Employee engagement surveys. In or out? Relevant or not? Is there something better?

The impact of engagement on company performance is well documented and if done well, engagement surveys provide useful guidance for designing effective talent, rewards and leadership strategies.

The gap between engagement surveys and relevance usually lies in one or both of the following areas: 1) The survey focuses on satisfaction rather than engagement and/or ignores one or more drivers of engagement; and 2) The company doesn't follow up on the information by making policy adjustments and measuring improvement.

When you sift through the various research, the top drivers of engagement are:

Managers – Good managers can keep people engaged at bad companies, but people leave bad managers at otherwise great companies. Or worse, they don’t leave, they just withhold their best work.

Rewards – We can debate to what extent money motivates but rewards do impact engagement, at least to the extent that getting rewards wrong may result in feelings of resentment, information hording and other negative behaviors.

Opportunities - The feeling that you’re getting somewhere rather than stuck in place is a fundamental driver of engagement.

Communication – Good communication means more than presenting the company strategy at the quarterly meeting. Employees who feel informed and involved are more likely to trust their employer, take pride in their jobs and have a big picture focus when it comes to their work.

An engagement survey that doesn't focus on all four engagement drivers, i.e., employee attitudes about their managers, their rewards, their feeling of belonging, opportunity and involvement may miss out on critical information. And even a perfect engagement survey won't add much value if the company doesn't use the information to design more effective engagement strategies.

Coincidentally, I recently completed development of a set of surveys that focused on engagement for a client I am working with. It is true that surveys are only one measure of engagement, but you can learn a lot if you ask the right questions. Asking flat out if someone is engaged with something (in this case writing/editing source code comments) does not always result in the best information, especially if the people being surveyed know there is a "right" "expected" or "desired" answer. Even if the survey is anonymous, the existence of a desired answer may influence the response. ("I know I am supposed to spend time creating useful comments...I'm not going to say just how much I don't like it/do it")

On the other hand, it can be very informative to ask a range of questions that are related - questions about behaviors that result from someone being engaged. You don't set off the same expectation triggers. The trick is to spend sufficient time to determine what the most relevant outcomes are - someone who is engaged with X, is likely to do Y, or think Z . You also have to determine how many of these questions to ask (breadth and depth) in order to triangulate on what you are interested in.

Developing these sorts of surveys is very engaging.

A business has 5 primary assets with the first and foremost being People both Customers and Employees. Question this? Try doing without them for one day.

Surveys and questionnaires are only one of the methods to determine what position you are in. Nothing beats face-to-face communication. Ask open ended questions and ensure that those who you interview know that they may speak freely. Most people have the fear of losing their job if they tell it like it is. High turnover is the result of executive's lack of communication and care, coupled with the lack of knowledge in how to fully understand.

Look in the mirror and ask the person you see if he or she is part of the problem.

I believe there are two major parts to this.

1. Even if the survey is well written and has a high percentage of returns, if the results and inferences taken from them are go without real enforced follow-through, then the survey becomes ineffective and often starts to skew results from subsequent surveys. (The "we get this every year and no one pays attention to our answers or addresses our problems." or "The results are ignored for the more severe problems and only low hanging fruit is addressed." type responses. Both are common responses. Not to mention leaving the decision of addressing problems in the hands of the one who caused them.)

2. If the survey is well researched prior to it's implementation, then engagement can be quantified if it is broken down to a series of questions that are relevant to the company, the company's product, and most importantly, the employee's specific jobs. The common problem here is that the questions are often so generic that they seem irrelevant to the individual employee. There is this idea that 'office worker' is stuck in an antiquated idea of the mid 20th century clerical worker. It doesn't take into account that the questions may not mere seem irrelevant but also may seem silly if the person taking the survey is an engineer, a creative artist, a factory floor worker, or some other special position that encompasses many workers in a specific company but are not an industry wide "defined group".

Additionally, responses are often compiled without regard to the differences in the perception or literal meaning of the question. As an example: "Do you have the right tools you need to do your job well?" This means very different things when your talking to a graphic designer, a lab technician, an HR Generalist, and accountant. These types of discrepancies are often obvious to the individual, but become useless when combined and averaged with a department, not to mention an entire company or enterprise.

Employee engagement is the reward employers receive for having all their employees doing their jobs well, all of the time, especially the CEOs and their direct reports. In other words, stop asking employees if they are engaged and start getting the CEOs and their direct reports to do their jobs well. Perhaps employers do engagement surveys because that is easier to do than to get the CEOs and their direct reports to do their jobs well?

