On August 1st, the Wall Street Journal published an article in the business section by Peter Cappelli titled: It’s time to get rid of employee surveys. We have seen opinions like this be expressed in the past and with this new widely publicized article we feel we need to respond and educate.
By helping create high performing workforces grounded in science, discovery, and innovation, we contribute to the vitality of individuals, the success of organizations, and the progress of our society and our world.
Multi-rater, multi-perspective feedback programs have been around for a long time serving many purposes with very mixed results and reviews. Like many other forms of feedback, if not done properly, the intended objective and outcomes may not be realized. Learn what works and what doesn’t.
In times of crisis, there is a great opportunity for employers to have a game-changing impact on leadership trust and employee engagement. Learn the questions to ask to ensure your workforce prevails stronger than it ever was.
When designing and setting up an employee engagement survey, the overriding consideration is to ensure the utilization of good science. But it’s not just about good science.
There are a lot of conversations occurring about the evolving role of employee surveys. Learn how to make the best use of new, faster and more advanced technologies without losing focus on what matters the most.
Just because we are dazzled by technological advances like Continuous Listening, with its speed and convenience—doesn’t mean it makes us better. Learn how to use technology and science equally to create momentum in your workforce.
Employee Engagement survey frequency can impact your results positively or negatively. Learn how much of a good thing is too much and what balance to use to ensure you’re asking at the right time and with the right frequency.
Anything worth doing, is worth doing right, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Learn the right frequency and focus for your employee engagement survey efforts.
After completing our second year in business and already celebrating the acquisition of our eightieth client, we are excited to share the incredible success and progress of our clients.
Learn how the right engagement index is critical to providing you with the most reliable and accurate employee engagement insights. Insights that cause your employees to be more motivated, committed, and conscientious.
To drive engagement, you have to listen differently. Learn the critical differences between employee feedback and customer feedback, what to do and what not to do when looking at the two initiatives.
How an effective continuous listening program gave leaders of a well-known resort the understanding of what levers matter to continue driving engagement during challenging times.
Learn how a well-known bank strengthened leadership and listening efforts during uncertain times of 2020.
In a time of crisis, this large organization exemplified strong leaders and effective communication strategies that drove higher engagement rates and more motivated and trusted employees.
Learn how the CEO of a large retail organization built a future strategy that energized the workforce, defined culture, and empowered the workforce to achieve strategic objectives.”
“It was a meeting I’ll never forget. I was going in to deliver some of the worst employee-survey results that I had seen in quite some time, and I had to give the news to an entire executive team of about a dozen people.”
WSA releases new research and a Point of View document on the importance of listening and communicating with your employees during times of crisis.
New HR consulting firm founded by former Kenexa and IBM executives recognized by Qualtrics as its leading employee experience partner.
New book written by Workforce Science Associates co-founder Bill Erickson, an ex-Kenexa, IBM and Gallup executive, helps individuals and organizations realize elite performance
Three former executives of Kenexa, a leading provider of human resources technology acquired by IBM in 2012, today announced they have formed Workforce Science Associates, an HR consulting firm dedicated to creating engaging employee experiences.
Employee engagement is what best describes and measures the level of motivation, commitment, and conscientiousness of the employees who make up your workforce. It is best understood as the right combination of factors that cause your people to want to work harder, stay longer, and care more.
Your employee engagement scores are derived from the items on your survey. So, your organization’s scores are truly in the hands of the survey designer. Some scores are much better indicators of performance than others.
The most meaningful engagement scores are an average of three or four summary types of items that focus on the core nature of engagement for your organization. These engagement summary items should represent the best predictors of change within the most important performance indicators for your company.
After testing hundreds of items over 40 years we have established that the following four items represent the single best measure across business and industry:
It’s also good to note that the right specific and actionable items should always be included in the survey, but NOT part of your engagement scores as the research findings and recommendations will be biased.
Disengaged employees are only concerned with what they have to do. Engaged employees want to know what else they can do to help. As people become more engaged, their work goes from feeling like a job, to a career, to their chosen way of life. They take personal responsibility for the success of their team and their company. Research shows that engaged employees have stronger friendships at work, find more meaning in their work, and are much more likely to advocate for their company. Specifically, as people become more engaged they want to work harder, stay longer, and care more.
To be honest, we find this question highly problematic because it involves a misleading assumption. There is no right answer in a vacuum. People always answer with their pet action plan or what best fits their business or consulting model, and this is wrong. If you ask an oncologist how to treat cancer, and he/she gives you a specific answer without examining the patient, they are NOT professional. The only right answer is “it depends”. Anyone who makes a specific recommendation about how to engage your workforce, within your culture without doing the research and taking the time to understand your company is, in our opinion, not giving credible advice. If you want to engage your workforce, first do the research, second identify the top drivers of engagement and third, from that list of key drivers, select a small number (one to three) of factors that you think you can address most effectively and go to work.
