Survey swindle is newest fad

There were staff opinion surveys. Which became staff attitude surveys. And transformed into employee engagement surveys. There was also survey mania. Followed by survey fatigue. Now there’s survey swindle.

A report in The Australian Financial Review has disclosed that employees at the National Australia Bank admitted fudging answers to last year’s engagement survey. At the time the bank ran its survey, it had just delivered a strong financial result but was cutting staff numbers by ten percent.

The Finance Sector Union engaged a research firm to ask bank staff how they had answered the survey. It was found that employees gave falsely upbeat responses in an attempt to get better treatment from their managers.

Employees realise that a lot rides on the survey scores, which are generally made available to staff, can leak and impact a company’s reputation and share price.

The Centre for Workplace Research says employee engagement data should be regarded with “great caution” since “historically they always trend upwards over time” irrespective of how people really feel.

Comments

[Bob M]

And this is a surprise?

[Geoff Alford]

Our company specialises in conducting employee surveys. We began to find evidence of "survey fudging" a few years ago. I believe it is linked to 2 things; a) the use of measures of "organisation satisfaction or engagement" as KPIs, and b) certain "public popularity ladders" where organisations are judged on their employee scores. In both cases, there is subtle pressure on employees to give their department or organisation a good score. There may be some managers who encourage staff to respond positively, but I think it has now - unfortunately - become part of the internal culture (employees in those organisations have learned to anticipate the consequences of not giving positive scores).

This is a great pity and management needs to recognise the negative consequences.

The true purpose of employee surveys is to validly measure the culture of the organisation and its main causal levers. For example, to validly measure employee satisfaction or engagement, and how these factors are impacted by the quality of management, leadership, internal communication, involvement, recognition, teamwork, etc. From that learning, management can confidently identify which levers need to be addressed in order to improve the organisation, both its culture and performance.

But if employee surveys are being corrupted by an over-emphasis on meeting "satisfaction or engagement" KPIs, or by over-zealous desires to make the organisation appear more popular, then management is not getting a true picture of the organisation, and is not learning.

This consequence does not bode well. If everything appears rosey, then - quite simply - management does not have valid information to be able to make the correct decisions.

That is the challenge for CEOs and their senior management teams. Do you want valid information and the capability to make informed decisions with confidence? If so, there needs to be a re-thinking of how to get employee surveys back on track.

[Bob M]

Geoff, how do you view this type of employee survey versus exit interviews of employees in respect to getting truthful answers?