By: Jerry Halamaj, Senior Manager and Consultant, jhalamaj@valtera.com
After your survey frequency cycle has been decided, timing is the next consideration. When is the best time for your organization to administer the survey? The seasonality of survey administration varies by firm, industry and global location. It is typically best to avoid industry-specific busy seasons, such as holiday season for retail organizations, or year-end and tax season for accounting firms. Being sensitive to your global footprint, such as international holiday and vacation seasons, also helps when planning for survey schedules.
Some research has shown that time of the year and relationship to other key organizational events can impact favorability of responses. By administering the survey using similar timing each year, the impact of seasonality and other factors on the responses will be mitigated.
When employees take the survey is not the only consideration. Organizations should also consider the availability of managers and employees to move into the action-planning stage. If Human Resources staff is tied up with year-end performance reviews, they are unlikely to have attention to spare for action planning. The timing of key customer events should also be considered when determining the best time to survey. Survey administration needs to be done when people can respond, when managers have the time for action planning, and when HR staff has time to support the process.
As surveys become more strategic, they should align and correspond to other business and people processes and cycles in the organization. For most organizations, this is annual (financial planning and reporting, budgeting, business reviews, performance reviews, talent reviews). In parts 1 and 2 of this blog series, we discussed the use of other frequencies. Regardless of the cycle used, a certain rhythm develops around seasonality: surveying, reporting, communication, visibility, and accountability.
Another key consideration for survey timing is to ensure that survey results are available in time for alignment with business reporting, planning, and communication cycles. Plan to have results in time to influence next year’s budget and resource plans. Consider also the availability and timing of key related data sources for linkage—customer satisfaction data, financial performance data by locations, annual report deadlines, annual and board meetings.
Planning your survey strategically – considering factors of frequency and timing – leads to the most effective survey process.
For more information and research on the importance of frequency and timing in strategic survey planning, download this whitepaper:
By: Jerry Halamaj, Senior Manager and Consultant, jhalamaj@valtera.com
Why not survey annually?
While the annual survey cycle is usually preferred, three concerns are often raised regarding this survey cycle.
One year is too short to develop action plans and see change.
While the initial launch of a first survey does require significant effort and time, establishing processes shortens the timeframe for future survey deployments. The reporting phase of survey results can be done in weeks. Discussions and action planning may be addressed at multiple levels of leadership simultaneously to speed implementation. In developing action plans, key priorities relevant to business strategy should be identified at the company-wide and business-unit levels and identified as short-term and long-term responses. A year is sufficient to work on short-term solutions and show impact. In fact, most other business metrics are reported annually, and corrective action is expected within a year.
Project costs and internal time and costs
Certainly, surveying on an annual basis is more time consuming and expensive than a less frequent basis. However, aligning the survey program to business strategy and demonstrating linkage to key business outcomes can alleviate this concern. While the initial learning curve can be steep, subsequent surveys build upon prior success.
Survey fatigue of administrators and respondents
With the proliferation of simple and inexpensive survey software, a glut of surveys may be cluttering your organization’s landscape. Training and holiday party surveys may cause respondent fatigue before your engagement survey even crosses their desks. A process of survey governance and prioritization may need to be established.
Why survey more often?
The benefits of annual surveying now established, what about surveying more often than yearly? The pulse survey may be added as a supplement to full surveys. Most commonly, a pulse survey refers to either a shorter survey or one focused on a sample of employees or a particular business unit or location. Some organizations use pulse surveys with regularity (e.g., quarterly, monthly), while others do a pulse survey on an as-needed basis around a particular topic or event. Pulse surveys are also useful in assessing progress on action plans at higher organizational levels.
Keeping the pulse survey process simple is critical both for efficiency and cost. Making use of content that has already been approved and translated, relying on programming already in place, and minimizing comment questions all contribute to the ease of adding a pulse survey to the regular survey cycle – whatever your company decides to make it.
For more information on strategizing survey frequency and timing, download this whitepaper:
By: Jerry Halamaj, Senior Manager and Consultant, jhalamaj@valtera.com
Two aspects of organizational surveying are now key strategic considerations for employers: Frequency and Timing. In this three-part blog series, we discuss considerations for determining how often and when it is best to survey.
Change Begets Change
The frequency of survey deployment historically was influenced by very long, paper-based processes that were onerous and expensive. Dramatic changes in technology enabling computerized data processing have led to more frequent and shorter surveys with rapid reporting to multiple levels in the organization with relative ease.
