anyone's work give 'morale' surveys?

[nereo]

I've recently taken on the task of judging morale in our medium-sized company (~100 employees) and one of the first things I thought we could launch is a short, semi-annual survey where people could rate various aspects of their job.  The idea is that it would 'take the temperature' of the company and hopefully identify areas in need of improvement.

Q: Has anyone participated in a similar survey, and if so what questions did you find useful?

[shunkman]

We had an "employee engagement" survey. Our annual review rating was partially based on this "score".  Upper management, in code, or a roundabout way, told us how we were supposed to answer the survey questions. So really it was a waste of time except for the company that was paid millions to evaluate the survey results.

[nereo]

We had an "employee engagement" survey. Our annual review rating was partially based on this "score".  Upper management, in code, or a roundabout way, told us how we were supposed to answer the survey questions. So really it was a waste of time except for the company that was paid millions to evaluate the survey results.

Exactly what I want to avoid.  How would you have done it differently?

[shunkman]

We had an "employee engagement" survey. Our annual review rating was partially based on this "score".  Upper management, in code, or a roundabout way, told us how we were supposed to answer the survey questions. So really it was a waste of time except for the company that was paid millions to evaluate the survey results.

Exactly what I want to avoid.  How would you have done it differently?

Keep upper management out of the process and don't tie pay raises to "improvements" in the score.

[draco44]

My workplace has a survey of this kind.  The big issue I remember from the earliest rounds of it was that there was a need for the survey writers to be clearer in their questions about defining different levels of management.  I'm not sure how your company is structured, but you want to be sure you can distinguish between comments about direct supervisors, department heads, and the CEO, e.g., when someone submits feedback to the effect of "I love/hate my upper management."

[Laura33]

My husband's company does these annually, and part of the bosses' performance reviews include the "engagement" scores of their people.  Great in theory.

First year, merely issuing the survey improved morale.  Employees were so happy to be asked how they were doing, and to have an opportunity to directly and anonymously tell Management about various roadblocks to doing their jobs well (e.g., I need a new tool, this part of the process is really inefficient, etc.).

Year 2:  engagement scores went down.  WTF?  Because the company didn't actually do anything to fix the identified problems, nor did it explain to the employees why it couldn't do X or Y or Z.  So by year 2, the employees had written off the survey as more cynical faux-"engagement" consultant bullshit -- just one more Management "initiative" that takes their time away from their regular job and means nothing.  Not only did they realize Management didn't actually care enough to fix anything, but they got to feel stupid for believing Management actually meant to do anything in the first place.*  And let me tell you, nothing lowers morale more than getting someone's hopes up and then dashing them.

My favorite part was that my DH got dinged in his review -- he was one of those mid-level managers whose group morale went down.  WTF?  Almost every category was good!  The employees praised him for his openness and interest in their career development and all of that!  Alas, his score in the "I have the equipment I need" area was low -- the one area he had zero ability to control or fix.  Awesome!

Tl;dr: Morale depends on follow-through.  If you don't already have Management buy-in to fix the problems people identify and to be very open about how those fixes are prioritized, your survey will do more harm than good. 

*The irony is that Management actually did mean to take action in response to the survey, but it had not developed a process to do so.  As a result, they were overwhelmed by the number of suggestions and so defaulted to the easy/cheap options, like "let's throw a pizza party, yay rah go team!" and avoided the harder/costlier changes that actually might have improved people's daily lives.  So lesson 2 is if you do intend to address suggestions that are made, have a process in place and responsible people identified to do so.  And make the whole damn thing transparent!  People will understand if you can explain that the budget doesn't allow you to do XYZ.

[okits]

I found too many questions of an identifying nature (department or function, length of service, age, etc.) discouraged me from giving very honest critical answers, for fear of retaliation.  Not as much of a worry when I was one faceless drone among dozens, but in smaller companies or non-homogeneous workforces, the promise of anonymity felt flimsy when there were very few employees with my characteristics.  You won’t get honest answers if people think it will just come back to bite them in the ass, so ask those categorizing questions very carefully.

[Loren Ver]

I work at a very large very global company and we have yearly surveys that include this kind of information (among other things).  If done right it can be effective, but if people point out an issue and you ignore it, people stop filling out the surveys. 

To answer your question, I found the questions that lead to good action to be useful, but I never evaluated the surveys. 

