Don’t wait until the end to ask for feedback

The way Princess Cruise Lines conducts surveys can be model for collecting staff feedback. 

Three days into our nine-day cruise aboard the Diamond Princess, a brief, half-page survey from the  hotel general manager asking for “First Impressions” was left in the passengers’ cabins.

“Our crew is always looking to share our hearts with you and exceed your expectations. Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions you’d like to share with us below.”

What Princess is doing that is better than what other organizations do is not waiting until the end before asking for feedback. 

Data collected after the cruise ends, after hotel guests have checked out, or after a service has been completed may assist the organization in improving what it does in the future, but those completing after-the-fact questionnaires won’t feel the impact of their feedback. They won’t benefit from any changes.

When Princess collects feedback just a few days into the cruise, it has an opportunity to make things right for the current guests. There is a potential benefit to the guests for taking time to answer the cruise line’s questions.

This approach to gathering feedback resonates with me. It’s a practice that I encountered years ago and incorporated into my daylong workshops, such as Interview Right to Hire Right, Staff Recognition: One Piece at a Time and Retaining Staff Without Spending Buckets of Money.

Just prior to the lunch break. I distribute a single sheet that asks participants to rate how well their expectations were met during the first half of the day and what mid-course corrections are required to better meet their expectations during the remaining hours.

The feedback I receive is always useful, whether it indicates that the workshop is what participants expected or that adjustments are needed to provide more of what participants really want. Some respond with questions that they wish to have addressed during the afternoon.

While there is still an evaluation form to complete at the end of the workshop, I have found that when participants understand that they could receive an immediate benefit from completing the survey, the quality of the feedback is greater than what I learn from end-of-the-day questionnaires. What I learn from midday assessments allows me to make same-day adjustments and improve the quality of future workshops.

A midpoint check-in is a concept that can be implemented as a tool to collect meaningful feedback from staff. A better approach than relying on annual staff surveys is a series of pulse surveys that ask about a single topic or a limited number of topics.

These brief surveys can be completed quickly. Limiting the number of topics means less time is needed to analyze the results before the organization can act, based on what was learned. 

Like Princess Cruise Lines passengers or workshop participants, staff can feel the impact of their feedback immediately.

Pause regularly to assess your staff recognition practices

Continuing to use the same recognition tools and techniques is fine if they are still working. But are they?

Is your recognition program up-to-date? Some recognition programs are based on values that were retired years ago. Don’t let that be yours.

Continually assess what’s working and what’s not. Look for new ways to express gratitude. Use what you learn to tweak your staff recognition efforts and avoid falling into a recognition rut. Consider if it’s time to abandon practices that have become less effective.

Pause regularly to assess your staff recognition practices. Observe how others react to the recognition you provide. Ask for feedback. Soon you will hear suggestions of what you might do differently.

• Invite feedback on your staff recognition practices from individuals and the team, both in person and via surveys. How am I doing? How could I do a better job of recognizing staff? What do you want more or less of? Do you believe the recognition you have received has been appropriate for you? What recognition would you like to receive? What’s missing from my staff recognition practices? How could we increase recognition in the workplace? Use the feedback you receive to improve how you recognize staff.

• Here are two questions to help you learn whether staff members feel they are being recognized for the right reasons. “What do you do that I’m not noticing? Are your colleagues doing things for which I am not recognizing them, but which you feel I should be?”

• Reset your staff recognition goals frequently, maybe even weekly. Consider how often you are recognizing staff. Ask yourself, “Do I need to increase/decrease the amount of recognition I provide?” Reflect on who you recognized recently and why. “Who have I missed? Who should I concentrate on finding a reason to recognize?”
• Improve the chances of achieving your goal to recognize staff more often by asking someone to become your accountability partner. Tell a friend or colleague about your goal and ask them to monitor your efforts to help keep you on track.
• Are you recognizing staff as often as you feel you should? Perhaps your busy workload has pushed staff recognition aside. The solution may be to schedule a few minutes each day to express appreciation to those whose contributions you appreciate. This ensures that your daily calendar includes a block of time to focus on positives. The recipients of your praise will feel good—and so will you.

• Does staff respond positively to the recognition you provide? If they do, congratulations! You’re doing a good job of recognizing staff. You are providing the type of recognition they value. Great job!

• At least once a year, survey staff about recognition. Include questions on your annual staff survey. Better yet, use pulse surveys—brief, more frequent surveys that consist of a few or of  just one question—to gather feedback.

• If your organization has a formal staff recognition program, is it still meeting the purpose for which it was established? Does anyone remember why the program was created? Maybe it’s time to reconsider the program. Is there a better way to express appreciation?

• Follow up staff recognition events with this three-question assessment:
  • What went well?
  • What could have been done differently?
  • What was the one key lesson we learned that could be applied to staff recognition events in the future?

Final thought:

Keep staff recognition fresh by examining what you are doing. Adopt or adapt new tools and techniques and abandon those that have grown less effective. 

You Asked: About staff surveys

Question: How can I use surveys to determine if staff members feel appreciated and if they feel they are receiving enough recognition?

