The Employee Survey:
Holding Up a Mirror to Your Company
by Ray Schneider

Packed with critical information, the employee survey is an excellent tool for measuring and understanding values, attitudes, and behaviors. Those involved in organizational change processes know an employee survey can dispel myths, highlight opportunities, and encourage constructive dialogue. It can also act as a mirror, giving the company the ability to see itself clearly and honestly -- the reflection created by the voices of employees throughout the organization. Also known as the "attitude" or "internal customer" survey, the employee survey is one of the more common surveys found in business. In this issue of "Perspective," I'll focus on the employee survey. In the next issue other types of surveys, including the external customer survey, will be discussed.

Uncovering The Keys To Employee Behavior
Without an employee survey in hand, companies typically learn what their employees are thinking via second-hand information, observation, inference, and just plain gut feeling. These so-called "information gathering methods" frequently fail to adequately inform decision makers. The result can be misguided business strategies and an unproductive, angry work force. This doesn't have to happen.

Rosabeth Moss Kantner writes in her highly respected work The Change Masters that, "...change requires an awareness of foundations...." If skillfully structured and administered, and if appropriately responded to by management, a survey will not only help an organization explore its "foundations" -- underlying values and attitudes -- but it can be a driving force for change.

How To Construct A Survey
Many pitfalls can be encountered in developing an effective and successful survey, thus experience is invaluable. In general though, eight steps must be followed:

1. Develop the Survey Team
First, you must identify a team of employees to assist in developing and administering the survey. Because of their knowledge, the team will increase both the quality of survey questions and the organization's ownership of survey results.

2. Develop the Hypotheses
Every question on a survey should attempt to clarify an hypothesis about attitude, behavior, knowledge, or perceptions. An hypothesis is an organization's assumption about a specific issue. The ability to develop effective action plans on the basis of survey responses increases as an hypothesis and the corresponding survey questions become more specific. Box 1 illustrates.

3. Construct the Survey Draft

1. Develop the questions for the survey. Good questions address only one issue, are not "loaded," are worded in the positive, do not use inflammatory words or phrases, do not use words with negative connotations, are not threatening, and are not too long. See Box 2.
2. Ask more than one question on each issue. Confidence in interpretation increases greatly when there's an "index" of questions associated with an issue, as shown in Box 3.
3. Choose your question format. The most common format is "closed-ended," requiring a choice among alternative answers. Open-ended, essay-type questions allow fuller expression, but they take time to complete, so be selective. Include them only at strategic points in the survey.
4. What is the optimal survey length? Our experience shows that surveys with nearly 100 questions can be well received. In Questionnaires: Design and Use, the authors Berdie, Anderson and Niebuhr write that within reason, survey length is not an issue. They add, however, that "boring, inane questions" do cause problems. As a rule, only ask questions you really want answered.

4. Finalize the Survey
Test the survey draft on a representative pilot group in order to maximize survey "validity" -- the extent to which survey answers can be interpreted in more than one way. Make modifications where necessary.

5. Establish the Administration Format
Typically, employees fill out their surveys on their own, either at home or at work. Either way, it is usually important to maintain confidentiality. This will increase response for sensitive questions and improve survey validity as well.

6. Communicate with the Respondents
Many organizations hesitate to communicate about the employee survey in advance. Yet, ironically, employees frequently cite organizational communications as a serious problem. So, inform your employees of survey intent and logistics beforehand.

7. Analyze the Results
When asked to analyze groups of numbers, most of us are accustomed to calculating averages and comparing them. A variety of advanced statistical techniques, however, are more appropriate for analyzing survey data. One is the t-test, which determines if the difference between averages is large enough to warrant investigation into the root causes of the difference.

Written comments are also a form of "data" that need to be analyzed -- but judiciously. Inflammatory comments may not be representative.

8. Develop Action Plans
A survey will create expectations. There is no way to avoid it. If an organization doesn't act appropriately, attitudes will become more negative than before the survey. An action plan must be developed, communicated, monitored, and linked to the survey if it's to become a credibility enhancer for the company.

Making The Most Of Survey Results
Surveys and action plans will yield long-term improvements in attitude, behavior, and ultimately organizational performance only if the company takes these steps as part of a larger organizational change process. Many of our clients, for example, use the results of employee surveys to focus TQM efforts and measure improvements in their culture. We have one TQM client with sites from Los Angeles to West Virginia who conducted its survey twice, eighteen months apart, and was able to measure improvement for every question posed. Essentially, once the answers are in and analyzed, the real work has begun. Gradually, the organization needs to learn to listen to the voices of its employees, and for a very good reason: People, it is shown, simply do not change their attitudes and behaviors until they are given the opportunity to be heard, and reason to believe that their values are respected. The employee survey is a good place to begin.

 

Ray Schneider is a vice president of Tunnell Consulting.

 

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