Employee Surveys That Make a Difference

Citation

Lengnick‐Hall, M.L. (2000), "Employee Surveys That Make a Difference", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 432-436. https://doi.org/10.1108/jsm.2000.14.5.432.1

It seems logical that the attitudes and morale (good or bad) of front‐line service employees would affect how they treat customers. In fact, there is compelling evidence to support this view. Research done in a variety of service firms, such as banks, car rental agencies, and department stores, shows that employee satisfaction correlates significantly with customer satisfaction (Bowen et al., 1999). Employees who feel that their company treats them fairly are more likely to treat customers well. On the other hand, employees who feel that their company treats them unfairly are more likely to treat customers poorly. Moreover, customers of service organizations are likely to make decisions about repeat business depending upon how well they are treated by employees. If customers are treated well by service employees, they are more likely to continue coming back to do business. On the other hand, customers who are treated poorly by service employees are more likely not to come back to do business. Therefore, it should be imperative that service organizations periodically obtain data on employee attitudes and morale to ensure that employees perceive fair treatment and consequently treat their customers well.

In his book Employee Surveys That Make a Difference, Joe Folkman provides organizations with guidance on how to conduct effective employee surveys. This book offers sound advice on how organizations can “take the pulse” of employee attitudes and morale in an organization. It is logically organized, practical, and presents tradeoffs for the reader to consider as well as steps to implement.

In the Introduction, Folkman begins with a cautionary note: “When organizations conduct surveys and then do not respond to the results, many employees feel frustrated, feeling that management has taken advantage of them.” I believe Folkman rightfully stresses the seriousness of conducting employee surveys. That is, by conducting employee surveys, organizations raise expectations for change. Ignored or unmet expectations may do more harm than any good associated with employee surveys.

In the Introduction, Folkman makes a good case for the value of using surveys:

1. 1.

   (1) Surveys provide consistent feedback from all employees on a given set of issues.

2. 2.

   (2) Surveys present the opinions of the entire organization at a specific point in time.

3. 3.

   (3) Surveys clearly reveal the organization’s strengths and opportunities for improvement.

He then gives readers 17 prescriptions for designing employee surveys that make a difference, ranging from establishing a direct link between the survey and critical measures of company performance to making surveys that are simple, easy to understand, and quick to review. The introduction is an excellent overview of general tips on employee surveys written by a clearly experienced survey researcher.

Chapter One (“Designing Surveys for Strategic Alignment and Competitive Advantage”) makes a case for measuring only those variables important to a business’s strategy. While this chapter makes a good point – organizational systems should be aligned with business strategy – its treatment of strategic management is superficial, relying on the McKinsey 7‐S framework and referencing Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence. However, despite the superficial treatment of business strategy, Folkman does offer useful advice on how to design employee surveys for competitive advantage:

1. 1.

   (1) clarify strategy and implementation plans;

2. 2.

   (2) identify critical skills, competencies, characteristics, and behaviors for achieving the strategy;

3. 3.

   (3) create measurement tools to assess effectiveness;

4. 4.

   (4) gather data and determine misalignments; and

5. 5.

   (5) focus efforts to create the most leverage.

Chapter Two (“Three Approaches to Surveys”) describes the information‐gathering approach, the change‐implementing approach, and the strategic‐alignment approach to surveys. Information‐gathering is for assessing employee perceptions about specific topics, change‐implementing is for identifying the most pertinent issues to address in making changes for organizational improvements, and the strategic‐alignment approach is for assessing gaps between where the company is and where it wants to go. This typology is useful for understanding the different purposes for employee surveys. Folkman makes the point that whether you survey the entire organization or only a sample depends upon the purpose of the survey – and a primary factor in the decision is the level of expectations among employees that might be raised by conducting the survey. In this chapter, Folkman also offers many rules‐of‐thumb for conducting surveys. His advice seems sound from a pragmatic perspective; however, I am unaware of any research supporting many of his recommendations. The recommendations appear to be his personal opinions based upon his experience.

Given Chapter One’s focus on designing surveys for strategic alignment and competitive advantage, I was puzzled about why the author discussed the strategic‐alignment approach to surveying again in Chapter Two. It would have been more logical to combine the material from Chapter One into the section on strategic‐alignment in Chapter Two for more clarity.

Chapter Three (“The Right Time for an Employee Survey”) makes the observation that most managers only want to hear “good news” from their employee surveys and, if given the opportunity, will try to adjust survey processes, such as timing the survey, in order to put themselves in the most favorable light. As Folkman states it, “Some managers conduct employee surveys only when they’re sure the results will confirm that employees feel good about the company and morale is high, believing it’s better to assume the worst than to find out the truth.” Folkman says that the antidote to this problem is to hold managers accountable for what they do with the results and not with the results per se. In this way, managers will be more amenable to conducting surveys even in tough times. This is an excellent chapter, and one that should be read by all managers who conduct employee surveys.

Chapter Four (“Tradeoffs in Survey Methods”) discusses the many tradeoffs that users of employee surveys must make: establishing expectations for change (many vs. few); deciding who will take the survey (all employees or a sample); level of aggregation (unit vs. organizational); sharing results with employees (at the work group vs. the organizational level); and frequency of surveys (one‐shot vs. repeated). The choices among these tradeoffs are not easy, but Folkman once again offers some sound, practical advice on how to decide.

