It might seem weird for a company that offers employee assessments to say that today’s workforce is over-surveyed. We are not talking about frequency, but how there are too many different types of surveys.
We have surveys for engagement, COVID-19 pandemic return to work surveys, diversity and inclusivity surveys, crisis response surveys, psychological safety surveys, leadership effectiveness surveys … the list is seemingly endless. By asking so many different survey questions with so many different instruments in a disconnected fashion, we waste people’s time and imply that the survey concepts are independent from one another.
Why do we do these surveys in the first place?
Let’s go back to the basics. Our goal is typically to increase performance and create a better human experience of work. If that is true, shouldn’t we create surveys focused on the elements of performance directly, instead of something one step removed?
Let’s take engagement as a case in point. Engagement surveys comprise a $1 billion industry, yet there is no clear evidence that higher engagement CAUSES higher performance. In fact, Dr. Catherine Bailey conducted a comprehensive review of 5,800 engagement research papers and came to a startling conclusion: “despite the number of studies, there is in fact still very little about engagement that can be asserted with any degree of certainty; we do not really know what engagement means, how to measure it, what its outcomes are, or what drives up levels of engagement.”
That’s a powerful conclusion and yet it makes sense, based on my experience as a coach and leader. While lots of research shows that engagement and performance are related, our research indicates that it is a high-performance culture that cultivates engagement, not the other way around.
Instead of spending a small fortune on numerous surveys, we offer you an efficient solution
Instead of spending a small fortune on numerous surveys, we offer you an efficient solution – one that provides data and solutions, for less than the cost of your surveys today.
The SupportingLines High-Performance Index™️ (HPI) is 82% correlated with employee work engagement and 89% correlated with psychological safety. All of our high-performance elements in the HPI™ are also highly-correlated with inclusivity. We offer you one powerful instrument that brings all these things together. You can send out a single, five-minute survey, 2-3 times a year that will assess everything on your list and cultivate high-performance. You can also add custom questions to capture feedback for specific contexts (for example, on your office’s return to work).
I usually try to not be too pitchy in our posts, but I have become frustrated on your behalf. At SupportingLines, we’ve talked to organization after organization, all running too many different surveys and overpaying for their own employee data. We can do so much better.
The second part...
In addition to over-surveying and overpaying, many leaders are not taking action. Many surveys indicated that employees do not expect much to be done with the results. When we collect employee data and file it away for the records, we are under-serving employees. This is what we will tackle in our next post. Learn more about the three traps leaders often fall into once they have the survey results. For a sneak peak, you can read this related article that we will expand upon in our next blog post.
Jeff Smith
Jeff is the Founder & CEO of SupportingLines. He is also a certified Master Corporate Executive Coach, seasoned C-suite business leader and yoga instructor.