Employee surveys that work: Improving design, use, and organizational impact

by Alec Levenson · 2014
GoodReads

A nice book covering some basic aspects of employee survey design. Not deep, but provides a good introduction to the topic.

Key Points

Chapter 1: Goals

  • Recognize the limitations of surveys. Don’t overuse them. Combine them with other assessment types as appropriate (interviews, focus groups, archival data analysis, direct observation, etc.).
  • Choose desired survey outcomes to maximize support of top organizational priorities. Choose one or two top priorities to focus on.
  • Clarify the highest priority organizational level for the survey priorities. Addressing multiple levels in the same survey is doable; choosing one primary level is more manageable.

Chapter 2: Objectives

  • Improving employee survey attitude scores is not advisable as a way to improve business performance for most roles. The benefits of improved employee attitudes accrue first and foremost to the employees. Whether the business benefits depends on the role and context.
  • Only in certain customer-facing roles can a causal link be made between employee engagement and business performance. In all other roles the link is tenuous at best and more likely is reversed: employee attitudes improve when business performance is high.
  • Measures of employee engagement are best used as lagging or coincident indicators of business performance, not leading indicators.

Chapter 3: Methods

  • Choose questions most appropriate for the roles and processes that are the survey focus.
  • The issues and questions that matter the most usually are not the same for people in different roles, functions, and geographies. When there are large role, function, and geographic dissimilarities in the critical issues, a single survey cannot easily address all top priorities.
  • Use individually focused and group-focused measurements appropriately. Though you can include both measurement types, thorough coverage of both individual- and group-level issues is difficult.

Chapter 4: Good Survey Practices

  • Choose survey questions that are clear, to the point, and have response codes that maximize ease and accuracy of the responses.
  • Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to: there are many sources for survey questions already written, especially validated questions from the research literature.
  • Minimize survey question wording tinkering by key stakeholders. It is more productive to focus their energies on using the data to support organizational processes and drive change.
  • Use multiple questions to increase the accuracy of measurement, while minimizing overall survey length to encourage high response rates.

Chapter 5: Anonymity vs. Insights

  • Matching survey responses with other data can show a link to business performance.
  • For employees like salespeople with clear performance metrics, the matching is best when it can happen at the individual employee level.
  • Keeping the identity of survey respondents anonymous is the best way to ensure that they will feel comfortable answering all questions honestly. With anonymous survey responses, however, matching with data from other sources can take place only at the group level.
  • Ensuring anonymity or confidentiality is needed to encourage the survey respondents to be honest and forthcoming about sensitive issues.
  • Be careful to not ask for extremely detailed demographic information that could be used to reverse engineer privacy controls and reveal people’s identities.

Chapter 6: KISS

  • Composite indexes are good at capturing general employee moods.
  • For deeper insights, focus on the components of the index, not the aggregated index score.
  • Employee engagement is best measured by focusing on specific employee attitude(s) such as intention to turnover, job satisfaction, thriving, commitment, and so on. Combining multiple measures into a single index usually yields no different insights than a single question on job satisfaction.

Chapter 9: Moving Forward

  • Closely tie survey reporting back to the purpose and desired outcomes for the survey.
  • Engage the organization as broadly as possible in the feedback process.
  • Tailor reporting as needed by role, function, business unit, and so on.
  • Involve key stakeholders early and often in the survey process to maximize effective post-survey action taking

Examples

Excerpts

Individually-focused constructs

Development support

  • Developing employee skills is a high priority for supervisors in this firm.
  • We have a good process for mentoring employees.
  • This firm has a good process for identifying employees’ development needs.
  • This firm has a good process for developing people.

Goal commitment

  • I am strongly committed to pursuing my performance goals.
  • It is very important to meet my performance goals.
  • Quite frankly, I don’t care if I achieve my performance goals (reversed).
  • I am willing to put forth a great deal of effort beyond what I’d normally do to achieve my performance goals.

Goal fairness

  • The steps involved in determining my performance goals are fair.
  • The procedures used to set my performance goals are fair.
  • The overall process for setting my performance goals is fair.

Intention to turnover

  • I plan to look outside my company/ firm for a new job within the next year.
  • I often think about quitting my present job.
  • It is likely that I will quit my job in the next twelve months.

Job satisfaction

  • Overall, I am satisfied with my job at .

Mindless work

  • My job is routine.
  • My job is boring.
  • My job does not have enough variety.

Pay satisfaction

  • I believe I am fairly paid compared to my peers at who are at equivalent job levels and who are equally skilled.
  • I believe I am fairly paid compared to my peers in other organizations who are at equivalent job levels and who are equally skilled.
  • I am satisfied with my total compensation.

Supervisor support

  • My supervisor is willing to help me when I need a special favor.
  • My supervisor would forgive an honest mistake on my part.
  • My supervisor really cares about my well-being.
  • My supervisor fails to appreciate any extra effort from me (reverse coded).

Thriving—Vitality

  • I feel energetic and vital at work.
  • I do not feel very energetic at work (reversed).
  • I feel alert and awake at work.
  • I look forward to each new day at work.

Thriving—Learning

  • I find myself learning often.
  • I continue to learn more as time goes by.
  • I see myself continually improving.
  • I am not learning (reversed).
  • I am developing a lot as a person.

Work-life balance

  • The demands of my work interfere with my home and personal/family life.
  • The amount of time my job takes up makes it difficult to fulfill personal/family duties.
  • My job produces strain that makes it difficult to fulfill personal/family obligations.
  • Due to work-related duties, I have to make changes to my plans for personal/family activities.

Group/unit/organization-focused constructs

Commitment to organization

  • I do not feel like “part of the family” at _____ (reversed).
  • I do not feel “emotionally attached” to _____ (reversed).
  • _____ has a great deal of personal meaning for me.
  • I feel a strong sense of belonging to ______.

Commitment to team

  • I do not feel like “part of the family” on my team (reversed).
  • I do not feel “emotionally attached” to my team (reversed).
  • My team has a great deal of personal meaning for me.
  • I feel a strong sense of belonging to my team.

IT support

  • We waste considerable time in doing our work because of information technology problems that are not fixed (reversed).
  • Our organization provides adequate information technology support.
  • We receive prompt technical assistance when our computer systems are not working.

Organizational support

  • ________ is willing to help me when I need a special favor.
  • ________ would forgive an honest mistake on my part.
  • ________ really cares about my well-being.
  • ________ fails to appreciate any extra effort from me (reverse coded).

Rewards for team performance

  • My pay depends on the success of the teams I work with.
  • Pay is tied to team performance.
  • My contributions to this team are rewarded by .

Shared understanding

  • People on my team do not agree on what is really important (reversed).
  • We have a shared understanding of what we are trying to accomplish on my team.
  • There is agreement about our priorities on my team.
  • There is an agreed way of getting the work done on my team.

Trust in team members

  • Team members always do what they say they will do.
  • The people on my team are reliable in their work.
  • Team members believe that others on our team will follow through on their commitments.