9 Ways to FAIL at Staff Survey Feedback

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Richard Lambert

It’s common practice for organisations to put all their effort into developing and conducting the staff survey and then pull together the feedback sessions in a rush, with little or no planning or thought.  This is a big mistake.

Here are 9 ways you can get the feedback process wrong.

1) Spend a long time analysing the data and producing the reports, feedback and presentations… in fact so long that staff have forgotten about the staff survey
Speed of turnaround is important.  You can buy yourself a little thinking time, but commit to a feedback date no more than 1 month after the close of the survey – ideally more like 2-3 weeks.

2) Invite all staff to a 1 hour survey feedback meeting on a single day, later this week.
Giving them little or no notice will make it likely that many can’t attend.  Giving them no choice of dates will further minimise the number of people that will come along

3) Schedule the meeting at lunchtime and don’t provide any food or drinks
You are asking them to give up their lunch-break to attend a business meeting.  If you expected them to attend a business meeting with a client across their lunch break, you’d expect them to eat too, wouldn’t you ?

4) Schedule multiple meetings at different times of the day, on different days (great so far) BUT fail to provide enough sessions to meet demand
You’ve got a willing audience, who have given their time to complete the survey, but your lack of planning of the feedback sessions destroys a lot of that goodwill.

5) Ask someone junior from the HR team to deliver the findings of the survey.
If the survey is important to the organisation, prove it.   Bring out the big guns – MD/CEO visibility at this stage of the project will work wonders.

6) Present all of the results of the survey, question by question, showing all the numbers.
If you do this it’s probably well intentioned, but it’s liable to send the audience to sleep. That’s not good communication (in case you hadn’t realised).

7) Only show certain elements of the findings.  Hide any analysis which is contentious or reflects poorly on the organisation. Don’t share any bad news.
You have to present the data warts-and-all.  Remember that the staff told you how they felt in the survey.  They told you what they were thinking.  They already know.  You’re not hiding anything they don’t already know (or suspect) – and by not talking about it, you’ll make things 100 times worse.

8 ) Present the story of the data (good), in the style of a lecture – imparting knowledge.
To make the survey come to life, you have to tell the story in an engaging and entertaining way. This means using humour, pausing for effect (and reflection), encouraging interaction, inviting questions, answering questions or saying “I don’t know” if it’s a tricky one !

9) Do everything else right, but present the findings without any indication of what happens next…
You’ve scheduled the feedback sessions well. The MD/CEO has delivered the results in a professional but entertaining way. Your staff have heard the story of the survey findings and feel engaged and enthused about the project.  You’ve highlighted strengths and weaknesses about working here.  And… And… what happens next ?  What are you going to do differently, change, where is the action.

Without an action plan, everything that has gone before is utterly meaningless.  Fact.

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For more advice about how to get the feedback process right (and other staff survey tips), join me for the Staff Survey Jigsaw Webinar (link below).

Staff Survey JigsawClick here to sign up for my free Webinar and discover how to conduct your own staff survey without the need for expensive consultants

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Basic Staff Survey Analysis

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Richard Lambert

Some people are strong swimmers.  Some splash about a bit, but do manage to get across the water eventually.  Others feel like they are drowning, give up far too quickly and run back to the changing room.

How do you feel when you’re faced with a massive pool of staff survey data ?

Confident ?
Wary ?
Overwhelmed ?

When I’m working on behalf of a client, I look after all the analysis and ensure that I translate the data and the information into an entertaining ‘story’ which is easy to understand.

However, with more and more organisations opting to go down the DIY (self-managed) staff survey route, it’s worth having a life-jacket available.   If it can stop just one person from drowning in survey data, then it’s done the job.

Start by doing frequency counts.  The (very) basics of data analysis start with counting how many people from your survey have answered a given question using each of the survey scale points. 

How many ticked “disagree strongly” ?  What about those that picked “disagree”, or “agree” or “agree strongly” ? And how many didn’t answer the question at all ?

You can do this using tally charts or a simple Excel spreadsheet.

