7 Reasons Employee Engagement Surveys Fail

If you gathered 100 Human Resource professionals together in the same room to discuss the benefits of conducting employee engagement surveys, we would bet that half of the group would sing the praises of conducting routine surveys, and half would have horror stories to tell about their experience with employee surveys.

We’ve been conducting employee engagement surveys for the past 22 years. We know emphatically what works. We also, along the way, have become outspoken about what doesn’t work. While we are typically optimistic and persistently positive in our advice, today we are switching our approach and will share with you what doesn’t work.

This topic was prompted by a recent discussion with a potential survey client during the proposal phase. We opted not to proceed with this partnership when they told us that they would not be sharing their data with anyone outside of the senior leadership team. Their premise was that managers, supervisors and employees wouldn’t know what to do with the information. For us, that approach was a red flag for a doomed survey. We opted to dissolve our partnership before proceeding any further.

Based on our experience with what does work, here is a list, in no particular order, of what doesn’t work when conducting surveys with employees:

Senior Management is Not on Board:

When senior management sees the survey process as strictly a function of HR, the survey will fail. There will be no vested interest in the success of the survey, and no commitment to doing anything with the results. If senior management cannot support the survey initiative, you will need to campaign, negotiate, and use your influential skills to sell the benefits of the survey to them. If you can’t persuade senior management to get behind the initiative, it’s best to delay conducting a survey until prevailing attitudes change.

Response Rates are Low:

When clients ask us how many people within the organization should take the survey, we respond, “Everyone.” When response rates are low, the next question is, “Did only the unhappy people take the survey?” Who knows? Low response rates provide every opportunity to discount the data as not being credible, or not being representative of the entire workforce. What’s an acceptable response rate? We aim for 100%, but are happy with a response rate of 80% or more.

The Survey is Complicated or Confusing:

While we advocate getting a cross-representative team involved in developing your survey, survey development by committee can lead to an unwieldy survey instrument. Questions can be double-barreled, or measure two different things. Both negatively worded and positively worded statements are intermingled in the survey. Different rating scales are used. Although this makes for a more interesting survey, it leads to confusion and frustration on the part of the survey taker. It also may provide mixed results, as participants have interpreted the questions differently.To ensure success, the survey must be easy to read, understandable, simple and straightforward.

The Data is not Broken Out for Ownership:

Everybody gets everything, company-wide, but nobody knows who owns the data. Supervisor A, in reading the data, rationalizes that the lower rated questions belong to Supervisor B. Supervisor B, on the other hand assumes the opposite… it’s Supervisor A’s team that is unhappy. There’s no way to associate specific data with specific supervisors, managers, departments, divisions, etc. because the data is only processed at a very high level. While anonymity is ensured, accountability is not. No one owns the data. It’s easy to point fingers and blame others, because the data is not specific to a particular leader.

Survey Results are not Timely:

The longer you wait to get survey results into the hands of employees, the more they assume that the results will mean bad news. Even worse, don’t give them the results at all, then, sit back and watch the speculation begin. The gossip about how bad things are surpasses reality because it is so much more interesting to talk about. Remember, the results won’t be a surprise to employees. Because employees typically comprise approximately 80% of the survey respondents in your organization, they know reality. When should you get the results to employees? As soon as you can. A good time frame for this is no later than 30 days after senior management has reviewed the data.

There is No Follow-Up:

The employees receive the data, but nothing further is done with the data. No action planning takes place. No one is held accountable for making improvements based on the survey results. And possibly, no mention of the survey is made again until it’s time to survey employees again. If you don’t follow up on your employee engagement survey, don’t be surprised when you see the participation rate on the next survey go way down, along with the overall favorable response. Employees will have a prevailing sentiment of “Why bother? Nothing will be done about the survey.” In this situation, of course, the employees are right.

The Data is Used to Punish People:

A surefire way to derail a successful survey is to use the data punitively. Data used to play gotcha will demoralize more than just members of the leadership team: the collateral damage will affect the employees as well. When employees see people being fired or ostracized for their data, they will become hesitant to ever participate in another survey. Successful surveys are not used to punish a leader, but rather to draw attention to areas where the leader could take action to change employee perceptions and build even stronger, more productive relationships with employees.

Whew! That’s a lot of negatives, but we wanted to make sure that we give you a heads up, based on our experience about approaches that can defeat your survey initiative. We are proud that our client partners have never experienced these negative outcomes. Next month we promise to return to our usual positive focus.

Can you think of any other ways to destroy a survey?