Misguided satisfaction

By VIKKI BLAND

When you think about it, the point of a staff satisfaction survey should be to find out how satisfied the employees of a company are. Yet according to international research and local management consultants, many organisations carry out staff satisfaction surveys to satisfy themselves.

Dr Peter Hart, director of the Australian research firm and survey consultant InsightSRC, says one of the biggest mistakes organisations make is to survey staff to satisfy senior management's competitive curiosity.

"Staff satisfaction surveys should not be used as a benchmark for organisations to compare themselves with other organisations," he says. "The point is to gather information which can be used to help people and companies develop and improve."

Leigh Branham, vice-president of organisational consulting for international consultants Right Management Consultants, agrees.

"Many senior leaders just want to see how [they] stack up against other organisations. The problem is too many companies then take comfort in learning they are about average instead of striving to achieve excellent results."

And there are good reasons for getting staff satisfaction surveys right.

Peter Swanson, practice leader, leadership development for Right Management's New Zealand branch, says one of the most compelling reasons for surveying staff satisfaction is to keep staff.

"Technology is no longer the key differentiator between organisations," he says "It's people."

Swanson says modern organisations are in a war for talent (a phrase coined by management consultants McKinsey Group in the 90s). As more people head into retirement there is a shortage of labour for management and leadership positions.

Employers can no longer assume promotions and salaries will lead to staff retention, Swanson says.

"There is more talk about people wanting to be aligned to an organisation in terms of value and culture.

"What I sense and what I see would suggest that the lifestyle of the employee also makes a lot of difference. So it is very important to understand what your employees want. Staff satisfaction surveys can help provide that information."

However, surveying staff is not something all organisations want to do.

"Some organisations fear the survey being leaked, revealing internal questioning to competitors," says Hart. "There is also a fear of creating false employee expectations. I advise companies with these fears not to proceed until they feel ready."

Swanson says the tall poppy syndrome also means New Zealand organisations are reticent about using surveys to identify the needs of high performers and talent groups.

"New Zealand employees tend to cluster around a middle group of average achievement and New Zealand employers seem happy with that. Meanwhile, overseas companies are busy working out how to identify and stimulate high potential and high performance."

One problem is the word talent, which New Zealand employers tend to associate with elitism, Swanson says.

"Each employee is talented in their own way. And there's nothing wrong with an organisation looking to identify specific talent sets for business benefit."

Swanson refers often to "employment branding", consultant jargon that describes a company's mission to discover how its culture is perceived by employees.

"Every organisation has an employment brand, but staff satisfaction surveys help identify where the gaps are between the espoused brand and what is actually happening."

However, that can only occur with carefully administered and properly analysed surveys.

"Staff satisfaction surveys are of little value if they're not done properly or if you don't get a high enough response rate," says Hart.

"Some companies are happy with a 50 per cent response rate, when between 70 and 90 per cent is possible with education and promotion."

And Swanson goes a step further.

"If you survey too often, ask the wrong kinds of questions or don't follow up on the action needed to follow a survey, staff can become very blase about the process and even cynical."

A common mistake is to make assumptions about data when it is being interpreted, says Swanson.



Hart describes the danger of false assumptions bluntly. "If the survey analysis is flawed, the business decisions you make as a result of the analysis will be flawed."

And companies that write their own surveys must consider employee confidentiality, says Swanson.

"Staff should be able to raise what could be threatening issues without any fear of reprisal or consequence."

Evidently, successful staff satisfaction surveying is not straightforward. So how can companies ensure their surveys produce the desired results?

Swanson suggests administering formally written surveys (either paper-based or online) together with verbal surveys of smaller focus groups.

He advises employers to survey regularly, but not more than once a year, to avoid survey burnout.

After each survey they should spend time deciding what their employment brand and business culture should be.

"Declare it and demonstrate it. If you don't demonstrate it, it will fall over."

Hart agrees. "Senior managers need to show they are serious about making changes. They must walk the talk, set targets and have accountability for reaching those targets."

And those targets might include leadership management initiatives if the survey highlights ineffective management or leadership problems, or job restructuring and assistance if the survey reveals employee burnout or lifestyle problems.

"Some companies discover their people are doing horrendous hours which are affecting their view of the job," says Swanson. "With the new health and safety laws surrounding stress management, these issues need highlighting more than ever."

Viewed in that light, annual staff satisfactions surveys are like a temperature check.

The cost of surveying staff every year and following up with action varies widely. For example, while some companies devise their own surveys, others rely on proven templates for which they pay a licensing fee.

The total cost of surveying also depends on such things as the size of the survey group and organisation, how the survey is tailored, whether or not focus groups are run, if a management consultant is engaged and how long for.

"It really is the proverbial piece of string," says Swanson.

However, the costs are probably worth it. Right Management's Branham explains why: "Seventy per cent of employers worldwide survey their staff. Why? Because if employers hope to retain good workers, they need to know what those workers are thinking and what they want."

10 tips for surveys

* Survey all staff; handpicking employees who will tell you what you want to hear is pointless.

* Promote the survey and get internal champions; employee buy-in is vital.

* Forget how the survey results compare with other organisations. Use the data to improve internal processes.

* Don't rely only on surveys to ascertain staff satisfaction. Other useful measures are the rate of voluntary staff turnover, absenteeism and dispute outcomes.

* Seek advice on survey design. Common mistakes are asking too many questions, and not providing a neutral response option.

* Link the survey to business drivers. There's not much point learning more about what your employees want if you can't use it to affect key business decisions.

* Maintain employee confidentiality, or future surveys will be doomed.

* Follow through. Use survey results to implement culture change or process improvements.

* Survey every 12 months and be consistent. Link the results of surveys together; improvements must be able to be tracked.

* Don't let a fear of surveying stop you from surveying indefinitely.

Compiled with Right Management Consultants and InsightSRC Australia.