Answer: Let’s begin with some key elements of successful surveys:

If you can’t “fix it,” don’t ask. Surveys come with an implied promise that you will act on what you hear. If there are aspects of the organization’s operation that are beyond your control or your ability to change, don’t ask about them. You will be frustrated that you can’t do anything and staff members will be disappointed, and even angry, if after completing the survey they don’t see any action.

Ask questions that will produce easy to interpret results. Guessing what the data means is never a good idea. The potential of misunderstanding what staff is saying is too great.

Avoid burying yourself in data. Asking too many questions will produce so much data that it will take a long time to interpret and will produce an unmanageable number of potential actions. The longer they wait to see results, the more cynical staff members will become about the value of surveys.

Prevent “survey fatigue.” Some employers attempt to use surveys to ask about everything. When surveys are too long, staff is less likely to complete them and if they do, they will put less thought into their responses. The quality of the information coming from these surveys will be less than you hoped for.

All these are problems associated with once-a-year omnibus surveys that are administered in many workplaces, which attempt  to assess how staff feels about all aspects of the organization’s operation. 

There is a better way to use surveys to gain insight into what staff is thinking—pulse surveys.

These are shorter, consisting of a few questions and, at times, just one. Pulse surveys are quick to create, more focused and require less time to complete, which reduces the potential for survey fatigue and improves response rates.

The more frequently you conduct pulse surveys, the shorter the survey should be.

With fewer questions, pulse survey results can be interpreted quickly. Staff will see the results of their input sooner. Seeing the organization’s leadership acting on their input, staff members will become less cynical about surveys and more likely to respond to future surveys.

As pulse surveys can be conducted more frequently, you don’t have to wait a year to assess the impact of changes that you made as result of a previous survey. 

What to ask

There are two ways in which you can ask questions on surveys. The more common approach requires staff to respond to statements using a five-point Likert scale (Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Agree, Strongly agree) to statements similar to these:

• I receive meaningful recognition for doing my job well.
• The recognition I received is aligned with the goals and values of the organization.
• The recognition I receive is focused on what I must do to do my job well.
• Recognition is given to individuals and groups when it is deserved.

The advantage of asking questions in this way is that they can be answered quickly, which means that you can ask about several aspects of workplace life. On the other hand, this approach may produce results that are challenging to interpret, making it difficult to take action without seeking more input.

For example, what does it mean if 40 per cent disagree and 40 per cent agree that they “receive meaningful recognition?” What are you to do?

An alternative approach is “gap research,” which enables respondents to state how they perceive the workplace and how it could be improved. Four questions are asked about a topic.

Here’s how the topic of receiving meaningful recognition could be explored using gap research:

1. On a nine-point scale, with nine high, how satisfied are you that you receive meaningful recognition for doing your job well?

2. Why did you give this rating?

3. Knowing us as you do, if we really put our hearts into improving how we recognize staff, how satisfied could you be (using the same nine-point scale)?

4. What would we have to do to get there?

The first and third questions establish the gap between how staff members perceive the current situation and how they feel it could be. Question 2 invites respondent to explain why they rated the current situation as they did.

How staff answer Question 4 is most important. By telling you in their own words what needs to change, staff members are contributing to a plan for improvement. Their words may become your action plan.

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Participants in Retaining Staff without Spending Buckets of Money have the opportunity to develop their own gap research survey questions.

You asked: About how to show that a recognition program is failing

The Question: How do you overcome managers invested in an existing, but failing, recognition program? 

The Answer: Like almost everything else in our world, staff recognition programs and techniques have best-before dates. Staff recognition programs introduced years—even decades ago, in some cases—may not work as well as they once did. Over the years, people lose track of why certain approaches for recognizing staff were introduced

 “It’s difficult for any program—no matter how good—to last forever,” writes Bob Nelson in his book, Recognizing & Engaging Employees for Dummies.

What was meaningful to recipients at one time now has less impact. What worked for previous generations in the workplace may not have the same meaning for younger workers.

One common technique which has run out of steam in some organizations is service awards presented to employees to mark each fifth-year employment milestone. In Thanks! GREAT Job! I wrote of attending a client’s service awards event and discovering that none of the people who had been invited to receive their five- or 10-year awards showed up.

This program was a candidate for retirement.

All approaches to staff recognition should come with a plan to shut it down by a specific date. “It’s better to shut down a successful but declining program a little earlier than necessary, than it is to allow a marginal or counterproductive program to remain in place long after it should have been retired,” writes Nelson.

Even if you’re not prepared to take the drastic step of abandoning a program after a year or two (or even less), there should at least be a commitment to review its effectiveness after a specific period of time, say within a year of its implementation, and regularly thereafter.

Of course, many organizations already have programs that were put in place without any thought to assessment. In the situation alluded to in your question, it’s time to take a close look at what’s happening. Gather input that supports or disproves your belief that your existing program—the one in which managers are invested—is failing.

If you need to convince the bosses to assess their staff recognition program, blame it on me. “This guy who spoke at the Award and Personalization Association Expo in Las Vegas says organizations should assess their staff recognition practices at least once every two years. Are they still working? Does staff value the recognition they receive?”

(I may not have actually said that there, but it’s what I believe.)