Mr. Schaeffer is pretty much right. Such surveys are pretty much worthless. Want your employees engaged? Get out and talk with them (not to them). And be aware it will take a while (years) before they feel they can be honest with you. And I don't mean just one level down. CEOs can learn from janitors.

Bring back that old Suggestion box for those who need to be anonymous. Old ideas aren't necessarily bad ideas.

I believe employee surveys are very relevant and definitely should be "in." I say this with the caveat that the survey is designed to capture real and relevant information. And that there real be real analysis toward fixing the problems that are identified...And that there is some kind of link to the leaders pay, bonus etc...ensuring favorable outcomes occur.

Far too often, I have seen exit interviews, Q12 employee engagement surveys and client engagement and satisfaction surveys gather awesome data...yet no one aggregates, analyzes or addresses the information in any way.

This is why most clients or employees even bother completing surveys when asked...or even care about Job Evaluations...they believe what I know. No one is going to do anything about it anyway!

Have just finished reading The Secret Life of Pronouns http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/book.php my perspective on this has shifted a bit. Perhaps we are looking at the wrong things?

Now I'm thinking that we need to look at the language used in the responses to surveys, questionnaires, even email correspondence and day to day chatter.

One way to interpret overall engagement within a group is to look for the standard "I, we, they" language. Lots of folks using "I" words is ok, suggests taking ownership. Better if you can get to a point where most are using "we, us, our" suggesting a bonded team of people with shared values, vision and goals or in Tribal Leadership speak, a stage 3 Tribe. If the bulk of the correspondence and talk includes "they, them" well, you're in trouble.

To make staff feedback even more useful perhaps using the language analysis tools available at http://www.liwc.net/ could help provide a real view of how engaged a staff group is.

My other quick thoughts on this is that employee engagement has to be embedded in the culture. Asking staff for feedback ought to be part of the daily practice, not a scheduled event.

Engagement comes with great leadership. Great leaders don't need surveys to tell them if their employees are engaged; they are the conduit of engagement.

It concerns me when I hear that it is pointless or useless to ask people about their level of engagement. Surveys may or may not be the appropriate vehicle - it is context dependent. But if you don't go directly to the source (the people you are concerned about) but instead use some external measure then you risk falling into the "we know better than them" trap. No one knows better how they feel or what they believe than the people in question. Not their boss, not anyone else.

They survey I referred to in my prior response to this question was requested by some people who are really and truly interested in understanding why their people are behaving the way they are in a given environment. The external variables are complex (as always) and they want to learn all they can about what is going on before they move forward with some changes under consideration. This is not a bad situation, but they want to not waste time and money on the wrong changes as they strive to make things even better.

There is more to it than surveys - but the surveys will give them one set of information they will get no other way. I don't believe you can make a blanket statement about surveys of engagement being useless or not useless. You have to go to the people you care about if you want to understand them and in some situations a survey is a good choice of how to do that.

In. Relevant. Better when the survey measures the right things and is the impetus for further discussion, inquiry (if needed - e.g. through focus groups) and action. Any survey is a snapshot of perceptions at a given time so, of course, engagement surveys are not the all and end all. These surveys, however, are powerful tools to inform leaders and teams about what is going well and what important areas need improvement in order to support the best workplace experiences.

Some commenters seem to be criticizing surveys as not being drivers of engagement. Engagement surveys are only tools for measuring satisfaction and engagement. I agree that surveys aren't worthwhile where that organization's leaders and teams do not utilize the survey information well and communicate about those actions effectively.

Reading through this thread, it becomes evident that we need a new word for what a lot of people are talking about here in this context. In the context of employee surveys, I think what we're really looking to measure is *employee sentiment.* That is to say the aggregate mood and "pulse" of the employee at that particular moment in time.

Practically speaking, "measuring engagement" (as done by HR professionals) is most often actually trying to measure the efficacy or ROI of specific initiatives meant to improve overall morale and connection to each worker whereas assessing mood, loyalty, affinity and identification is more accurately categorized as sentiment. Can we agree on this?

Whatever their actual usefulness (which - as has been said many different ways through this thread is a function of survey design, analysis and action and post assessment communication), most employees question the value (relative to their required time investment) of the survey.

The primary reason expressed is because given the gap between employee input and final communication, the employee cannot often feel a relevance to how the survey inputs measurably improve or change their own day-to-day work experience (i.e. sentiment).

