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Published October 2008

The Employee Survey: What's in It For Me?

 

  Dean Wiltse

Employee surveys are a staple of HR outreach to the employee base. But when a survey reaches the employees' hands, they may ask: "Why should I take this?" Many find themselves without enough reasons to make the effort. As a result, the opportunity to make their feelings and thoughts known is lost, and the company misses out on important feedback.

Of course, we did not arrive at this place by accident.

Leading HR industry groups, such as the Society for Human Resource Management, indicate follow-up is a critical factor in employee surveys. Unfortunately for many organizations, data often is collected but not actually used to make critical employee business decisions. More distressing, employees rarely see any of the analysis from the process and too infrequently see evidence that change results from their participation.

Employees also withhold their true opinions due to concerns about anonymity and potential consequences. As a result they have little motivation to participate and even less faith their participation will make a difference.

The flaws lie almost entirely with execution, not with the employee survey concept. Fortunately, execution issues easily can be addressed by those organizations committed to the process.

The first step in inspiring participation is to create an employee Respondent Bill of Rights. Taking a survey is an act of trust between the respondents and the organization, and guidelines should be established, communicated and followed. Establishing a sense of respect and trust has been demonstrated to yield higher response rates, ensuring a truly representative employee sample is heard.

Some elements of the Respondent Bill of Rights are:

• Respect of time: No survey should take longer than 15 minutes to complete, else the talent manager risks survey abandonment. An employee's time is a precious commodity and must be respected. Large surveys should be avoided by dividing them into multiple smaller surveys that can be executed over time. Further, target surveys based on available HR data to avoid inviting employees to participate when their responses will eventually be disqualified.
  
• Quality of the survey: Today's online survey tools make it easy for anyone to build a survey. Some organizations will spare no expense to make sure customer or consumer surveys are well-constructed and concisely written, using all of the advanced techniques available to make the experience positive while maximizing the return. Creating the employee survey, however, often is left to individuals who may not share the same level of expertise, but to make progress, employee surveys should be given the same level of care.
  
• Frequency: In some companies, surveys are infrequent, and survey fatigue is not an issue. Other companies bombard employees with surveys that eventually drive people away from the process. A guideline should be set for survey frequency to avoid turning the process into an intrusion.
  

Taking the respondent's view will make it easier for employees to feel good about participating in surveys.