it comes to employee morale and satisfaction, manpower turnover, etc.

Conducting employee surveys and organization scan

My company is conducting Employee Surveys and Organization Scan and Diagnosis. We have been hired by companies to run them, and most of their reasons align with the framework we have established for our programs. Some, especially bigger organizations with thousands of employees, want to gather the majority of their employees' feedback on specific issues or problems confronting the company, and/or policies that they plan to implement.

Impact of employee surveys

We have the impression that employee surveys can have a real positive effect in an organization when the company acts positively on the survey results, especially when there are urgent issues raised by their employees. Moreover, surveys must be commissioned only when the company is ready and has decided to fund and implement organizational changes. There must be a great amount of information before its launching to help people understand and cooperate with it, and prevent the rise of undue or false expectations.

Using survey results for organizational development

The results of the survey should be used to determine the appropriate OD intervention tools and guide the depth and mix of the intended organizational intervention. The problem with surveys is that many times they only raise employees' expectations beyond the real intent of the top management agenda. When that happens, the level of negative employee feelings towards the company can multiply more rapidly than before the conduct of the survey.

Best wishes.

Ed Llarena, Jr.

Managing Partner

Emilla Consulting