Is your employee survey protecting poor performers?

So, you thought an employee satisfaction survey was going to be a good idea ...

Perhaps the results came out exactly as you expected, or perhaps you received a culture shock when you learnt that the expectations of your employees seemingly have no bounds.  Even the new fruit bowl in the office kitchen has people complaining.

You may have tried weekly massages, a funky new couch, a game machine, stress balls, or even bean bags.  Then you watched productivity stay exactly the same, employee satisfaction stay the same, and the office gossip continue along as normal.

It made no impact on poor performers. In fact it seemed to encourage them - to do less with more.

It could be funny, but we have these conversations with employers almost every day, and they aren't laughing.

Their best employees aren't laughing either, as the culture of the business - the way things are done around here - hasn't changed, and it seems to fight against them rather than make things effective for them.

So the problem isn't that you did a survey.  The problem is that you asked about the wrong things, and that made the survey ineffective because it leaves you conflicted between the commercial needs of the business, and the seemingly unrealistic desires of your employees.  In the worst cases, it may have enabled a culture of "them and us" to develop.

You asked "them" how they feel and what they want, and the message received was "what can you provide for us?"

A culture survey is different.  It asks about the enablers and barriers to productivity and fulfilment.  Most importantly, it asks you to identify the type of workplace you want to create and then identifies the gaps so that you have something meaningful to work with from the results.

It then enables a conversation - shoulder to shoulder - employer and employee together about making the workplace more productive, fulfilling and engaging.

AN EFFECTIVE CULTURE SURVEY

There are 5 features of an effective employee survey:

1. It surveys everyone in the business, not just the employees.  This ensures that everyone answers the same questions and leaves no room for misperception between one set of questions and the other.
2. It enables the business owners to articulate their desired business culture, so that they have clarity of what, for them, a productive workplace will look like.  This enables a meaningful and honest conversation once the results of the survey are known.
3. It enables free and honest feedback from employees. Without such feedback the survey is meaningless.  The best way to achieve this is to ensure the survey is run by an independent party and that the responses remain anonymous.
4. It asks about observed behavioural norms, not ambiguous desires.  This ensures that people are responding to actual situations and issues, and not reaching for ideas or expressing unrealistic ambitions.  It ensures the feedback is genuine and useful.
5. It enables conversation about the results, rather than leaving employers or employees conflicted about their differences.  If doing the survey is unlikely to facilitate change, then why do it?

Our clients use a culture survey as an effective tool for understanding the enablers and barriers to a productive and fulfilling workplace, and for enabling rich conversations about genuine improvements.  They use it to bring everyone onto the same page as to what their productive and fulfilling work place will look like.

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