Top-10 signs your employee survey needs to change

October 3, 2009 - Luc Galoppin

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.

#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.

  • 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

  • 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

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

    Regards

    Craig

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

    Regards

    Craig

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