I think you need to first really figure out why you are giving the survey.  If it is just to check the temp and gain metrics, then write it that way.  If you want to seek ideas or insights, then the survey changes quite a bit.

How you ask the question matters a lot, even more if you work with analytical people.  You may want to give gradients instead of yes/no. 

Make sure it is, and can stay anonymous.  If people think there is a chance something negative can get back to them, you will only get rosy responses.  If you only want rosy responses, make sure to tie it to people :).

Loren

[rantk81]

Employer used to do it annually.  Workers weren't pressured into answering a certain way.  Scores rated employee satisfaction very high in most categories.  Few years ago, employer was acquired via a leveraged buy-out by idiot bean-counters.  No more employee survey -- but if they were to do one, I know the results would be far, far worse than before.

[trix76]

Survey responses can be difficult to interpret or take action on if you don’t understand the “why” behind the responses. You might consider asking some open-ended questions where respondents can provide detail about why they are satisfied or dissatisfied with a particular aspect of their job, working at the company, etc. In a company with a few hundred employees, analyzing some open-ended responses won’t be too onerous, and you’ll likely learn a lot more than just asking for satisfaction ratings. Just be sure to make open-ended questions optional in the survey tool so that people who have something thoughtful to say will, and those who don’t can bypass.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dave1442397]

Anonymity is key. Nobody's going to be honest (if there are issues) if they think retaliation is a possibility.

My company (large corp) has a survey, but most of the questions are worthless. The one thing we all enjoyed this year was giving the CEO (and team) the lowest possible rating.

There is also a comments section, which is where we usually bullet point the things we really want them to know. It's quite obvious they don't care, so the whole thing has become a joke at this point.

We're actually curious to see if they'll publish the results this year, because things have gone downhill fast in terms of work environment, etc.

[nereo]

I appreciate the feedback so far!

A few comments/responses:

• The survey will be double-blind and structured to maintain anonymity.  Thankfully we have a rather compact hierarchy where individuals can be grouped into one of 4 categories without revealing a person's identity 
• Changes (follow-thru) need to be made post-survey or morale will drop.  Absolutely.  Thankfully we have some buy-in from upper management to implement moderate changes, and a reasonable budget to implement them (no 'rah rah pizza party!').  My involvement won't stop with the survey, but will include (I believe) transparent suggestions to management.   
• Responses will not be used to adjust compensation and management should not be able to influence the responses (double-blind)
• re: the purpose of the survey.  Good point - it's really about both measuring morale ('taking the temperature') but equally about identifying and implementing practical solutions to make this a better place to work.
• re:Open ended questions - I plan to include 1 or 2 of these, but in order to maximize responses I'm also trying to make this as succinct as possible and make it possible to finish the survey in 5-10 minutes. IME very long surveys don't get completed. Right now I have an ending question "Is there a specific, practical change that [company] could make which would improve your overall job satisfaction" as well as a possible "Any additional thoughts on improving morale".

The good news is that we have buy-in from the top, and this isn't intended to be a one-off, and we have a moderate budget to make some changes. Whether this really gets off the ground remains to be seen, and I'm keenly aware of Laura33's warning that a lack of apparent follow-thru can have the opposite effect (making workers feel like they are being ignored after identifying problems). 

Please keep your thoughts coming!

[tygertygertyger]

My (large) company also does an engagement survey every year. For a few years, management would ask employees to join "engagement teams", during which employees suggested initiatives to increase engagement... but ideas were rarely approved or if they were approved, often died in the pilot phase.

However, something else they did - and I can't remember the name of it - was to ask twice a year "How likely would you be to recommend your company to a friend?" on a scale of 1-5 (ie would you suggest your place of employment to anyone that might be searching for a new job). This handled the "taking the temperature" part of morale... they stopped doing this a year or so ago, but that may be due to the new executive team in place.

[zhelud]

If you aren't going to engage a professional survey researcher to do this survey, here is my number one suggestion-

Test your questions.  Come up with your questions and the options to answer (whether yes/no, open-ended, etc). Then, before sending them out to everyone, give them to 10 people in your company who are willing to provide feedback.  Do they understand the questions?  Do they all understand the questions the same way? Are the responses you propose too limiting, or too broad? Should some of your multiple choice responses be open-ended, or the other way around?  Do some of the questions not apply to some people  Etc.
I get a lot of surveys from service providers, etc, that are so badly done that it is clear they never tested with actual people!

