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The A Team

It all starts with a simple idea. “I think it’s time we ran a staff survey”.

It all starts with a simple idea. “I think it’s time we ran a staff survey”. Designing a staff survey is like baking a cake. If you get the ingredients right, all the components will come together, but get them wrong and you will be faced with a rather unsavoury mess. Sally Winston, Key Account Director at ORC International reflects on why staff surveys can easily go wrong.

There is wide perception that surveys can be thrown together in a few simple steps. Firstly, you pull together a list of questions, then you send the survey out and finally, you collect the responses. Many organisations follow these basic procedures, but are surprised when the survey fails to achieve its purpose. A well-designed staff survey isn’t rocket science, but it does require careful attention to key details.

Many companies look to run surveys simply because everyone’s doing them, because it seems like a good idea or because they want to give staff input on key strategic decisions. Staff surveys can be extremely useful, but the reasoning behind carrying them out must be very clear. There may be an obvious point in the business planning cycle where the survey results would be really useful. By spending time deciding on key goals and looking at the anticipated outcomes, an organisation can begin to see if a survey is the correct action. At this stage other questions should be asked, such as, will it impact upon negatively staff? The most successful surveys are those that start with a clearly defined objective and a vision for how the information will be used.

One of the most disappointing moments in a staff survey process comes after the results are and you realise they tell you very little. There will often be elements of the responses that you don’t entirely understand. It’s very hard to gain an insight into every part of an individual’s experiences, attitudes and behaviours. To do so would require hundreds of questions and multiple response scales – putting off busy respondents who have little time to spare and overwhelming managers who have to analyse, interpret and act on the results. Following some key design principles can help. Refer back to your objectives, make sure you have all the major ingredients of the employee experience covered and always think back to one key question – will I be able to take action in response to the answers?

Avoid classic mistakes like forgetting who your respondents are and asking questions that could only be answered by those in strategic decision making positions. Questions must also be clear. Don’t ask questions like; “Are communications frequent enough and clear?” This is an unfocussed question. Instead ask; “Do we need communications to be more frequent, less frequent or clearer?” Be careful about using do-it-yourself tools that provide a blank canvas or promise to tell you everything you need to know in a few standard questions. Questionnaire design is an art form. If you have in-house expertise, a clear set of objectives and a way to test your questions before going into the field then you can create an intuitive, robust and insightful piece of research. But every business is different, and the questions that work in one scenario won’t always translate to others.

Simple survey tools often fail to truly support businesses in using the results effectively. Off-the shelf options like ORC International’s engage give access to validated questions, global benchmarking and reporting tools. A successful survey requires fast feedback on headlines, the ability to compare against relevant external benchmarks and a way of identifying the key priorities for action. When choosing your tool you should make sure you have all of these bases covered. It is easy to assume that the best place to focus action is on the most terrible results. But this will not help you to achieve the desired outcome of improved employee engagement or better business performance. The science behind the interpretation of the results is important and a basic off the shelf tool doesn’t necessarily give you that.

Often, a lot of effort is put into the design of the questions, but getting response rates are forgotten. When results are based on the opinions of a small number of staff they can’t be considered representative or accurate. This is a worst-case scenario for an HR Director. A well-designed communications campaign can create a real buzz about the survey. Attention should be given to communicating the benefits of taking part, demonstrating that leaders and managers really want to hear staff views and making commitments to action on the basis of the results. If you have asked the right questions and have generated a high response rate you will be rewarded with a wealth of data that can help inform a wide range of issues. The results stage is a critical hurdle it is easy to drown in data, fail to identify key priorities and allow the results to lead you down the wrong path.

www.orcinternational.co.uk

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