To actually get results, an engagement survey process has to be much more than just a bunch of questions you send to employees. Remember: Every survey question you ask implies a promise that you’re going to do something with the answer. Because if you ask employees a survey question, and you don’t do anything to address their answer, it’s just going to make your people angry, and that hurts rather than helps engagement.
 

Think of it this way: Imagine you just got dressed up to go out with your spouse, and you ask “Does this outfit look OK?” Now imagine your spouse says something like “Meh, it’s alright” or even “Is that really what you’re going to wear?” Of course responses like these irritate you, and so you respond “Well, to heck with you, I’m wearing it!” And then your spouse angrily (and rightly) says “Well, if you didn’t want my opinion, why’d you bother to ask?” That, in a nutshell, is why your engagement survey process has to be a lot more than just asking a bunch of questions.

Surveys commonly ask questions about whether employees have friends at work and whether they trust their boss. Let’s say you get low scores on those questions. Now you need to do something about it. Let’s start with the trust issue. Do you know specifically what causes the typical employee to trust the boss? How about what causes your unique employees to trust the boss? What steps have you taken to validate these issues?

Solutions will Depend on Your Unique Culture

We conducted one of the largest studies ever on the topic of what makes employees trust their boss. And we discovered that the extent to which leaders respond constructively to employees who bring them work-related problems is the biggest driver of employee trust. This factor ranked significantly higher than whether or not the employees saw the boss as honest and truthful. And yet, there are a lot of organizations teaching managers to engender greater trust by being more honest, while other organizations are teaching managers to be more transparent in order to gain employee trust. What is the guaranteed solution to the problem? You won’t find an answer by asking a question like “Do you trust your boss?”

Similarly, low scores on a question that asks if employees have a good friend at work don’t teach you exactly what steps you need to take to fix the issue. Social networking might improve friendships, but so might more teamwork or less teamwork, or spending more time together or less time together, etc. The solution might depend on your unique culture. Bottom line, if you really want to know what’s going to work for your folks, you’ve got to ask about those solutions specifically.

It should also be noted that factors like friendships and trust are means to an end; they are not the end themselves. The “end” is to get employees to willingly and passionately give 100% and to recruit people to come to the company and do the same. Maybe having friends at work is causally related to that, maybe it’s not. Maybe trust is causally related to that, maybe it’s not. Maybe open communication, doing interesting work, having good life balance, being autonomous or being in great teams are all related, but maybe they’re not. The trick is to figure out what’s truly related and ask about it in a way that gives you information about the specific actions you need to take. So if you discover an area you need to fix, you’ll immediately know what needs to be done.

For every survey question, ask yourself “Do I know exactly what actions will fix this issue?”

Our surveys never ask employees if they trust their boss. However, we will ask if the boss responds constructively when presented with work-related problems. We’ll also never ask employees if they have a good friend at work. However, we will ask if the employee can successfully deliver constructive feedback to their co-workers.

To judge how effective your current employee survey really is, take a good look at every question on the survey, and ask yourself, “Do I know exactly what actions will fix this issue?” It’s not good enough to be able to guess what might work; you have to know with complete certainty what you will do. If you don’t have a definitive answer, the survey question has no value and needs to be dropped.
 

If you would like to get the eLearning material on "Why 5-Point Scales Don’t Work (and other Deadly Sins of Employee Engagement Surveys)" and 39 other eLearning topics by Leadership IQ, you can e-mail info@directions-consulting.com or call +86-136 7190 2505 or Skype: cydj001