[sisto]

I appreciate the feedback so far!

A few comments/responses:

• The survey will be double-blind and structured to maintain anonymity.  Thankfully we have a rather compact hierarchy where individuals can be grouped into one of 4 categories without revealing a person's identity 
• Changes (follow-thru) need to be made post-survey or morale will drop.  Absolutely.  Thankfully we have some buy-in from upper management to implement moderate changes, and a reasonable budget to implement them (no 'rah rah pizza party!').  My involvement won't stop with the survey, but will include (I believe) transparent suggestions to management.   
• Responses will not be used to adjust compensation and management should not be able to influence the responses (double-blind)
• re: the purpose of the survey.  Good point - it's really about both measuring morale ('taking the temperature') but equally about identifying and implementing practical solutions to make this a better place to work.
• re:Open ended questions - I plan to include 1 or 2 of these, but in order to maximize responses I'm also trying to make this as succinct as possible and make it possible to finish the survey in 5-10 minutes. IME very long surveys don't get completed. Right now I have an ending question "Is there a specific, practical change that [company] could make which would improve your overall job satisfaction" as well as a possible "Any additional thoughts on improving morale".

The good news is that we have buy-in from the top, and this isn't intended to be a one-off, and we have a moderate budget to make some changes. Whether this really gets off the ground remains to be seen, and I'm keenly aware of Laura33's warning that a lack of apparent follow-thru can have the opposite effect (making workers feel like they are being ignored after identifying problems). 

Please keep your thoughts coming!

I work for a fortune 50 company and we do these. They are called org health surveys. You are evaluating the health of the organization. The main thing you seem to be looking at is morale. That's great, asking the right questions can help you implement things to raise morale. I've been involved in these from many aspects. You are going to want to make sure you can easily analyze the data and you want to be transparent with it. From what you wrote it appears you are approaching it correctly. My suggestion is to put timelines on everything. Publish the results immediately and identify a plan and steps for improvement. You will also want to have a follow up survey to see if the changes are making an impact. Good luck!

[Just Joe]

I found too many questions of an identifying nature (department or function, length of service, age, etc.) discouraged me from giving very honest critical answers, for fear of retaliation.  Not as much of a worry when I was one faceless drone among dozens, but in smaller companies or non-homogeneous workforces, the promise of anonymity felt flimsy when there were very few employees with my characteristics.  You won’t get honest answers if people think it will just come back to bite them in the ass, so ask those categorizing questions very carefully.

Not to mention I'm taking the survey on a work computer whose IP address is known by management. Even this forum shows me my IP address.

Nope, I save my criticism of whatever goes on at work for my spouse on the drive home. At work everything is hunky dory all the time...

I push back when necessary is quiet ways and occasionally I do stomp my feet and make things right when they go wrong.

[nereo]

I found too many questions of an identifying nature (department or function, length of service, age, etc.) discouraged me from giving very honest critical answers, for fear of retaliation.  Not as much of a worry when I was one faceless drone among dozens, but in smaller companies or non-homogeneous workforces, the promise of anonymity felt flimsy when there were very few employees with my characteristics.  You won’t get honest answers if people think it will just come back to bite them in the ass, so ask those categorizing questions very carefully.

Not to mention I'm taking the survey on a work computer whose IP address is known by management. Even this forum shows me my IP address.

Nope, I save my criticism of whatever goes on at work for my spouse on the drive home. At work everything is hunky dory all the time...

So you would not give honest feedback to a survey even if the results were 'double-blind' and the questions/responses would not reveal your identity?  What could be done to better encourage honest feedback?

[BECABECA]

I’ve worked at a number of companies that have done these morale surveys and they’ve never been helpful for the reasons everyone already pointed out.

If you really want honest feedback without the possibility of it backfiring and decreasing morale, do exit interviews of the high performers who are leaving the company. (Low performers, who cares, but the high performers will be leaving for specific reasons that you can hopefully improve). And they will have no qualms with giving honest feedback, since they have nothing to lose.

All the useful things that were identified in morale surveys at my companies would have been identified in a couple of exit interviews. If you aren’t doing these, start here.

