Staff Survey

One of the biggest causes for staff dissatisfaction is the upheaval that results from mergers and acquisitions. In our case, the company has been through a few. We are now part of a very large corporation, one of the half-dozen biggest companies in it's category in the world. Some companies do badly for years after such turmoil.

This company, however, appears to be serious about finding out what the workforce thinks about the company - and doing something about it! They have so far this year held a number of Work-out sessions (despite my misgivings about the tool, the idea is right), and held the first ever IT Conference.

The annual staff survey is supposed to expose the areas to concentrate on, but it has become apparent that an interesting point has now been reached. The survey appears to be asking the wrong questions.

This raises a bit of a dilemma - changing the questions would invalidate previous years results, in effect 'starting over'.

Specifically, one of the questions is along the lines of "I frequently think about leaving the company". We are supposed to answer in varying degrees of "I agree/disagree". Do you see the problem?

Lots of people think about leaving, and going to work elsewhere. Last year, senior management were appalled to see the results showing more than half the staff were thinking of leaving, but they could not reconcile this with the actual staff turnover figures, which were comfortingly low.

As i've said before here, surveys can be a minefield of misinformation. There are only two categories of survey :

• those where you know what answer you expect, and use the results to prove a conclusion you have already reached, and
• those like this one where the answers result in more questions than answers.

So, is a staff survey effective? Yes, to a point. It can be a gauge of general staff attitude in certain areas - pay and reward, job satisfaction, leadership, etc. but it is a blunt instrument at best, not a surgical tool.