Changes in the general business environment – increased competition, globalization, accelerated organizational change, the war for talent, economic swings – have had an impact on survey usage. Significant changes in survey purpose and content have likewise evolved from the former emphases on measuring morale and job satisfaction, to linkage with business outcomes (turnover, absenteeism, quality, service climate, and customer satisfaction), to engagement and business strategy drivers (including balanced scorecards and other metrics). Tools such as linkage analysis, driver analysis, and text analytics have helped organizations and managers focus on the critical areas for improvement; online action-planning tools, along with libraries of best practices, further streamline information usage.
Today’s successful survey programs strive to be more aligned to the firm’s strategic business priorities by using:
- Content that matters
- High-quality data collection and analysis approaches
- Powerful, quick, and easy-to-use reporting
- Easy-to-implement action-planning tools and support
The Annual Survey
Most organizations today survey every 12 to 24 months; some clients have longer windows (18-24 months) while others survey much more frequently (quarterly or even monthly in a pulse sampling strategy). Approximately 75% of our Fortune 500 clients choose an annual survey schedule.
There are multiple benefits to conducting an employee survey on an annual schedule:
- Surveying annually demonstrates that leadership values frequent, systematic, two-way communication.
- Scheduled, annual surveys also show commitment to acting upon results, fostering a culture of continuous improvement when results are used.
- Aligning survey processes with the collection of other annual metrics elevates the survey process in importance and relevance to business processes and linkage analyses.
- Linking the survey to managers’ annual performance appraisals and bonuses may increase accountability (barring unintended consequences).
- The degree and pace of change in the firm, industry, and economy should inform survey frequency. Extending surveys beyond 12 months raises validity questions regarding historical benchmarks.
- Support for the survey (response rate and participation in follow-up) is built through ongoing communication at multiple levels. Annual communication of broader business and people strategies lend visibility and powerful branding to the survey.
- Administrative and managerial follow-up and support are facilitated by annual continuity (once the initial training investment is made).
In our next blog, we take a closer look at the pros and cons of various survey frequencies: the annual survey, the less frequent survey, and the pulse survey.
For more on frequency and timing as strategic considerations in organization surveying, download this whitepaper:
By: Diane Daum, Ph.D., Vice President, Research and Analytics, ddaum@valtera.com
Receiving feedback is an annual reality for managers as well as their direct reports. There is no need to be a passive recipient in this review process; you will get greater benefit if you are prepared for a two-way conversation.
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Pre-Meeting:
- Sum up your performance for your manager. Whether or not your manager asks you to complete a self-evaluation, you can provide a list of key accomplishments and projects that you worked on during the year to help her recall your contributions. Also list any development activities you participated in, whether company-sponsored or not. It is wise to do this well in advance of the meeting to ensure that you give input before the review is finalized.
- Be prepared to discuss what you need in order to be able to perform better. Are you getting enough feedback throughout the year? Lacking any key resources? In need of more visibility?
- In many organizations a development discussion is held separately from the performance review, but these may be concurrent. Be prepared to talk about opportunities and assignments that you would like to have this year.
During the Meeting:
- Ask for clarification or examples of any feedback you don’t understand.
- Take notes on issues that you may want to follow up on.
- If you have an inconsistent interpretation of an event, it is OK to share your interpretation and ask how/why your manager saw it differently. Be sure to treat your version of what happened as one perspective rather than “the truth,” and avoid using exaggerating words such as always and never that force a black-and-white perspective.
- Don’t lose your cool. If you start to have an emotional reaction to the feedback, make some notes, sleep on it, and request a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue more calmly.
Post-Meeting:
- If the feedback given is inconsistent with how you view yourself, consider asking others you trust whether they have observed it. It may be a blind spot for you.
- If you feel that your review is unfair and want to take action to address this, talk to your manager about the points of disagreement before going through an official grievance process. This may help you to preserve your relationship with your manager and allow her to share her point of view.
- Create a plan to act on the feedback by leveraging your strengths and addressing any development needs, and enlist your manager’s support to carry it out.
Being prepared and actively engaging in a dialogue about your performance will help to set you up for a successful 2012! And remember, the conversation doesn’t have to stop there: Once you start a two-way dialogue about your performance, meet regularly with your manager and continue the conversation throughout the year.