[nereo]

I’ve worked at a number of companies that have done these morale surveys and they’ve never been helpful for the reasons everyone already pointed out.

If you really want honest feedback without the possibility of it backfiring and decreasing morale, do exit interviews of the high performers who are leaving the company. (Low performers, who cares, but the high performers will be leaving for specific reasons that you can hopefully improve). And they will have no qualms with giving honest feedback, since they have nothing to lose.

All the useful things that were identified in morale surveys at my companies would have been identified in a couple of exit interviews. If you aren’t doing these, start here.

Interesting suggestion, but our company is small enough that we do not have enough exiting employees for this to be immediately useful.   in addition to the morale surveys (or 'org health' surveys, as apparently they are also called) I hope to initiate incoming adn outgoing surveys - but that would be much further down the line.

The challenge is to avoid the fate that others have echoed - that these surveys have no or negative net impact.

[markpst]

We had an "employee engagement" survey. Our annual review rating was partially based on this "score".  Upper management, in code, or a roundabout way, told us how we were supposed to answer the survey questions. So really it was a waste of time except for the company that was paid millions to evaluate the survey results.

This sounds like my workplace. We had a question "Do you have a best friend at work?" (looking back, it must have been a Gallup survey) that apparently scored lower than they liked. So they tried to re-define what it means to call someone a best friend. Sorry, I don't need any help with that definition.

I believe this was a different year, we had to meet as a group and come up with solutions to address the two questions we rated management the lowest on. So basically we were being punished for giving lower scores. I think everyone rated management higher the next year so we wouldn't have to deal with it again.

[nereo]

I believe this was a different year, we had to meet as a group and come up with solutions to address the two questions we rated management the lowest on. So basically we were being punished for giving lower scores. I think everyone rated management higher the next year so we wouldn't have to deal with it again.

I don't quite understand - why would that be a punishment?  Were you not paid to do this?  did they not enact your suggestions in any way?

[SnackDog]

You need to be sure and get the questions right. I recommend a space for comments on each question because the questions which score the lowest overall will require deeper digging and that comes from the comments or focus groups.  Ask for comments regarding the gap on any score less than 10.

Keep questions simple!  Rate everything 1-10.  1=strongly disagree, 10=strongly agree

 - I am happy to come to work most days
 - I am satisfied with my current position and duties
 - I have had a meaningful career development discussion with my supervisor and feel positive about my future with the company
-  I would not consider looking for employment at another company.
-  My work load and hours are reasonable and manageable
- I speak positively about the company outside work and would recommend it to others

[HenryDavid]

One opinion: a manager in a company of 100 employees should be able to judge morale through personal contact. Not with each individual, but with many. Say 20 key people who know the score, and more casual contact with others. Making the effort in itself raises morale.
Last place I worked, they did one of these surveys. I replied that the survey affected my morale because I saw it as an admission of defeat—management had given up talking to us and needed consultants.
All the best managers I ever had would shun such remote-control staff relations.

[markpst]

I believe this was a different year, we had to meet as a group and come up with solutions to address the two questions we rated management the lowest on. So basically we were being punished for giving lower scores. I think everyone rated management higher the next year so we wouldn't have to deal with it again.

I don't quite understand - why would that be a punishment?  Were you not paid to do this?  did they not enact your suggestions in any way?

From what I recall, they didn't implement any of them, and didn't do anything different on their end either.

[dcheesi]

I found too many questions of an identifying nature (department or function, length of service, age, etc.) discouraged me from giving very honest critical answers, for fear of retaliation.  Not as much of a worry when I was one faceless drone among dozens, but in smaller companies or non-homogeneous workforces, the promise of anonymity felt flimsy when there were very few employees with my characteristics.  You won’t get honest answers if people think it will just come back to bite them in the ass, so ask those categorizing questions very carefully.

Not to mention I'm taking the survey on a work computer whose IP address is known by management. Even this forum shows me my IP address.

Nope, I save my criticism of whatever goes on at work for my spouse on the drive home. At work everything is hunky dory all the time...

So you would not give honest feedback to a survey even if the results were 'double-blind' and the questions/responses would not reveal your identity?  What could be done to better encourage honest feedback?

Some folks are just paranoid, and you'll never get an honest answer out of them no matter what you do.