Beyond all the obvious problems with "point in time" assessments, and what many organizations now often do to briefly increase sentiment shortly before the survey, the biggest problem with the standard "top down" survey is that it can identify "whole" (i.e. felt company-wide) but not identify issues that impact performance at a team-level (i.e. with a small set of employees and their manager).

So, in my opinion, the right system to measure employee sentiment should meet what I call, "The Five T's"

Timely: It has to be able to scan as frequently as daily, and at least weekly to identify key issues that might impact performance;

Trusted: It should sit *outside* the organization and be anonymous for employees. The manager should be able to trust that the data is sufficiently informed to not just represent the "vocal minority;"

Time sensitive: The time required for each session should be a couple of minutes of time per each employee;

Transparent: The results need to be instantly communicated and the employee should see how their answers compare to their colleagues;

Tactical: It should identify specific issues that are impacting (or threaten to impact) performance that a manager can address within their team;

We've designed a lightweight SaaS web application that does all of this called happiily (http://www.happiily.com) and before you say "a person's happiness can't be measured!" let's refer back to "employee sentiment." Outside of HR (and even inside of HR) very few employees naturally express themselves in terms of their engagement. They do however talk in human emotions about their work.

I hope beyond promoting our own tool, I've contributed to this great thread.

Hi Charlie,

PHOOEY on surveys. Not that I don't like surveys, I use them in my work. I just think rudimentary survey approaches are not an optimal way to measure employee perceptions and attitudes. They are a dime a dozen, and too many management consultants and market research companies are happy to do an employee engagement/satisfaction survey for you. The results are often delivered in an aggregate form, losing valuable details about subgroups in the overall community.

Have you ever seen Undercover Boss? Another reality show with many flaws, but it does clearly illustrate how the lines of communication in any organization filter messages on the way up the ladder. Very successful CEOs are in the dark about fundamental issues involving their most important asset, their employees. The revelations in each episode appear for two reasons: The willing openness of an employee in a specific role, and the anonymity of the boss.

To get Undercover Boss results through an employee study requires a combination of characteristics: Honest and believable anonymity on the part of study participants, a detailed way to analyze subgroups within the overall community, and a way to understand the gap between satisfaction and the importance of the subjects covered. This is basically a discovery process that supports perception analysis and subsequently perception management. This type of work is available, but not from my company.

Employee engagement can mean a lot of things, but the bottom line is that we need to learn what may be holding employees back from being productive, enjoying their work, excelling in their profession, and possessing the commitment to work toward the vision of their superiors and the organization (this is assuming there is vision). Cookie cutter employee/customer sat instruments and approaches may reveal interesting information, but generally lack the insight to create actionable change information at a detailed level.

There are so many insightful and thoughtful posts in this thread…good question Charlie.

It comes to mind that the question of "employee" engagement may actually be driven by questions in many minds about just how engaged younger people are in their lives and the society around them. With the rise of "virtual" interaction through social media and the web, young people may be coming to adulthood with less and less real connection to the world around them, opting instead for living in a virual world of their own making and to which they can remain largely anonymous.

I was at a government conference in DC last year where at least half the audience of nearly 500 spent entire sessions fixated on their PDAs, never even looking up at the presenters, and the main stage had three huge panels: one for the presentation and two for tweets from attendees about the presentation. I came away with an eerie feeling that something is seriously wrong with the way we are participating in our culture. This is, I know, controversial, but the signs are visible... including the decreasing degree to which employees appear to be engaged in their jobs.

Yes, there is something better.

Employees need to be competent and well-suited to their organization and they need an adequate or better talent for their jobs. Employers do a very good job of determining job applicants' competence and employers do a good job of evaluating if applicants are well-suited to their organization. Engaged employees are; competent, well-suited to their organization, and have an adequate or better talent for their job. Most employers however do not do a very good job of evaluating job related talent.

1. How do you define talent?
2. How do you measure talent?
3. How do you know a candidate’s talent?
4. How do you know what talent is required by each job?
5. How do you match a candidate’s talent to the talent demanded by the job?

Everyone wants to hire for talent but if we can't answer the five questions above with specificity, we cannot hire for talent. Yes, we will hire talented employees, about 20% of the time, which helps explain why so many new hires fail to become successful employees, i.e., engaged. Even engaged employees need to be effectively managed. If effective management were a function of knowledge, then than their would be few business majors and MBAs who are not effective managers. MBAs (Managers By Acclamation) may or may not be effective managers even if knowledgable and well educated in management.

The something better is to hire for;
* competence
* culture
* talent
and then manage each employee effectively, which is hard for most managers to do since they were not hired for talent.