To read about the importance of personality at work, download this whitepaper by thought leader Ben Schneider:
By: Diane Daum, Ph.D., Vice President, Research and Analytics, ddaum@valtera.com
January is a time for reflecting on the past as well as planning for the future. As part of the business cycle, this is often the time of year for conducting performance reviews. Many managers consider this to be one of the least pleasant tasks that they do all year, yet it is one of the most important. Here are some tips for making it go more smoothly:
- Invite input from others: To have a more complete picture of the employees’ performance, consider others who may have valuable input: key customers, peers, managers of projects that the employee has taken a key role in. Be sure they know how their input will be used. For example, will you mention them by name? Use their comments verbatim? Or compile the feedback and share some overall themes? You might also invite the employee to submit a “self-review” or a summary of their accomplishments.
- Find the right time and place: A review should not be rushed or interrupted and should occur in a private place where both parties will feel comfortable talking. Schedule a time and turn off electronic devices so that you can focus on the discussion at hand.
- Make sure the feedback is balanced:
- Consider both behavior and results. Did they deliver a great work product but alienate their coworkers in getting it done? Did they put forth some genuine, but misguided effort that didn’t lead to a good outcome? If so, praise what they did well, but offer constructive suggestions on how they might do things differently the next time.
- Offer both positive and constructive feedback. The balance of the feedback should match the balance of performance. If overall performance was excellent, be sure to celebrate their accomplishments in the review instead of just focusing on what should change. If overall performance was poor, beware that too much sugar-coating with positive feedback will weaken your message.
- Be specific: Give multiple examples of what was done well or poorly so they have a clear understanding of what should or should not change. When talking about poor performance, provide specific examples of what would have made it better. If they have performed inconsistently, compare/contrast their effective performances to those that were less effective.
- Make it a conversation: Don’t use the feedback meeting to read the review aloud. Instead, encourage questions and dialogue, and do some joint problem-solving about challenges faced. Allowing the employee the opportunity to read the review in advance of the meeting may facilitate this.
- Be prepared for reactions: Having input from others and providing specific examples should lend credibility to your ratings, but there is always the possibility that feedback may catch someone off-guard. If an employee may have a strong emotional reaction to your feedback, don’t let it escalate. Instead, request to schedule a follow-up meeting to allow a chance for the employee to absorb the initial impact and discuss matters more calmly.
Remembering that performance management is a year-round process and not a once-a-year activity should also help these conversations to go smoothly. The topic of our next blog will focus on how to do just that.
To delve deeper into the relevance of personality at work, download this whitepaper:
By: Scott Young, Ph.D., Principal, syoung@valtera.com
As we saw in the last blog on this topic, item weighting is an effective method of addressing disproportionate respondent rates. Today’s blog discusses how to calculate those weights.
Calculating Weights
The calculation of weights is simple and remains the same regardless of the number of variables on which the weights are based. The basic formula for computing a weight (where “cell” is the department of interest) is:
Cell Population / Total Population
Cell Returns / Total Returns
Consider this example. Below are the weight calculations for three departments (A, B, and C) surveyed within a company. Together, these three departments employ 5,000 people. Each department represents between 20% to 40% of the population. Only 500 employees responded to the survey, with participation rates varying by department. Though Department A represents 40% of the population, it only represents 20% of the respondents. Contrast this with Department C, which also represents 40% of the population, but 60% of the respondents.
If we were to simply combine all respondents (with no weighting) in the calculation of the overall results, Department C would have much more influence than Department A on the results, despite their equal representation in the population. If employees in Department C were much more satisfied than employees from Departments A or B, we would then end up with a higher proportion of satisfied employees in our sample than actually exists among the population of these three departments. This, therefore, is a good case to use weighting to help ensure that our overall picture is as accurate as possible.
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Dept A
2,000/5,000 = 2.0
100/500
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Dept B
1,000/5,000 = 1.0
100/500
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Dept C
2,000/5,000 = 0.67
300/500
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Notice that the responses from Department A are given a large weight (2.0), thus compensating for the lower proportion of returns from Department A compared to the proportion of Department A employees in the population. In a similar manner, responses from Department C are given less weight (0.67) while Department B responses are unit weighted (1.0). Weighting ensures that each group’s contribution corresponds to its representation in the population. 
Hint: Checking your work
To ensure that the weights were calculated correctly, multiply the returns for each group by their weights and sum the products. The result should be equal to the total number of returns as shown below:
(2.0 x 100) + (1.0 x 100) + (0.67 x 300) = 200 + 100 + 200 = 500
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Applying the Weights
There are two ways to calculate the overall weighted average response for a survey item: 1) apply a weight to the response of each individual by multiplying each individual’s response by the weight corresponding to his or her group, sum these products across all individuals, and then divide by the total number of respondents, and 2) multiply the item mean or average for each group by its proportion in the population; sum the resulting products.
Equations for calculating weights based on incomplete information and multiple classification variables are available in the linked white paper.