[mm1970]

One opinion: a manager in a company of 100 employees should be able to judge morale through personal contact. Not with each individual, but with many. Say 20 key people who know the score, and more casual contact with others. Making the effort in itself raises morale.
Last place I worked, they did one of these surveys. I replied that the survey affected my morale because I saw it as an admission of defeat—management had given up talking to us and needed consultants.
All the best managers I ever had would shun such remote-control staff relations.

I'm not sure we've ever done one of these.  We've had some pretty bad morale.

For the most part, they consider me the canary.  Especially when we were much larger, the Pres would just ask me the score.

In the deep dark depths of the bad morale though, after one of the layoffs (probably the one where he laid off 5 of the 6 people I'd spent the prior year searching for, interviewing, hiring, and training), he told me that he considered it "my job" to keep up morale in our manufacturing facility.  "You are the the person people look to because of your positivity.  You set the bar!"

Fuck that you don't pay me for that.  I'm an engineer / manager.

Ah I don't miss those days.

[BECABECA]

I’ve worked at a number of companies that have done these morale surveys and they’ve never been helpful for the reasons everyone already pointed out.

If you really want honest feedback without the possibility of it backfiring and decreasing morale, do exit interviews of the high performers who are leaving the company. (Low performers, who cares, but the high performers will be leaving for specific reasons that you can hopefully improve). And they will have no qualms with giving honest feedback, since they have nothing to lose.

All the useful things that were identified in morale surveys at my companies would have been identified in a couple of exit interviews. If you aren’t doing these, start here.

Interesting suggestion, but our company is small enough that we do not have enough exiting employees for this to be immediately useful.   in addition to the morale surveys (or 'org health' surveys, as apparently they are also called) I hope to initiate incoming adn outgoing surveys - but that would be much further down the line.

The challenge is to avoid the fate that others have echoed - that these surveys have no or negative net impact.

If you’re a small enough company that you don’t have a couple of high performers exiting, then you’re a small enough company to just ask a couple of your top performers what they see as the areas that need to be improved. Being top performers, they’ll likely feel safe enough to give you honest feedback. Trying to roll out a company-wide morale survey in a small company will almost certainly have the opposite effect of what you’re wanting. People in small companies have much less patience for bureaucracy than their large company counterparts.

[ysette9]

I’ve worked for two large companies that do these surveys regularly. I agree with the thoughtful comments above about really thinking hard about the questions you want to ask.
In addition to what has been discussed I’d recommend thinking about the fact that you want to ask the same questions hear after year so you can get trend data as well as a snapshot of a given year. So think ahead of what trends would be useful for measuring the health of the company.

Again, it is really important to share feedback of the survey in a timely manner. My company is doing that right now. What the averages were, what insights can be gleaned, and what specific things the company will be working on in response.

[fell-like-rain]

My company does the "net promoter score" thing, so it's basically a one-question survey asking whether you'd recommend working here to other people. Every year they make a big deal out of announcing the new number and how it's changed from the past year and how important it is to have a high number. People end up inflating their responses so it keeps growing year-over-year, and the execs can pat themselves on the back about how happy everyone is, without actually addressing any issues that may exist. It's entirely focused on the metric and not what we're actually supposed to be measuring.

[MJseast]

We used to use Tiny Pulse - online, anonymous questionaire where they suggest standard questions/polls or you can create your own, and you set the frequency. https://www.tinypulse.com/
The idea is that you ask 1 question every so often (I think we did it monthly) and give area for open feedback. Then you can easily measure the change over time to the questions (with a regular one being "How happy are you at work?") without getting bogged down by a huge survey. I also liked that as a manager, you can respond to individual comments, but since it's all done through the Tiny Pulse platform it's still anonymous.

[shunkman]

We had an "employee engagement" survey. Our annual review rating was partially based on this "score".  Upper management, in code, or a roundabout way, told us how we were supposed to answer the survey questions. So really it was a waste of time except for the company that was paid millions to evaluate the survey results.

This sounds like my workplace. We had a question "Do you have a best friend at work?" (looking back, it must have been a Gallup survey) that apparently scored lower than they liked. So they tried to re-define what it means to call someone a best friend. Sorry, I don't need any help with that definition.

I believe this was a different year, we had to meet as a group and come up with solutions to address the two questions we rated management the lowest on. So basically we were being punished for giving lower scores. I think everyone rated management higher the next year so we wouldn't have to deal with it again.