To compare the range of questions, just take the raw frequency counts and turn them into percentages.  At this level, ignore the people that skipped the question and base your percentages on valid answers only.

eg.  if your frequency counts produce the following;
disagree strongly: 20
disagree: 40
agree: 80
agree strongly: 60
did not answer: 10
Total valid responses = 200

Then, the percentages are
disagree strongly: 20 / 200 = 10%
disagree: 40 / 200 = 20%
agree: 80 / 200 = 40%
agree strongly: 60 / 200 = 30%

This certainly isn’t difficult. It’s not a cross-channel swim.
But it will help people who are just dipping their toes in the staff survey water.

Staff Survey JigsawClick here to sign up for my free Webinar and discover how to conduct your own staff survey without the need for expensive consultants

Posted in best practice and tips, data analysis, Staff Survey Jigsaw | Tagged | 2 Comments

Your Staff Survey Brand

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Richard Lambert

Time for a confession.

I once worked at an organisation where every 12 months or so an A4 sized, black and white, paper survey booklet would be placed unannounced on my desk, ready for me to see first thing in the morning.  Back then (in the pre-web ‘stone’ age), staff surveys were a pretty dull affair.  No pomp, no ceremony – almost an apology as the time arrived for the survey to start.  Worse still, no communication about why the company was having a survey in the first place.   

When you launch a new product onto the market, you would never consider doing it without any pre-positioning sales message or  without a brand name / logo. Your survey is no different. If you want your staff to buy (complete) your survey, you have to sell it to them.

Let’s look at how that could work in practice;

  • Survey Pre-Positioning – what does this product do for me ?

Why are you bothering with this survey in the first place ?  OK, you know why.  If you’re the CEO you’ve probably sanctioned it. If you’re in HR you’ve probably discussed the benefits with the Board.  BUT – your ‘shop-floor’ staff are going to need some help to understand what the purpose of the survey is.  How is it going to help them ?  

Messages about the link between employee engagement and business performance might play a part. However, the best way to sell the “what’s-in-it-for-me” is through talking about local action from previous surveys (or if you can’t do that, promises of action from this survey).

  • Survey brand name / logo – how do I recognise this product ?

So many organisations don’t bother with this step and it’s a criminal mistake.  Giving the survey a name allows you to refer to it at any point during the next 12 months and it’s likely that staff will know exactly what you’re talking about.  They will make the link between the survey name and the survey experience.  Give it a logo/image too and you have a double whammy.  You can then use the logo to badge anything that is survey related. 

One of the best examples of this was one of my clients who used a portion of their coffee area noticeboard to place a massive version of the survey logo.  Around the logo they added lots of other documents describing the actions that were happening in the business as a result of the survey findings.  Everyone saw this everyday.  Everyone made the link between the survey and the actions. Everyone saw much more value in the survey experience.  Response rates soared for the next survey.

Back in the stone age, few knew why we were actually having a survey.  There were probably many others that didn’t even notice the “product” launch.  The sad, paper booklet was ignored or swept unintentionally into the bin.  Response rates were dreadful.  Thankfully we’ve all come a long way since that time.

I’d love to hear your examples of your own survey branding, naming and logo. Please share in the comments box below.

Staff Survey JigsawClick here to sign up for my free Webinar and discover how to conduct your own staff survey without the need for expensive consultants

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The Right Way to Use Open Questions

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Richard Lambert

Most of your hard work and effort has been rightly spent on crafting the closed question items in your staff survey questionnaire – the ones which ask people to respond on a scale of “agree” to “disagree”.

After all these will form the bulk of your survey.

They are the backbone of the survey.

They provide the quantitative black and white data that makes your survey talk.

But they don’t provide its tone of voice or show how loud it is talking…

The missing piece of the survey voice comes from the write-in comments, the verbatim section, from the open-ended questions.

No professional survey designer would ever consider conducting staff research without offering the respondents a chance to have their say in their own words.

However, I’ve seen countless examples of badly-worded open questions or questions which you know are never going to elicit any really useful (and actionable) information.

Here are some bad open ended questions…

  • Do you have any comments about this survey ?
  • Is there anything else you’d like to add ?
  • What’s the best thing about working here ?

(OK, this last one isn’t disastrous, but there’s little you can do when respondents tell you they like working at your organisation because “the people are great”).

