Top-10 signs your employee survey needs to change

The below movie shows an interview with Curt Coffman, co-author of First, Break All the Rules. In my opinion his top ten covers all the pitfalls one can encounter when performing employee surveys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DnGt9zCjtg

#10 Your survey hasn’t changed since Bob Dole ran for president;
#9 Your survey has more items than your accounting system;
#8 Employees and managers feel more helpless after completing the survey;
#7 Your customer loyalty scores still have not improved;
#6 You are paying more than $10 per employee for data collection and reporting;
#5 By the time your survey vendor returns the data, your workforce has turned over;
#4 Employee surveys, what are those?…;
#3 You need a 3″ binder to hold one report;
#2 The dog ate your action plans;
#1 You keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect a different result.
(“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change“)

My both thumbs up for this powerful summary!!

PS: Thank you Craig Smith for pointing me to this video.

  • http://www.jkador.com/ John Kador

    Great list of problems for writing and implementing employee surveys. Indeed, the sum of all the problems is a killer of employee morale. When employees take the time to fill out a survey and then find that nothing changes, it is a total disincentive to everything that promotes the organization. It’s better for an organization not to survey employees at all if there’s no possibility of changes being made.

    Look for my new book on this subject. With Katherine J. Armstrong, I wrote “Perfect Phrases for Writing Employee Syrveys” (McGraw-Hill, Spring 2010.) http://www.mhprofessional.com/esl_product.php?isbn=0071664017

  • http://www.jkador.com John Kador

    Great list of problems for writing and implementing employee surveys. Indeed, the sum of all the problems is a killer of employee morale. When employees take the time to fill out a survey and then find that nothing changes, it is a total disincentive to everything that promotes the organization. It’s better for an organization not to survey employees at all if there’s no possibility of changes being made.

    Look for my new book on this subject. With Katherine J. Armstrong, I wrote “Perfect Phrases for Writing Employee Syrveys” (McGraw-Hill, Spring 2010.) http://www.mhprofessional.com/esl_product.php?isbn=0071664017

  • http://www.flint-consulting.com/ Craig Smith

    Thanks for the mention. Would you like to share links between our websites?

    Regards

    Craig

  • http://www.flint-consulting.com Craig Smith

    Thanks for the mention. Would you like to share links between our websites?

    Regards

    Craig

  • http://www.reply-mc.com/2009/10/12/prevent-survey-fatigue/ Luc’s Thoughts on Organizational Change » Blog Archive » Prevent Survey Fatigue

    [...] During large programs it is very difficult to keep an eye on what is cooking inside the organization and how people’s perceptions of the upcoming change are evolving. Hence, a commonly used instrument to check this ‘change readiness’ is holding surveys. Last week I mentioned the Top-10 signs your employee survey needs to change. [...]

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