It sounds like we both work (or worked as I am now retired) at the same place. The "best friend" question was absurd no matter how hard management tried to spin it.

[SquashingDebt]

My workplace has a survey of this kind.  The big issue I remember from the earliest rounds of it was that there was a need for the survey writers to be clearer in their questions about defining different levels of management.  I'm not sure how your company is structured, but you want to be sure you can distinguish between comments about direct supervisors, department heads, and the CEO, e.g., when someone submits feedback to the effect of "I love/hate my upper management."

+1 to this (chiming in because I didn't see it in your summary of responses)

We are in a year-long process with quarterly employee engagement surveys and the questions are so broad that it's hard to interpret the scores.  An example was one related to authenticity.  The way the responses were grouped, and the broadness of the question, make it impossible to tell whether the employees in my group don't think the group leaders are authentic, or don't think the senior management are authentic.  I suspect it's the latter, but I suspect it would be convenient for our senior management to assume it's the former.

[simmias]

I believe this was a different year, we had to meet as a group and come up with solutions to address the two questions we rated management the lowest on. So basically we were being punished for giving lower scores. I think everyone rated management higher the next year so we wouldn't have to deal with it again.

I don't quite understand - why would that be a punishment?  Were you not paid to do this?  did they not enact your suggestions in any way?

This sounds exactly like the kind of meeting my workplace would try in this situation.  The purpose of the meeting would never be to accomplish anything, but instead to try to educate the staff on just how hard it is to be in management.

Of course, there's also the fact that most meetings in and of themselves are a form of punishment, especially to productive workers.

[HPstache]

[gooki]

If you’re a small enough company that you don’t have a couple of high performers exiting, then you’re a small enough company to just ask a couple of your top performers what they see as the areas that need to be improved. Being top performers, they’ll likely feel safe enough to give you honest feedback.

I’d agree with this.

Even in a company of 50,000 I don’t feel I’m truly anonymous we completing these surveys. The one question I alway lie on is “would you recommend working here to someone you know”.

[happy]

I'm a veteran public servant and we've had these surveys to complete in recent years particularly as my sector has a reputation for issues with bullying and harassment. I view them just as part of the rah-rah window dressing that goes on.  In fact its all part of the game, the senior executive are desperate to get a high completion rate  so they get a gold star. So much so they've stooped to inducements to get folk to complete.

To be honest nothing ever changes as a result of these surveys, and neither do the survey ratings. I agree with being careful about the wording and interpretation thereof e.g. questions about being highly committed are assumed to reflect a healthy workplace if answered in the positive. In fact for me commitment is internally determined not related to the workplace, and in fact the worse the environment, the higher one's level of commitment needs to be to turn up.

I've always answered honestly, although there is some possibility due to my age, sex and job position I could be identified. In fact I think "so what, are you going to sack me?" But then I'm fairly difficult to get rid of, and I don't work in private enterprise.

[nnls]

I work for a large multinational company (about 50k employees) and we do them twice a year.

They are supposedly anonymous and have about 12 questions, managers get sent the comments for there area and we all get given information on the overall scores.

[Jouer]

Any reputable company does not know your individual responses to these surveys. That's especially true if they outsource to data collection and analysis, which is best practice. Nobody is combing through data to see who someone might be and that individual data shouldn't be shared back with the firm - results shared in aggregate only.

Having said that, my boss has told us that he can mostly tell who wrote some of the open-end responses based on our writing styles. But the rating questions, etc. will be anonymous.....the research vendor would make sure of that.

Signed,
a researcher

p.s. yes, go ahead and do a survey. Our company does look at the scores and think "oh shit, what can we do to make this better for employees?" Mind you, we ignore the low salary scores.

[jim555]

Its a trap.  They are seeing who is a malcontent by claiming it is anonymous.

[Indio]

One of the questions that we get asked every year is used to determine employee retention rates is "do you have a friend at work?" This question indicates whether the emp feels invested in the company.

If you are looking for other potential questions to ask, check out some of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys. Questions that apply to customers can also apply to employees.

[DeepEllumStache]

I have done a number of these and even administered one since my MegaCorp loves to stare at its navel lint. We've done engagement surveys (how likely are you to leave?), eNPS (employee net promoter - would you recommend working here to a friend or family member?), and all sorts of fun custom ones (what do you think of abc group or xyz benefit?).

