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.