The culture survey: fewer questions, more action
The culture or ‘engagement’ survey can be quite divisive. When done well it can provide organisations and their leaders with insights upon which they can immediately act on. When done badly it can actually make the culture worse!
Surveys are still the most popular way for companies to gauge culture and to uncover potential issues that need to be addressed. This was reinforced by Adam Grant, Scott Judd and Eric O’Rourke in a paper in 2018, but it’s only recently that they’ve been used consistently.
Management theories began shifting towards valuing employee satisfaction and motivation in the 1930s. The Human Relations Movement – born out of the Hawthorne studies in the 1920s – emphasised the importance of psychological and social factors in the workplace.
By the 1970s – and fuelled by The Quality of Working Life movement – employee surveys had become a staple in many of the large organisations and they focused largely on job satisfaction, communication and working conditions.
By the 2000s, technology had replaced the paper-based approach and simplified the process of gathering information and by the 2010s, workplaces started to introduce ‘Pulse’ surveys. Pulse surveys were a way of moving away from the once-a-year approach to provide richer data on culture and also to ensure that issues were being picked up sooner rather than later.
With advancements in artificial intelligence and data analytics, organisations are now exploring ways to use predictive models to anticipate employee needs, predict turnover and proactively address potential issues. Yet, any information collected or predicted is only as good as the action it initiates.
I spoke with an employee recently and asked whether she’d responded to the recent engagement survey that her organisation had undertaken. She rolled her eyes (never a good sign) and said that she had wasted 20 minutes(!) answering questions. Unfortunately, this is the lived experience of many employees.
Empathy seems to be rarely used when constructing surveys, particularly in the attention-poor world we live in today. Why ask five questions when you have a tool that can ask fifty? Because, employees are much more likely to answer five. It’s called ‘Response Burden’ and when the burden feels lighter we’re more likely to answer and answers are important if you want to improve.
The best surveys are those that are simple to understand, quick to complete and of course, are actioned by those who have accountability for employee experience.
Valuable productive time spent providing honest insights into what’s good and what’s not in order to produce a report that few people read or follow through on, in any meaningful way, is an appalling waste.
Leaders should be measured on their delivery to the culture actions by way of demonstrating to staff that their feedback has not been in vain, with the ultimate objective being that the culture improves in the short-term. Many organisations are still discussing the results from last year’s survey as they look to embark on this years.
The following principles should, therefore, be taken into consideration when using culture surveys:
Little and often – focus on fewer questions that provide easy-to-interpret information at more regular intervals throughout the year
Employee view – ask the questions from the perspective of the employee (‘Do you see our values being consistently practised by our leadership team?’) rather than the employer (‘Do you understand how to put the values into practice?’)
Don’t keep asking the same people – vary the people that you ask so that they don’t get survey fatigue
Create safety – give employees the option to provide their name if they wish to do so. They are less likely to do this in a toxic culture, hence why anonymity should be offered
Action immediately - don’t wait, assign owners, get to work and complete in the first three months
The culture/engagement/listening/other fancy name (delete as appropriate for your company) survey is still the best way to find out what people think about your culture, but if you want them to be seen as essential to positive evolution, then there needs to be fewer questions and more action.
