The Problem With Engagement Surveys

Shawnee Love   •   March 5, 2020

The problem with engagement surveys is that most of them suck from an employee’s perspective. The complaints employees raise are:

  1. Questions appear or are in fact repetitive which is often intentional to catch inconsistencies but to an employee it can feel like the survey is trying to catch them in a lie.
  2. Questions may use words which aren’t well understood by employees. For example, when I ask employees to describe the “organizational culture”, many ask me what that means. The same occurs with the term “engagement”, what engagement surveys purport to measure!
  3. Surveys are online. Not only does that mean it is difficult to ask for clarification of words or purpose, but employees lack confidence their answers are truly anonymous (pretty important to those who work in an environment where culture isn’t good and they are fearful for their jobs if they speak the truth).
  4. Nothing Changes. Thus, employees are asked to participate in surveys but:
  • They aren’t told the findings,
  • Changes in how the company will operate as a result of what is learned from the survey are not communicated (and sometimes not done),
  • Even if changes are made, nothing seems that different from the employees’ perspective,
  • Changes occur but people forget about them by the time the next survey is run.

We encourage employers to look for solutions to these issues, because only if the survey is well thought out and administered, the information learned will be valuable. If you are thinking of doing an employee survey and want to do it right, we are here to help!