By: Scott Young, Ph.D., Principal, syoung@valtera.com
When administering an organizational survey, the ultimate goal is to understand the attitudes of the entire organization. However, participation rates rarely approach 100%. As a result, an incomplete or inaccurate picture of the larger group or organization may emerge when only a sample of the organization completes the survey. Item weighting is one method of addressing this potential problem.
Weighting for data analysis and reporting may be appropriate whenever the proportions of survey respondents for your groups of interest (e.g. departments, regions, or functions) do not match their proportions in the overall populations of interest (i.e., all employees in the departments, regions, or functions being surveyed).
There are two primary reasons why the proportion of respondents might differ from proportions in the overall population.
1) Sampling techniques may require different proportions from certain groups. When data are to be reported for different groups (e.g., job levels, departments, etc.), it is important to ensure that these group-level results can be reported with an acceptable level of precision. Higher participation rates are needed in smaller groups than larger groups to obtain a given level of precision. Thus, when the survey is being sent only to a sample of an organization, smaller groups will often be over-sampled. While this helps ensure that those smaller groups can receive a report, it also results in those groups being over-represented in the report that combines all respondents.
2) Different groups may have different return rates. Even in the case where equal percentages of employees from each group are invited to participate (e.g., a census survey), actual group response rates may differ for many reasons. For example, one department may have an unusually high response rate because its management communicates strong support for the survey process. In addition, survey administration methods may differ between departments, with some methods yielding greater participation than others.
Weighting helps to compensate for some groups being over- or under-represented in the overall results by giving greater weight to the response of an individual from an under-represented group than a response from an individual from an over-represented group.
So why don’t we always apply weights to survey data? At first glance it appears that data should be weighted whenever the sample proportions do not perfectly represent the organization as a whole. However, there are some circumstances where weighting is not advisable. For example, when return rates are highly disproportionate and very low for certain groups, weighting the data can result in a severe reduction in the precision of the final results. This is because results for extremely under-represented groups are the most unreliable, and therefore giving more weight to data that is the least reliable results in lower precision in the overall results. As a general rule, it is best to apply weights to a group only when the sample from the group is large enough to ensure an accurate representation of the group’s opinions.
In addition, weighting will only have a meaningful impact on results and conclusions if there are significant differences in the results of the over- and under-represented groups. Given that weighting can result in some confusion among consumers of the data, it’s best to use weighting when there are large differences in the representation and the results of different groups.
For more on weighting survey results, follow next week's blogs and download this whitepaper:
By: Benjamin Schneider, Ph.D., Senior Practice Fellow, bschneider@valtera.com, and Karen M. Barbera, Ph.D., Senior Vice-President and Managing Principal, kbarbera@valtera.com
In our last blog, we looked at the influence of underlying employee engagement on service climate as reflected in the ACSI. Today we will look at the financial implications of those results.
The second set of results come from Valtera’s project on between 65 and 93 companies where we predicted the financial consequences of employee engagement for those companies. The figure below shows these results for engagement predicting ROA, profits (as a percent of revenues), and Tobin’s q, an index of market value adjusted for the replacement costs of assets. Again, using the top and bottom 25 percent of companies on engagement, we show dramatic differences in these important company financial performance indicators. In fact, companies with more engaged workforces had nearly double the shareholder value.
After demonstrating such dramatic results, Valtera has pursued additional research on its own, has partnered with a number of companies (Harrah’s, 3M) in making employee engagement happen, and has written about the results of its work with clients in the book Employee Engagement: Tools for Analysis, Practice, and Competitive Advantage (Wiley- Blackwell, 2009). These efforts have told us that to achieve high levels of employee engagement, companies need to pay attention to these points:
- People’s jobs must be designed to make use of their skills and abilities and appeal to their better instincts to be productive and useful.
- Companies must have a values position that is positive, inspirational, and carried out in ethical ways so that employees experience their work world as appealing and important.
- Managers must treat their employees with fairness and earn their trust. When people feel they can trust their managers, it permits them to feel and be engaged.
- The system as a whole must also treat people fairly and earn their trust, their efforts, and their engagement.
Valtera has in addition created action planning modules and resource banks of best practices for helping companies create the conditions for fostering employee engagement.
It has become very clear to us in our work with clients and in our extensive research that having an engaged workforce does not by itself guarantee success. Having an engaged work force sets the stage for creating strategic engagement—engagement that focuses on the important things company management wants to achieve. Creating and maintaining an engaged work force is the foundation for further strategic human resources management, where employees’ energies and competencies and engagement are focused—on service quality, on safety, on innovation and so forth.