This is such an important question. But it is often misunderstood and misleading because the question presumes that there is a right answer. The only honest answer is it depends on your culture, your business, and your leadership. And most of all, it depends on your people. But, from a practical perspective, the most effective employee engagement activities in your organization should be defined by identifying the factors, through the appropriate research, that are the most important drivers of engagement within your company. Then you can be certain that the engagement activities that best address those factors will be the ones that are most effective and have the most impact.
The single most important component of the survey is a proven, valid, credible overall engagement index. Without this, any research findings or recommendations will be of limited value at best, and at worst, misleading. For more information on this please see the FAQ above on “What is an employee engagement score?”
The remainder of the survey should be made up of specific, actionable items, that are all potentially addressable by some level of leadership or management. These items should all involve organizational or management issues that could indicate factors that are either detractors from or drivers of engagement. We have found that there are some items that are so universally important that omitting them from the survey would create the risk of missing a critical opportunity for improvement. We always recommend these core items.
We also know that every organization is different. Whatever it takes to equip employees for success in retail might be very different from what it takes in manufacturing, to point out just one of many possible examples. Therefore, we have developed, and strongly recommend, a process for better understanding the uniqueness of each company and choosing those items from an extensive library of proven items, (and even in some cases relying on expert judgement to write a new item or two) that might best capture and explain those unique factors. Our most successful projects have involved surveys with between 25 and 45 items that can be completed by employees in five to eight minutes.
We can state, with complete confidence, that the best foundation of a successful long-term employee engagement initiative is the annual employee survey, as long as it is designed, administered, and analyzed appropriately.
This being said, a mid-year pulse survey to monitor progress and increase accountability can be a very helpful addition. We recommend a shortened survey that still includes the engagement index and also those items that were selected by managers and leaders for goal setting and action planning. We have learned that across an entire workforce, employee engagement is an enduring condition that doesn’t significantly improve in a lasting way in short periods of time. It takes a focused, disciplined approach, over time, to make truly lasting changes.
As far as the overall engagement initiative is concerned, overly frequent surveys that lead to changing priorities and messaging can do more harm than good. However, if leadership has a specific question about such things as the level of acceptance and/or appreciation of a new program, or, employee preferences about changes that could possibly be made to the benefits package, to name just two examples, then a pulse survey can be an effective way of getting an answer.
Even though surveys are our business, we do caution against too many surveys. In a recent study conducted on a random sample of 5000 employed Americans, the results showed that employees who were asked to take four or more surveys a year began to passively sabotage the results. They reported being less honest, less likely to complete the survey, and less likely to take the survey at all. More isn’t always better!
The remainder of the survey should be made up of specific, actionable items, that are all potentially addressable by some level of leadership or management. These items should all involve organizational or management issues that could indicate factors that are either detractors from or drivers of engagement. We have found that there are some items that are so universally important that omitting them from the survey would create the risk of missing a critical opportunity for improvement. We always recommend these core items.
We also know that every organization is different. Whatever it takes to equip employees for success in retail might be very different from what it takes in manufacturing, to point out just one of many possible examples. Therefore, we have developed, and strongly recommend, a process for better understanding the uniqueness of each company and choosing those items from an extensive library of proven items, (and even in some cases relying on expert judgement to write a new item or two) that might best capture and explain those unique factors. Our most successful projects have involved surveys with between 25 and 45 items that can be completed by employees in five to eight minutes.
Please see the FAQ’s on “How do I engage my workforce?” and “What are the most effective employee engagement activities?”
The answer involves two powerful words: listen and individualize. Never assume that your top performers’ needs and preferences are just like yours or other talented people. John Wooden, arguably the most successful coach in history, once said, “The worst form of discrimination is treating everyone the same.” For example, many top performers deny that they need recognition. But upon further investigation it may prove that they make this claim because the recognition they have received to-date didn’t fit their preference. Some people crave a big, public splash, others are embarrassed that. Discover who they want to know when they have a big achievement, who they want to receive recognition from, the important things they do that no one notices, and how they like to be appreciated. The number of options is really unlimited, but only one or two, for some people, feel right.
And recognition is only one of so many issues deserving consideration. What about career goals and ongoing growth and learning, their need to find a greater sense of purpose in their work, and their need to work in a trusting environment? How do they like to be involved and included? When do they need more communication? When do they need to be listened to? How closely do they need to be supervised? How do they learn best and what kind of feedback do they want the most? The list goes on. The possibilities are unlimited! Until you get to know your most talented people and your top performers you can’t possibly get it right. Ask, listen, and be prepared to individualize your approach based on what you learn.
