Today, business leaders have realized that the employees have information that could be used to improve the bottom line, and employee engagement surveys are critical components in uncovering that information. But not all surveys are created equal. In computer science, there is a saying “garbage in, garbage out.” The same applies to employee engagement surveys. Here are five things the successful ones have in common:
- First, they are addressed to the right people: If I want to know how well everyone understands corporate strategy, I am going to get a different answer if I include the C-suite and the senior vice-presidents than if my survey excludes them. Presumably they will know the strategy best because they are setting it and using corporate communication tools to promulgate it. That skews my result.
- Second, the questions are simple and direct. This isn't a vocabulary test, nor is it an inquiry into philosophical questions. Short questions, easily read that can be easily answered get the best results. Related to this is brevity of the survey. Short questions are fine, 10,000 short questions are not. If you need a lot of questions answered, maybe a few surveys over the course of the year is preferable to one big one that everyone hates, which damages your other corporate communication tools.
- Third, the results can be quantified: Numbers don't lie. You need to ask questions that have direct yes-or-no answers, allow for a grading scale of 1-10, or other choices that can put clear and meaningful numbers on your results. This allows you to track results in future surveys, and it provides a way of ranking issues in order of importance. If 92% of respondents are happy with Situation A and only 25% with Situation B, you can safely say that B is where you need to do more work.
- Fourth, the results have a qualitative dimension to them. While numbers don't lie, they can certainly mislead. Let's look at the 25% who were unhappy with situation B. Why aren't they happy? Does it take up too much time, do they not have the resources, do they lack the training? Fill in the blank has its place in such a survey.
- Fifth, the results have to be used. There must be some kind of mechanism in place that puts this information to use. If senior management discovers that the only people who understand the corporate strategy are VP or higher, what is going to be done about it? Is there a system in place that makes changes in the way strategic concerns and issues are explained? Can HR or the communications department develop such a system with corporate communication tools?
The key to successful employee engagement surveys is to design it so that it has a genuine business value. Remember, value in, value out beats garbage in, garbage out every time.