Ask staff members how they feel about the recognition they receive. The value of recognition is determined by recipients, not by those who are providing the recognition.

Many organizations use annual staff surveys to gather this information. Typically, these are made up of many questions about different aspects of the workplace life. They often yield more data than anyone could manage, and as a result no action is taken that can be traced to the staff’s input. Staff then become reluctant to complete surveys because, “nothing ever happens after we do these surveys.”

Some organizations now take a different approach. Pulse surveys can be as short as a single question, which means organizations don’t have to rely on long, once-a-year surveys to gather input. They are quick to administer and require little time to interpret. 

In a recent article about this information-gathering tool, I suggested a simple four-question survey that would produce actionable information. This may be useful in your situation.

Another input-gathering technique are focus groups. Focus groups should be made up of five to 10 people, representing a cross-section of staff, and should be facilitated by someone the staff trusts or someone from outside the organization. If the organization is large enough, you should schedule more than one of these group discussions.

Ask participants how they feel about the recognition they receive. What’s working? Do they value the type of recognition they receive? What could be done differently? What type of recognition is most meaningful to them? How would they like to be recognized?

A third assessment tool to consider is similar to what I use as a post mortem to every program I present. As soon and as objectively as possible, I ask three questions (the third is reworded to suit your purposes):

• • What went well?
  • What could have been done differently?
  • What was the one key lesson we learned that could be applied to staff recognition in the future?

If, after your assessment, the conclusion is that change is needed, don’t simply drop your existing practices. Ease them out with a retirement party coupled with the introduction of new approaches to recognize staff.

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Does my answer raise new questions? Use the comment space below this article to ask your questions or comment on what I have written. Or you can always email at nmscott@telus.net.

Replace your long, once-a-year staff survey with shorter, more frequent pulse surveys

Recently, I was invited to complete a 40-question survey, which the originator promised would “take only about 15 minutes.”

My reaction was likely similar to that many employees have, when faced with their employer’s annual staff survey.

“Forty questions! Fifteen minutes? Not now. I don’t have time. Maybe later.” 

Two email reminders and one deadline extension later, I finally completed the survey. Rushing to finish, I may not have read the questions with enough care to fully understand what was being asked and several open-ended questions were left unanswered.

The reason so many of us recoil from surveys is threefold:

Survey fatigue – Every time we make a purchase, eat a restaurant meal, or stay in a hotel, we are asked to complete a survey. We wish they would leave us alone and stop pestering us for our opinion.

Time constraints – Because traditional surveys are so long, and therefore perceived as time-consuming (of time that respondents don’t feel they have), people put off completing surveys or rush though them.

Cynicism – Based on what they have seen happen in the past—or more accurately, what they have seen not happen—potential respondents are cynical about giving their feedback. “Why bother? Nothing ever changes!”

In the face of these observations, should you abandon surveys? You could, but gathering staff input is important in assessing the effectiveness of your staff recognition strategy.

There are questions to which you need answers: How satisfied are staff members with the recognition they receive? Do they feel appreciated for what they do? Valued as individuals? Is the recognition they receive meaningful? Do they feel they are recognized often enough? Is the recognition they receive Appropriate?

There’s not much you can do to eliminate survey fatigue. Other organizations will continue to ask for feedback, but you can make changes to minimize the other reasons staff are reluctant to complete surveys.

If you are relying on a comprehensive, once-a-year staff survey, it’s time to rethink this approach. Because it’s seen as the only opportunity to collect staff input, there is pressure to include questions about every aspect of life within the organization—leadership, support, benefits, flexible work hours and staff recognition.

The result is an omnibus survey that takes staff too long to complete and produces a mountain of data.

This mass of information is overwhelming, requiring time to process, creating the impression that nothing is happening. Often, the delay between when the survey questions are answered and when staff sees action creates doubt that the organization values feedback.

It may be time to replace annual surveys with a series of short surveys conducted throughout the year.

Waiting a year to check what staff is thinking is an antiquated approach. In today’s rapidly changing world of work, relying on an annual survey makes as much sense as would waiting a year to check your bank balance.

The alternative is pulse surveys, which require only a minute or two to complete. Results can be quickly analyzed and actions taken, if required, within days, not weeks or months.

Because they are short and can be created quickly, pulse surveys can be administered more frequently. This allows you to follow up previous surveys or to explore another topic a week or two later, rather than waiting for months to ask your questions.

Staff are more likely to complete short surveys and when you survey staff frequently, it demonstrates that you value their input—but only if they see you acting on what they are saying.

If you ask for input, plan to act on what you hear.

A pulse survey, such as the three-question sample below, will provide easy-to-gather, actionable information you can use right away.

1. On a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 high, how satisfied are you with the recognition you receive for doing your job well?

1          2        3        4        5

2. Please explain why you gave this rating.

3. What could we do to improve your rating?

Suggested Action: Initiate your own pulse survey. Use the example in this article or create your own question. Email nmscott@telus.net or call 780-232-3828 if you would like to discuss your plans or if you require advice about questions.

Participants in my Staff Recognition: One Piece at a Time workshop develop their own plans for using  surveys to develop, assess and improve their staff recognition strategy.