Employee Engagement. Voice of the Employee. Pulse Survey. Employee Experience. Team Engagement Assessment.
Do any of these terms ring a bell? Do they possibly send you into a panic? Or a place of exhaustion and fatigue?
Don’t get me wrong. I am an advocate for employee engagement work, when it’s done the right way, with true intentions and transparency.
Unfortunately, I am seeing very little of that pure methodology these days. Instead, as an outside observer, I am watching companies conduct surveys with little to no communication to employees about the reason for the surveys, or what – if anything – they can expect from the fruits of their survey-taking efforts. The management education and support resources are limited to simply an expectation to “action plan” and make sure their team’s survey numbers are on an upward trajectory. And, if the company-wide results don’t meet whatever arbitrary goal was set at the beginning of this very odd year, the information quite simply isn’t shared.
Folks, this breaks one of the cardinal rules of surveys. Don’t ever survey employees if you don’t plan to share the information or act on your findings.
Under this cloud of mystery and disinformation is a potentially more troubling piece of data. These surveys are now being used as weapons against managers whose teams had the audacity to either respond with full brutal honesty, or who simply opted out of responding because of a lack of trust with upper management. What kind of magical powers are these managers supposed to wield to bend the will of their teams to “game” the survey? And is that really the point?
What are the executive teams so afraid of when it comes to hearing the truth from their employees? Do they think its personal? If so, they might want to ask their egos to sit in the corner for a bit.
Are they afraid of acknowledging the workforce is changing rapidly? That employers can no longer “command and control” and expect blind loyalty? That employees take their mental and physical health seriously and aren’t afraid to demand better pay, equal opportunities, and reasonable accommodations? That working more humanely in a human world is, quite simply, the right way to operate?
This all leads me to wonder…why are companies still conducting these surveys in an environment not geared towards favorable responses? Has a tool that was once intended to create a more engaged workforce now being used to disengage and provide more fuel to fires of displacements, return to office mandates, quiet promotions, and more?
If your company is still conducting annual, quarterly, or monthly surveys it is worth keeping an eye on when or if the data is shared. If it is, how transparently and at what levels of the organization. How is the data being used? Are teams hosting meaningful action planning sessions?
Remember, when these surveys are done appropriately, they are incredibly effective engagement tools. Don’t be shy about asking the “why, when, how, what” questions around your own company’s surveys. Those questions are:
- Why is the company conducting the survey?
- When and how frequently will the survey(s) be conducted?
- How will the results/data be shared? And to which employee audiences? How will the data be used?
- What can employees expect in terms of action, empowerment, and follow-up communication?