On the survey giving side, the comments will run the gamut of truly insightful commentary to garbled nonsense that is impossible to ever do. After a certain number of years of doing surveys, most of the easy to accomplish things are done. The rest tends to be stuff that the company has no interest and/or ability to change. At that point, it'll highlight the gaps in communication about your priorities/strategy but not much else will be actionable.

When you start doing surveys, half the employees will hate them because of the privacy issue. The problem is then you can't quit the surveys because the other half will assume you no longer care about their opinion.

It's never 100% anonymous. Comment voice will out some people but the results themselves are segmented heavily enough to the point where you're guaranteed to have at least one segment that is so small you can identify the respondents.

My MegaCorp has a fun habit of tagging high performers and forcing them to take on an additional project of parsing the results of various surveys to come up with recommendations. It's a nice idea, a nod to your high performers, except it's one that backfires once you reach the point where actionable improvements are few and far between. You take someone who already is overburdened with extra work, force them to squeeze another hour of work into their week to develop recommendations that will be ignored. Not very motivating. But once again, once you start doing it, it looks bad if you stop.

[shunkman]

One of the questions that we get asked every year is used to determine employee retention rates is "do you have a friend at work?" This question indicates whether the emp feels invested in the company.

Our survey specifically asked if we had a "BEST" friend at work. I always answered no to this. I had friends at work but none were what I considered "best". For whatever reason this particular question was a huge deal for management and many attempts were made to sway us to answer this question affirmatively.

[nereo]

Wow, thanks for the responses so far - many more than I was expecting.

A bit more background given the discussions above - the idea for actually came from an all-staff meeting, and that's how I got involved. Overall the company (both management and their workers) seems to want a synopsis of what issues we face, and (importantly) they don't want individual responses going directly to upper management. Stepping back further our company is fairly young and has changed dramatically over the last 3 years, and we're in the midst of an all-encompassing strategic management plan which (almost) everyone is involved in.

The issue of anonymity and its effects on people responding truthfully seems to be a major one.  We (myself and the two other people working with me on this) have already decided on double-blind surveys, and we'll be summarizing (grouping) results before presenting them, which I believe will make any particular person's responses impossible to trace back to the individual.  N But it seems for some there's a trust issue, and I'll have to think hard on how to address that. No managers will see the individual responses.

Perhaps this is my own optimism/naivety, but we do seem to have the support from much of the company, including a willingness from management to put resources towards the more pressing issues. We also have an ongoing capital campaign and expansion project, so now would be a good time to push for infrastructure/facilities improvements that will have the biggest long-term impact. By design we are more fragmented than most corporations, so it can be difficult which issues are unique to a particular department and which are shared across many (which was where the idea for the survey came from in the first place)
Thanks for everyone's input thusfar.  If I did not respond directly to your comment it is not because I didn't read it or that I disregarded it, but simply that there have been so many.

[merula]

My Fortune 200 company did one of those Gallup polls. Problems:

-Questions were phrased from a big picture standpoint ("Do you feel that your views are heard by others in *the company*?), but then they were interpreted from an individual manager's standpoint. My group in particular is one of those that other departments love to ignore when we're not saying what they want to hear. The COMPANY doesn't "hear our views", so most of us answered "No". My manager got all sorts of grief because *HE* wasn't valuing our views. So he addressed it with us. And we're all "Oh, no, you hear us, we were saying that THEY don't care." And he knows that; the rest of the company ignores him too.

-People took things way too literally. Like the "best friend at work" question. Some people answered "No" if their literal BFF in the whole world didn't work here. Others answered "Yes" on the basis that if you have ANY friends at work, you have a best friend at work among those friends, by definition. I still don't really know what that question was trying to ask.

-There was a massive amount of reorganization during the time this survey was going out. People were being asked to review organizations that had been in place for a week, or had done a review on one organization and then the results were attributed to their new organization because they had been moved around between taking the survey and the results coming out.

-Absolutely nothing changed as a result of the survey, at least that I could see.

[partdopy]

Make sure your scoring matrix makes sense.

