Are you getting the employee participation you want from your job satisfaction surveys?

Trust in Leadership

Do your employees trust the leadership team? Last week, I shared my beliefs on why I think employees should fill out employee job satisfaction surveys, and this is part deux on the same topic. When employees do not want to fill out employee surveys, it is NOT because they don’t see the value in the survey. Employees don’t fill out surveys because they fear their answers will be tracked back to them individually. This is an especially sensitive topic when employees have critical feedback from the company or their leaders. Frankly, it is the necessary feedback that I want to hear as a manager because this is where I can improve. I don’t need to hear if I am doing well, I NEED to hear when I am f’in it up. It is tough to improve when I don’t know what is wrong.

Have you seen Glassdoor.com!

It’s a statement, not a question. I don’t think a quarter goes by where I don’t get a call from a CEO or an HR colleague who asks me to check out their negative feedback on Glassdoor.com. Nine times out of 10, there are only 1 or 2 negative comments out of 20 or 30 positive comments. OIYYY VEYYY! Why do we see the tree instead of the forest and worry about the fringe commentary?

• It is easy to take negative feedback personally. It’s easy to feel like we failed our employees. Our personal reputations are at risk when someone publicly badmouths the company or leadership. If 20% of our comments read negatively, this is a trend. Three to 5% is a signal. One or 2% is but a blip on the radar that needs a couple of finger taps on the screen to get the needle reading back to normal. Think of your empty gas tank when you were in highschool. 
• Glassdoor is not a 1-time annual survey. Glassdoor is a complete anthology of feedback. If your company has been around for 5 years, there can be 5 times the amount of input as compared to an annual survey, where year to year, the company may have improved over time.

How do we treat the process as leaders?

If you are part of a leadership team that wants to increase trust in leadership, one way is to evaluate how we treat the process around employee satisfaction surveys. A few recommendations below: 

There should be no mention of any tracking of feedback

Squash the talk at the manager and executive level when leaders try to figure out who posted comments (both positive and negative) on prior employee surveys or Glassdoor.com. Even if the comments are negative, we should be thankful that our employees take the time to provide feedback. Focus on creating a culture that doesn’t sweat the minutia regarding employee surveys. We shouldn’t worry about a single employee or two out of 50 bitching about management if the rest of the feedback is neutral to positive. 

Regarding employee surveys, explain publicly that the answers are not trackable to the individual level. Explain this concept 3 times in three different ways. Saying this 3 times MAY not be enough, but I can assure you that explaining it once will NOT be enough.

Make it safe and easy to fill out the survey

Schedule time on employee calendars so they can complete the surveys on company time. Reserve a (training room with PCs) room where employees can take the survey in private. This is especially effective if you have an open seating plan (with little privacy) or employees working out in the field with little online access.

Public Retrospective 

Explain what was learned from prior surveys and what management did to address deficits. Explaining how the survey kept management from fixing something that wasn’t broken is just as important as fixing something that was broken. Explain that management wants to know what employees like and what they want to see changed. 

Even if feedback is negative, explain how leadership is grateful that the company is getting participation and feedback. EG: I can be a real asshole customer when it comes to spending my hard-earned duckets with a new retailer. If I am mistreated, I won’t complain publicly. I won’t say anything to management. I walk out quietly and won’t return to that place of business. Why should I give the retailer who mistreated ME the opportunity to fix it? Should I be doing them any favors for treating me wrong and being successful? Do they deserve my help when I was wronged? (I am sure I am losing followers here) Negative feedback hurts, but in the end, no input will kill. Be grateful for any feedback, positive or negative. (Yeah, I can be a jerk)

Grace under pressure

Accept negative comments with grace. If we ask for feedback, we need to accept that not all of the feedback will be constructive. Some participants may not yet have the corporate maturity to explain a situation tactfully and provide potential solutions. Some comments may be downright hurtful, but if we ask for feedback, we should be prepared to listen. Try not to let the few negative Nellies taint the experience.

There are companies that will include competencies in their annual review and grade these competencies on a scale of 1-5 per the below:

1. Unacceptable

2. Sometimes meets expectations

3. Meets Expectations

4. Sometimes exceeds expectations

5. Far Exceeds Expectations

Eat your dog food

For many companies, the philosophy is that a rating of “Far Exceeds Expectations” is reserved for a rock star in that particular competency. These same companies will make a blanket statement that NO EMPLOYEE should receive a “Far Exceeds Expectations” rating scale in all company competencies. If an employee gets a “5, Far Exceeds Expectations” in all competencies, it is assumed the manager is being too easy on the review. Not everyone will agree with this philosophy (I do), but the bar is consistent as long as all the managers are on board with the same philosophy. All reviews are relative across the enterprise. This rating philosophy gives employees opportunities to improve, forces managers to grow, and provides constructive feedback. We can have an employee who is rated very well within multiple competencies but has opportunities for growth in a single competency. Companies are no different, and leaders should recognize this. 

If the leadership team will not give “Far Exceeds Expectations” across all the competencies that employees are judged on, guess what! Leadership should not expect to receive high grades across all of the survey questions. I won’t go this far, but one could say the following:

Investment in the training of competency reviews and how they work will result in more consistency consistent employee surveys

When the results of the survey come back, share results that are not personally identifiable to employees. Comments may not have names associated with them, but the employee who wrote it anonymously will feel like they have a big target on their back when it is out for all to see. For this reason, we scrub the comments. Hold a Brown Bag session where leadership or HR explains what was discovered. In addition, explain the next steps.

Some things that could be presented in this next session:

• “We are not going to change “x”. We didn’t think that employees cared for the company picnic when attendance dropped and were going to cancel it this year. Based on the feedback, we have been holding the event at the wrong venue. We will have the picnic and change the venue”
• “We are going to review the benefits program. A lot of employees shared that they want a 401K. We are not sure if we can afford one just yet, but we will run the numbers and let folks know how we can make it work or what it would take to make it work. We may not match funds to start, but we will look into a program.”
• Management doesn’t support career development. This one is a bit of a surprise for us. We talked about it amongst the leadership team and none of us has been asked for any type of training. We are not sure if we need to provide individual coaching or traditional training courses. We plan to look into this and if anyone has any thoughts, please share them with us. This was a miss on our part.

Make it easy and safe for the employees

If we want employees to share feedback so we can improve the workplace, we need to take steps to create an environment where feedback is welcomed. If employees are scared of turning in feedback or don’t think it will make a difference, then it shouldn’t surprise us when we don’t have the participation we think we deserve.

See you at the after party,

HRNasty

nasty: an unreal maneuver of incredible technique, something that is ridiculously good, tricky, and manipulative but with a result that can’t help but be admired, a phrase used to describe someone who is good at something. “He has a nasty forkball”.

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