I recommend that your open questions are much more thought provoking and challenging.  They should ask for creativity and be positive and upbeat.  That way, you’re guaranteeing yourself a set of information that you can use and take action with.

Try these alternatives (and get a feel for the difference)

  • What’s the one practical thing you’d like to change in your department ?
  • What ideas do you have for new ways in which your team could be recognised for its efforts within the business ?
  • Please make two suggestions for how we could improve the way in which our business communicates with its customers ?

 

These alternatives are much more upbeat, more focused on a particular issue and even on a particular department or team within the organisation.  They will provide the organisation with a set of ideas for action at a very local level which can be worked and moulded into a plan for change and business improvement.

Surely that’s so much better than a string of responses in the Any Other Comments? box which say – “No, not really”

What do you think ?  Do you have any examples of good or bad open questions ?

Staff Survey JigsawClick here to sign up for my free Webinar and discover how to conduct your own staff survey without the need for expensive consultants.

Posted in best practice and tips, Staff Survey Jigsaw | Tagged | 2 Comments

4 Tips – Census or Sample Staff Survey

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Richard Lambert

4 Key Tips for Deciding Between A Census or Sample Staff Survey

So you’ve taken the decision to run a staff survey in your organisation.    You’ve joined the massed ranks of organisations that are using staff research to understand morale and improve business performance.

But have you overlooked something important… ?

How much consideration did you give to deciding which staff would actually get the chance to complete your survey ?

Most organisations will do a blanket, all-staff, “Census” survey.  But even here there are other things to think about.  Should this type of survey include temporary and casual/transient staff – or just the permanent staff ?  What about those permanent staff that have been away from the business on long-term sick leave.  What about those on maternity leave ?

The alternative is a sample survey. The idea here is that you choose a random but structured sample of staff (ie. ensuring that you have representation from all the constituent parts of your organisation – and all the relevant demographic groups).  This is a difficult thing to achieve without a huge amount of effort or external help.  For some very large or global companies, a sample survey may be the only viable option.  They simply may have too many staff to make an all-staff census survey practical.

“So what should I do ?”

OK – here is the advice I give to my clients

  1. Start with the premise that you’ll do a census survey and involve all permanent staff.  You should certainly include every single person irrespective of whether they are sick or on maternity/paternity leave.  It may be difficult to communicate with the staff who are not a current part of the daily business activity, BUT it’s a necessity.  They may not be able to fully participate in the survey because they feel a little out of touch.  That’s fine, but you should absolutely include them.
  2. If your business is structured around using temporary staff, seasonal staff or casual staff then you should make a decision about whether to include them based on the (proposed) content of your survey.  For example, if the survey majors on career development and training, then the views of the non-permanent staff may be less relevant.  If the survey is about customer interaction, then the views of the non-permanent are much more important.
  3. If you are planning a sample survey, consider the message you are sending to those that are not chosen to take part.  It’s very easy for those not chosen to feel that their views don’t matter or you don’t care about them.  Your internal communications must be spot on and highly inclusive (even if they are not part of the current survey wave).
     
  4. If you are planning a sample survey, then do a lot of planning about the rolling sample selection.  How many waves of the research would it take for everyone to get a chance to be involved with the survey ?  It’s obviously dependent on total staff numbers and frequency of survey – however for most organisations, it’s probably a sound guide to try and involve every member of staff at least once in a 2 year period.

 

Staff Survey JigsawClick here to sign up for my free Webinar and discover how to conduct your own staff survey without the need for expensive consultants.

Posted in best practice and tips, Staff Survey Jigsaw | Tagged | 3 Comments

I work in HR – I don’t do Sales

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Richard Lambert

HR Magazine’s Employee Engagement Survey Challenges HR To Sell The Benefits of Engagement

I am sitting there watching the room cringe as each of the speakers lays down the gauntlet – challenging the assembled throng to step up and conquer the problem head-on.

I am at a breakfast seminar where HR Magazine is presenting the results of the HR Employee Engagement Survey 2010 (sponsored by Fairplace).   The event is very well attended and from a quick scan of the room beforehand, it’s clear that the majority of the attendees are HR Professionals (HR Directors, HR Managers and the like). 