Chapter Five (“The Steering Committee: Key to Success”) focuses on how to use a steering committee to design and implement an effective employee survey. This important chapter discusses the necessity to involve employees or their representatives in the survey process in order to gain commitment to the goals of the survey. Without careful attention to these issues, even the best designed, most technically sound survey will not generate data useful for decision making. The issues discussed in this chapter are often neglected in more research‐oriented treatments of employee surveys. Thus, Folkman’s chapter makes a valuable contribution in this area.

Chapter Six (“The Survey Process”) is an excellent chapter mixing both research‐based prescriptions for conducting surveys along with practical strategies for making them useful to organizations. For example, Folkman suggests obtaining survey items from statistically validated instruments when you can, and supplementing them with items you create on your own that are more tailored to your organization. He then provides the reader with eight research‐based rules for constructing survey items, followed by a discussion of how to decide among scale response alternatives. This chapter is the most substantive in the book and does a very good job of translating complex technical survey issues into layman’s terminology. It also provides numerous examples that add clarity to the discussion.

Chapter Seven (“Trends in Employee Survey Data”), like Chapter Six, is an excellent chapter with useful strategies for both analyzing and presenting employee survey results. Folkman discusses typical survey trends using satisfaction data as an example: (1) Executives and managers are typically more positive than professionals or front‐line workers, (2) Male and female respondents generally show few differences with regard to overall satisfaction, (3) Employees tend to be very positive soon after joining a company and just before retiring, but they tend to be more negative between those times, (4) Employees with lower levels of education (e.g. high school) and higher levels of education (e.g. PhD) tend to be more positive, while levels of education in between tend to be more negative, and (5) Minorities tend to be more positive than nonminorities. While the generalizability of these results across all organizations and situations is questionable, Folkman’s main point is that companies should analyze data trends in a broader context – a point with which I agree.

Chapter Eight (“Root Cause Analysis”) describes a total quality management technique to use with employee surveys in order to diagnose the cause of organizational problems. While the chapter provides a fairly standard treatment of this well‐known tool, its inclusion in a book about using employee surveys to make a difference is warranted. The procedures described in this chapter, along with clear examples, make it possible for companies to gain more insight into the data they collect.

Chapter Nine (“Creating Change in Organizations”) offers a consultant’s perspective on the pragmatics of creating change in organizations. This chapter focuses entirely on prescriptions with no direct links to the large body of research literature on change management in organizations. Consequently, I found it to be a fairly superficial treatment of a complex topic. Moreover, the prescriptions for change leave the impression that a “cookbook” approach will work. I am skeptical. However, given the author’s desire to demonstrate how employee surveys make a difference, I understand why he included this chapter. And, if you evaluate it from that perspective, this lighter treatment of the topic may be justified.

Chapter Ten (“Leading Change”) led me to believe that it was going to be an extension of Chapter Nine. Unfortunately, this chapter simply reports the results of what appears to be a nonscientific survey of executives on what makes leaders effective. Perhaps this survey was conducted by the author’s consulting firm, and perhaps the survey has some merit. However, there is no way to judge the scientific rigor of the underlying survey research. Readers should be skeptical about drawing any firm conclusions regarding leadership from this chapter. And, frankly, I think the chapter should have been left out of the book entirely.

The Appendix to the book presents a “Readiness for Change Profile” along with how to score and interpret the results. This appears to be an instrument designed by the author and his firm for consulting practice. It provides a useful model for readers interested in seeing one way to design an employee survey.

While Folkman makes a convincing argument that employee surveys can make a difference in organizations, there are many examples in the literature of companies which have successfully used and benefited from employee surveys. Perhaps one of the best examples of the effective use of employee surveys in the service industry is Sears (Rucci et al., 1998).

Sears has established a sophisticated employee surveying process which links attitudinal measures to customer outcomes and to other “bottom line” measures. With a complex econometric model, they can show how changes in employee attitudes affect “bottom line” outcomes.

I found the information presented in this book generally accurate and clearly presented. The author used many examples from his own consulting experience which both made for more lively reading and enhanced the ability of the reader to actually apply his recommendations. The book is also concise and can easily be read in a few hours. However, even though it doesn’t take long to read the book, readers who are novices to employee survey methods should not believe that they can master surveying skills as quickly. The author himself has spent 20 years refining his skills in effectively conducting employee surveys across many organizations. Furthermore, the author offers many prescriptions that seem more practice‐based than research‐based. Consequently, the naïve reader may believe that there is consensus in the research community supporting all of his recommendations, when in fact that agreement does not exist.

The intended audience for this book is managers and staff personnel in organizations. As such, it is written with a pragmatic focus on collecting useful data for diagnosis and decision making. While the book has some references, they are not extensive. Readers looking for a more scientific focus on employee surveys for conducting substantive research need to consult other sources (e.g. Dunham and Smith, 1979; Kraut and Kraut, 1996).

For readers who won’t actually develop and administer employee surveys, but instead will simply use the results from these types of surveys, Folkman’s book offers insight into what distinguishes “good” from “poor” survey methods. A book like Employee Surveys That Make a Difference can help readers become more informed consumers of information, which is increasingly important in our information‐rich business environment.

In summary, Employee Surveys That Make a Difference, provides a blueprint for the effective design, implementation, and analysis of employee surveys. Stripping away much of the technical jargon while retaining the core principles associated with effective survey research makes this book a useful addition to a manager’s library. While I have some reservations about specific recommendations and the way they are stated without qualification, in general the book offers good advice. And, since employee attitudes and morale can affect customer satisfaction, all managers of service organizations should obtain the basic knowledge contained in this book in order to more effectively assess their own employees.