What Everyone Is Saying About Employee Surveys

People don’t seem to like them.

There is a lot of data that shows that both managers and employees don’t really take them seriously, and view them as extra, unnecessary work.

This is a silly way of thinking, since surveys can be a great source of data.

They can be great learning tools for your organization, if you’re smart about how you do them.

Of all the research I’ve done, everyone seems to be saying the same thing.

We’ve been doing surveys wrong all this time, and there are many companies out there that still practice these bad habits.

We recently released an infographic about employee surveys, and the research in there is very interesting.

Let me quickly highlight 4 very important points from the survey.

• 20% said their boss never bothered to follow up any concerns raised


• 52% reviewed survey results but took no action


• 27% of managers never review survey results at all


• 48% of senior managers reported the surveys were highly valuable, while 45% of employees say surveys had little or no value

The last point is my personal favorite, and shows just how out of touch senior management often is with these things.

Before I tell you how you should be conducting employee surveys, let me talk about 2 companies that do employee surveys.

One company that gets it wrong, and one company that gets it right.

Doing Employee Surveys Wrong: Dish

In 2012, Dish Networks was branded as the worst company to work for in America.

This was according to data from Glassdoor.com, where 64% of the reviews came back as “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied”.

Some of the comments on Glassdoor were pretty bad, with things like being “forced to do overtime”, or “only getting ahead if you brown nose”.

Here’s where the story gets interesting.

After receiving that label, they finally decided, for the first time ever, to do an employee survey to see what was wrong.

Their mistake, obviously, was that they waited too long, and were in reaction mode.

If they were smart, they could have been proactive about it, and fixed issues before they received such an embarrassing label.

Looking at the reviews for 2014, it seems as if either the company has gotten much better, or some of the reviews are being “faked” in a PR effort….hard to tell really.

Doing Employee Surveys Right: Google

As a company that continually wins the “best places to work” award, you would expect them to get employee surveys right.

Leave it to Google to do them perfectly.

Like I was mentioning earlier, employee surveys are great tools to help you make data driven dcisions, and since Google is known for being data driven, it would make sense that they do frequent surveys.

“Data is central to everything we do — even when we choose a paint color for a conference room wall or plan a lunch menu,” – Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations at Google

Google does tons of “pulse surveys”, which are short, frequent surveys to check in on things.

From their Think With Google page:

We regularly survey employees about their managers, and then use that information to publicly recognize the best managers and enlist them as teachers and role models for the next year. The worst managers receive intense coaching and support, which helps 75 percent of them get better within a quarter.

They also do a more formal yearly “Googlegeist” survey, which is longer, but actually has an average response rate of 88% (which is incredible).

Tips For Better Employee Surveys

Here are 4 tips for conducting better employee surveys.

1. Make It Anonymous

Ensuring anonymity will help employees feel more comfortable that they can really speak their mind and share their feelings.

2. Short And Sweet

Keep your surveys to 10-15 questions max. People get survey fatigue very easily, no need to overwhelm them.

3. Do Them Frequently

Similar to the last one, keep the surveys short, but feel free to do them frequently to get a better overall picture.

4. Be Transparent

This tip might not be for everyone, but if you can be transparent with your employees and share results and action plans, the employees will respect you much more.

What Everyone Is Saying About Employee Surveys