Our research shows customer-focused engagement behaviors, as reported by employees in Fortune 500 companies, predicts the quality ratings of those companies for products and services. In Figure 4 it is clear that the top and bottom 25 percent of companies in those ratings do not even overlap when determined by the customer-focused engagement scores of employees.
The bottom line: if you create an engaged work force and then strategically focus them on what is important, the chances are great you will win.
For more on linkage research, download this whitepaper:
By: Benjamin Schneider, Ph.D., Senior Practice Fellow, bschneider@valtera.com, and Karen M. Barbera, Ph.D., Senior Vice-President and Managing Principal, kbarbera@valtera.com
Continuing last month's series on linkage research, today's blog focuses on employee engagement as the underpinning of service climate. In fact, our thinking about the foundation on which companies might build a service climate is what led us to our more recent work on employee engagement. We asked ourselves the question: What is it that employees experience that permits organizations to build a service climate? We realized that this question had much broader implications: What is it that employees experience that permits organizations to build any kind of strategic climate—a climate for service, for sure, but also a climate for innovation, a climate for safety, and so forth.
We realized that employee engagement is the foundation on which companies can build important strategic initiatives of all kinds, and that this was a key to understanding the role of human resources in organizational performance and effectiveness. We began our work on employee engagement prior to its being an industry buzz word. Two important items were produced from our early work:
- An extensive and intensive review of the academic research literature on employee engagement so that we could locate the phenomenon and understand how it relates to ostensibly similar ideas (like job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement). We concluded that engagement is different especially in that it has to do with energy and enthusiasm as well as urgency, adaptability, and persistence, rather than concepts like satisfaction or commitment.
- A new and unique measurement of employee engagement focusing on feelings of engagement and the engagement behavior that characterizes work groups of all sizes (teams, entire companies). Having learned from the service climate work that it was important to focus on work units (not individuals) as we proceeded, we again focused on employees in the aggregate and not individual employees one at a time.
We now have two sets of dramatic results from our research using the new engagement measures within a market panel approach. In today's blog, we discuss the first set of results. This comes from a major study, again of customer satisfaction, but this time across companies where we predict the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) scores for 32 companies.
Shown in the figure above are the ACSI results for the companies that scored in the top and bottom 25 percent in terms of employee engagement. As can be seen, organizations with more engaged workforces scored 6 points higher on the ACSI than those with less engaged workforces. More importantly, this difference translates to significantly better ROI, future cash flows, and other important financial incomes.
Next up: More research results and financial implications
For more on linkage research, download this whitepaper:
By: Diane Daum, Vice President, Research and Analytics, ddaum@valtera.com and Susan Grant Palombo, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, spalombo@valtera.com.
New Year’s is the perfect time to recommit to your role as a leader. In our prior two blogs we covered three of the five Leadership Essentials to create and sustain engagement in your work teams. We discussed the unique role you have as a leader. Today we focus on leadership essentials #4 Ensuring Challenging Work for your Team and #5 Attending to Management Basics.
To engage your team, create jobs that capture their minds and hearts. Design job attributes with company goals and objectives in mind, and ensure that the job is strategically relevant as well as personally meaningful.
Demand the full use of team members’ most important skills and abilities and they will feel appropriately stretched. Specific, difficult goals are welcome challenges when they are accompanied by feedback and the celebration of achievements. Give timely and useful feedback when things go well, and when they do not go well, use those as opportunities for training and not to place blame.
Making the work meaningful has personal and organizational consequences that are clearly beneficial. In fact, meaningful work is the most powerful accelerant of employee engagement. How can employees’ jobs be infused with meaning? By creating work that has variety, challenge, and built-in feedback. Give team members the autonomy to decide what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Requiring people to use the skills and abilities they value most not only makes the work meaningful to them but is also most likely to lead to opportunities for personal growth and development.
The 5th leadership essential for engagement sounds really simple: Cover the basic management tasks.
Leadership is difficult, but taking care of the basics can make it easier. People cannot be engaged if they don’t have the resources to do t
heir work. Identify what your team needs to accomplish its goals and be sure to fill those needs by providing:
- Critical resources: Tools, equipment, space, supplies, time
- Critical training: On-the-job, classroom, information updates
- Critical support required: Encouragement, participation, empowerment
- Clear information
- Clear expectations
So now, armed with knowledge from research around the five leadership essentials to create and sustain engagement, kick off the new year with a resolution and commitment to focus on what matters to engage your team. Here’s to an ENGAGED NEW YEAR!