Each of the 3 speakers carries the same message.  Michael Moran, David MacLeod and Sarah Churchman all speak very eloquently about how they see the current state of play in terms of employee engagement.  They want to know why HR Professionals are not doing everything they can to put engagement on the business performance agenda.  

The crux of the issue is this;

HR people unanimously agree that employee engagement has a direct impact on business success BUT they struggle to get real buy-in from the top brass.

Some quick stats

• 73% say that they try to measure engagement
• 68% use a staff survey
• 61% claim to have a strategy to increase engagement
• Just 50% link engagement to business performance

An IES / Work Foundation report (“People and the Bottom Line”) claims that if organisations increased their spend on engagement practices by 10%, then profits would rise by £1500 per employee.   Surely that’s a no-brainer !

Apparently not.  Only half of HR Professionals in the survey agreed that they have executive sponsorship of their employee engagement initiatives.   1 in 3 responses believe that their organisation sees “engagement” as an HR initiative (only) rather than a strategic issue for the business as a whole.

So – here’s the challenge.  How can HR ‘sell’ the benefits of an employee engagement survey to the business ?

My 4 step guide

1. Get Board-level buy-in by making a big song and dance of the reams of empirical evidence that already exists (or failing that just quote the IES/Work Foundation numbers above)
2. Use an employee survey to measure engagement and understand the factors that influence engagement with your group of staff and take action.
3. Compare the performance of the business against your employee survey results.  Look at every single business metric you have.  Correlate how engagement compares to business performance.  If you’ve done it properly, you’re almost guaranteed to find a strong link.  
4. Wait for the Board to say “thank-you”.

If you need any help with the above, just get in touch

Or, try this if you want specific help about how to conduct your own staff survey.

Posted in business case for engagement, news | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Staff Use Twitter To Discuss Your Staff Survey

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Richard Lambert

So you’ve done your best to develop and launch a staff survey project which ticks all the boxes and is on the money – only to see your staff quickly start disparaging your efforts via Twitter…

Sad, but true.  And also likely to have a big knock-on effect on perceptions of your employer brand. Potential recruits suddenly get a totally different idea about your organisation.

I’m planning to post a series of ideas about how position your staff survey to minimise this social media bad-mouthing. That’ll kick off in early 2011.

However, in the meantime “enjoy” what others are saying about their staff survey experience – in terms of survey findings, survey actions, timing, confidentiality… and even a positive one at the end!

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LegalBizzle Legal Bizzle
Our employee survey results are out. Apparently my colleagues think that they are not well paid. Survey also confirms that Pope is catholic.

tama42 tama
my mind is still haunted by the employee survey! can’t sleep!!!

iPad_AL Alan Sutherland
We had a staff survey in work today, I was asked what can we do to improve your work environment, I said send me to work abroad !!

tanyadavis Tanya Davis
Yay I won movie tickets for completing an employee survey! Thanks @luxottica_au for funding my next date :)

spud Michael McGimpsey
Work is conducting a staff survey to see what we think of the culture. The results should make for interesting reading

mirpkered Derek Prim
@KingQuagmire I took it off to eat spaghetti for lunch. He didn’t care. I wrote 4 pages about him in our annual employee survey.

BRETTARO Brett Aromando
Just filled out my employee survey for the Y, boy they picked a good time to send me that

EvaBaez Eva Baez
We recently had an employee survey at work. It led to focus groups (which I didn’t attend cause it might have led some to not speak freely)

Julesconner Jules Conner
Jules has just filled in his NHS Staff Survey. I hope they can read it on the tear-smudged paper.

joannedj Joanne Dixon-Jackson
@MrsSDutton I didn’t bother with our staff survey this year. The bigwigs don’t give a shit about me anyway.

errantways Alicia
@shakethingsup 2/2 results which showed that our dept has the highest amount of people looking elsewhere for a job made them create perks.

mattystan1972 Matt Stanley
So I got another NHS Staff Survey to fill in. Apparently it’s completely confidential. So how do they know I’ve not sent it in already???

devinsays Devin Price
Just gave a ridiculously good evaluation of everything on our employee survey. Really enjoy working with everyone here

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Two Thirds of ALL employees disengaged – Really ?

