 Recognizing
that resistance to change is natural, culture sensitive
programs must anticipate the reactions of employees and
supervisors.
Before
changing or designing a compensation program, it is important
to understand both the issues and concerns that are on the
minds of your employees and supervisors.
Attitude
Survey Issues
Attitude,
or climate, surveys are used for a variety of purposes. Their
primary uses are to identify problems that are a concern to
employees that can benefit through management's attention or
to measure the awareness or acceptance of specific issues.
Surveys can be applied on a one-time basis to assure that the
climate is positive prior to implementing new programs, or on
a periodic basis to verify the success of various employee
relations efforts.
Focus groups can be very useful in pre-testing major
changes in areas that are perceived as sensitive by employees.
External consultants, such as ECI's, can increase the level of
candid responses on topics viewed as somewhat sensitive. If
the company determines that it cannot use focus group
interviews, then we strongly encourage the surveys to use a
causal format in order to obtain a better understanding of the
reasoning behind the responses.
While short "paper and pencil" surveys provide an
economic process to assess the opinions of a broad group, more
detailed surveys or focus group interviews are required to
obtain a more thorough understanding of what the reasoning is
"behind the numbers".
Common Survey Problems
ECI can assist you in avoiding the most frequent problem
encountered by organizations attempting such as:
-
frustration in interpreting the results
Poorly designed questions often result in data that
raise more questions than they answer. To avoid this,
anticipate the significance of different possible
answers in advance, and include supplementary questions
as needed to minimize any confusion that might result.
- unintended cross group comparisons
Survey results are often compared to the results of
other groups in order to provide a "benchmark"
for the results (i.e., to determine whether the results
of the current study are better or worse than the norm.)
While this is good in concept, the comparisons almost
always fail to consider the significance of the sample
differences. No data base exists that allow comparisons
to be controlled for industry, employee group size, and
geographic area, much less the more significant
variables such as the economic and political climate or
the fiscal outlook for the organization.
- biased survey questions
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of any survey is
the challenge of wording the questions in a neutral
manner and putting the questions in a sequence that does
not encourage certain responses. The easiest way to
improve the neutrality of the survey is to have it
constructed by a professional that does not have an
interest in the outcome.
- lack of survey consistency
By periodically conducting surveys that have a core
set of questions in common, organizations can determine
whether the changes that they are making are perceived
by employees as resulting in improvements or not.
Surveys that focus only on "hot topics" too
often fail to monitor the overall health of the
organization's culture.
-
too much focus on averages
Survey results often focus on the average response to
questions. This frequently fails to identify problems
(or opportunities for improvement) that become evident
only in a distribution analysis. While a small percent
of respondents may answer in a certain manner, their
concerns may provide the key to significant organization
improvements. Care must be taken to review the issues
behind these statistics, particularly when the responses
correlate with sub-group membership or other key
question responses.
-
too much focus on paper
While "paper and pencil" (or PC-based)
surveys can yield great amounts of statistical
information, they can never reveal the entire story. The
most effective survey processes plan to use
"focus" groups of employees to investigate
"why" employees responded in certain ways, and
"what else" is a major concern that wasn't
included in the survey (in fact focus groups can be used
as part of the design process.)
- too narrowly focused surveys
Organizations often conduct an attitude survey in
preparation for a specific new program. As a result,
they are interested in obtaining information that might
impact the development of the new program and often
limit the survey scope to just the issues they
anticipate are relevant. "Surveying with blinders
on" can create a number of problems, including
generating resentment by employees who desired an
opportunity to express their opinions about other
issues.
-
lack of management commitment
Perhaps the worst common survey problem is to conduct
a survey and not to follow through in making any
improvements based on the survey results. Conducting a
survey raises employee expectations regarding the
future. A survey with no follow through is worse than
none at all since the survey provides a sense of hope
for positive reactions.
ECI's consultants and associates can help you anticipate
problems such as these in the design stage. Our thoughtful
approach will help maximize the quality and quantity of the
information collected while minimizing expense and employee
anxiety. We believe that the quality of the design effort is
critical. Well designed surveys provide clearer and more
useful results with less need for further follow-up analyses.
For
more resources on attitude survey design processes - see our Resource
Order Form page
|