We had a professional consulting firm come do something similar.  The questions were OK, but the scoring matrix made no sense.  We were asked to rate things from 0 - 100 (or maybe 0 - 10 by .1 increments), but the grading scale started at a 70 I believe, and basically made it so you couldn't get below a 'B' in any area unless everyone rated it 0.

The explanations made no sense either, as apparently 'trouble areas' were those that graded at 77 and below, or those where everyone gave like a 10 or 20 rating, which in my mind a 'bad' rating would be anything below a 60 or so.

Confusing and useless.

[Car Jack]

I've had many of these over the years.  If company leaders could actually listen and consider what they're being told, perhaps morale would be better.

One mega corp:  They used employee "score cards" where anyone in the company could see anyone else's score card.  These were mainly based on sales and win numbers with customers.  What wasn't shown is that those being judged were assigned customers, and when a manager wanted someone to leave, they'd take all the loser customers, bundle them together and give them to that person.

Their annual survey started with you putting in your name and badge number.  Really?  I would look through the questions and then delete the link.  I ain't got no time for that shit.

Small corp:  No reviews or raises for 10 years.  No morale surveys.  I think it's because there were no survey companies who on a 0-10 scale would know what to do with a minus 50 average.

Another mega-corp:  Traveling with a big whig, we had a couple hours in the car to discuss a bunch of things.  I was mostly honest and some of the problems were obvious and he told me that everyone was telling him these things.  These were things that would be glaringly obvious if they were addressed.  None were. 

Annual survey has been the exact same questions since the 80's.  The CEO goes over results, making up excuses for any score that's gone down.  If a score goes up but is in the 30/100 area, he concentrates on the improvement, not the fact that the score absolutely sucks.  In all the years I've been here, "low pay" has always been one of the biggest concerns in the survey.  We're still known as the low pay company.  It is low stress, however, so I'm here till I bail in the next 1-2 years with 50X spending in my liquid assets.

In general, I see morale surveys as a good sign that a company has become the Evil Empire and is looking for ways to keep the monkeys from misbehaving. 

[mathlete]

Yes.

Management made very progressive changes that are universally loved based on it too. :)

[Just Joe]

I found too many questions of an identifying nature (department or function, length of service, age, etc.) discouraged me from giving very honest critical answers, for fear of retaliation.  Not as much of a worry when I was one faceless drone among dozens, but in smaller companies or non-homogeneous workforces, the promise of anonymity felt flimsy when there were very few employees with my characteristics.  You won’t get honest answers if people think it will just come back to bite them in the ass, so ask those categorizing questions very carefully.

Not to mention I'm taking the survey on a work computer whose IP address is known by management. Even this forum shows me my IP address.

Nope, I save my criticism of whatever goes on at work for my spouse on the drive home. At work everything is hunky dory all the time...

So you would not give honest feedback to a survey even if the results were 'double-blind' and the questions/responses would not reveal your identity?  What could be done to better encourage honest feedback?

Some folks are just paranoid, and you'll never get an honest answer out of them no matter what you do.

At a previous employer the employees publicly critical of management were the first ones to be laid off during an economic slowdown.

At my current employer, enough of my opinions are shared and boldly voiced by more senior employees in meetings I've attended that I'll confidently let them do the talking.

[MayDay]

I'll be the odd person out and say that it worked well at my company.

My division of about 150-200 engineers, scientists, and technicians did a survey maybe 5 years ago.  Meh to bad results, and they made changes, and scores went up. 

They do the survey every 3 years so we should be due for another one. 

My husbands' company was stupid though.  They did surveys where you evaluated your manager.  But if you were in a group of less than 3, it rolled up a level.  His direct boss was fine, but his skip level boss suuuuucked.  Even rolling up to the skip level boss, it was a small enough group that he couldn't be honest.  Why even bother with that nonsense- its one thing to look at a hundreds of people org, but don't try this small group nonsense.  There is no way that is anonymous.

[MicroRN]

Our workplace (large, multi site organization) does every year.   I hate it.  9I work in a small department with a responsive manager.  I can go to her with problems and she'll try to fix them.   Overall, our team works well together.   However,  we do the  "engagement" survey,  then have to sit through hours of meetings with our manager and her manager to go over the results,  come up with an action plan for how our office is going to improve our scores,  and then we end up doing team- building exercises, which I loathe.

I actually love my job and am very engaged in my work.  But I hate that whole engagement process so much that it negatively impacts my morale.