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Richard Lambert

I read a report recently which claimed that 64% of Australian workers are disengaged. That’s an astonishingly high proportion of people that don’t like what they do on a day-to-day basis. 

Given what’s going on down-under with The Ashes cricket, I saw the chance for a cheap gag and explored some more.  Apparently, the sample of over 28,000 employees covered 10 major industry sectors (with the possible exception of Australian cricketers… otherwise the percentage would have been even higher !).

However, the analysis revealed that having two thirds of the workforce disengaged is also the global average.  I am simply stunned by this.  The report says just 33% of employees globally are engaged.

This holds for Australia, the UK, France, Sweden and Germany.  The best result is actually in India where 45% are engaged.  The worst is Japan where on 11% are.  The average again – yes you’re reading this right – is just 33% engaged.

Of course, there is no standard definition for employee engagement (and that’s part of my issue below), but in my experience, I’ve not come across a single organisation where the majority of the workforce are actively disengaged.  We will certainly be using different definitions – but this is so far removed from my own clients’ experiences.

There are loads more facts in the report. Although it focuses on Australia and New Zealand, it’s still a good read for those of you who like to have a sense of global benchmarks.

The report also goes on to draw a distinction between employee engagement and employee satisfaction.  I do see value in distinguishing between these two factors, but part of me thinks that it’s a bit too much navel gazing sometimes.

We ALL know what we’re trying to achieve here.  We’re searching for the holy grail of the workplace – people who care about the organisation and want to perform and make a difference.    Whether we call this engagement, job satisfaction, morale or whatever is in part irrelevant.  Measure what needs to be measure, interpret what’s important, decide on an action plan and move on.

I’d be interested to hear what you think.  Please add your comments below.

Read the full ‘Right Management’ report at   http://bit.ly/heDN6L

 

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Happy Country, Happy Government

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Richard Lambert
Happy Cloud

thanks to Movement For Happiness

Happy Country, Happy Government ? 

Yesterday, David Cameron outlined his plans to conduct research into what would make the people in this country happy. He has asked the Office of National Statistics to devise a way to measure people’s “well-being”.

He’s aiming at creating a happy country (and therefore a happy Government). Hang on Mr Cameron, you seem to have inadvertently copied my catchphrase !

I’ve been talking about the link between a happy workforce and a happy organisation for a little while now. I’m a massive advocate that improving employee engagement will lead to improvements in business performance.

There’s a stack of empirical evidence out there – some published academic research, some published white papers, other consulting companies with client case studies. I’ve got my own evidence with my own clients – but that’s where I draw the confidentiality line, I’m afraid.

It’s not a tricky concept. It’s fairly self-explanatory. If you do the right things in your company to increase the levels of job satisfaction, morale and employee engagement – then you’ll reap the benefits of increased individual discretionary effort and also a lower staff turnover.

The trick is finding out which are the important buttons you need to press in your particular organisation. It’s can never be a one-size-fits-all approach. The buttons are different for each company I’ve ever worked with. Of course, there is some overlap, but I’ve never found exactly the same key drivers of employee engagement exist in 2 separate organisations. If only it were that easy !

The best way to uncover what people want is to ask them. I know that, you know that and David Cameron knows that too (insert you own joke here). That’s why I’m really keen to help organisations design and conduct their own employee research projects using the best tools and methodologies that are available.

From a previous blog post here, I’ve explained why it’s not salary that is a key (sustainable) driver of employee engagement. Mr Cameron (and his advisors) say the same thing – “prosperity alone cannot deliver happiness”.

For more about the Government’s initiative, see here

http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/topstorynews/2010/11/britain’s-wellbeing-to-be-measured-57578

Posted in employee morale, research methodology | 1 Comment

New Facebook Video – Welcome Message

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Richard Lambert
Just thought I’d let you all know that I’ve uploaded a new video as the Welcome message on our Facebook Fan Page.   You can view here or follow the link to the site and “Become a Fan / Click Like”

This is all very new for me and I’ve set myself a “stretching” goal of reaching 50 Fans before Christmas.  I may regret committing to that publicly !

Please Be a Fan at www.facebook.com/happystaffhappycompany

Posted in Facebook, fun, video | Leave a comment