Tips on Making Employee Survey Initiatives Successful (Part 5 of 5)

 

Other Suggestions for Employee Surveys

Over the last several weeks, we've already covered several tips on ways to make employee survey initiatives successful. Here are a few more suggestions that don't fit neatly into the previous topics, but are very important nonetheless:

• Get senior management endorsement. As mentioned earlier, senior management should drive the initiative, not HR and not a consultant. But "endorsement" means more than "Okay, let's do an employee survey." It means:
  
  
• Signing off on the employee survey content as providing data important to making the business strategies a reality
• Actively encouraging employees to participate in completing the survey and helping plan improvement actions
• Serving as role models for the important events that follow the delivery of the employee survey reports
• Providing support to subordinate line managers and holding them accountable
• Don't let the process get bogged down. There are two ways this sometimes happens:
  
  
• First, it takes many months to develop the employee survey instrument, and it consumes far too many internal resources in meetings, focus groups, etc. It shouldn't be that difficult. Determine the employee survey objectives, choose an item pool from a vendor that's on target, modify the items as appropriate, and get on with it.
• Second, the feedback process becomes unduly delayed because a top-down, cascading process is used (i.e., each level in the organization has to wait until the higher levels have processed and "digested" the data). A better approach is to give each manager at every level in the organization his/her employee survey report within 1-3 days of the survey close-out date. The managers then go through the feedback-action planning process, and report their planned actions upward.
• Ensure a high response rate. A very low response rate leads to managers discounting the results (e.g., "Only half of my employees responded, and their views probably don't represent how the total group sees things."). An even worse problem with a low response rate is that it may not be possible to generate meaningful employee survey reports for subgroups at lower levels in the organizational hierarchy. In addition to good communications in advance of the employee survey, other actions to improve the response rate include keeping the survey as short as possible, ensuring employees that their responses will be confidential, telling them the results will be shared with them, and sending reminder emails to non-respondents at established intervals.

A Final Comment

This series provides only a brief overview of some of the main points in making employee survey initiatives successful. There are many other points that could be made, and a good consultant with expertise in all phases of employee survey projects can help guide you through the process to maximize the value and avoid the many pitfalls companies often get trapped by. In addition to employee survey expertise and a solid technology for collecting survey responses and generating reports, the consultant should also provide a variety of templates, processes, training programs, etc. to make the employee survey process easy, fast and value added.

 

Tips on Making Employee Survey Initiatives Successful (Part 4 of 5)

 

Feedback-Action Planning Meetings

Earlier in this series of posts we described the feedback-action planning model as "valid data collected on employee perceptions being fed back to leaders in the business, and used to improve organizational effectiveness and morale/commitment." That's actually not the best description of the model when it's implemented in an optimal manner. Ideally, it's not just the "leaders" who receive and then act on the employee survey results, it's the whole team, with the leaders facilitating the process. This is an important distinction, and it represents another key tip on making employee survey initiatives successful: use the employee survey process itself, particularly feedback and action planning, as a way to get the employees engaged in improving things.

The most effective process works like this: (1) managers receive their reports, (2) they study the employee survey reports and identify key issues to share with the employees and get more detailed input, (3) they conduct feedback-action planning meetings with their employees, and (4) they involve the employees in making change happen in the unit. This approach is very powerful because it helps open communication channels and gets the whole work force involved in making the company better in terms of organizational effectiveness and quality of work life for employees.

In order for this approach to work well, however, the managers must have the skills necessary to perform the role described. The requisite skills development can be accomplished in several different ways, and it's not that difficult. Furthermore, the investment the company makes in training their managers to conduct constructive meetings, and to plan improvement actions based on quantitative employee survey data, will have significant payoffs as the managers apply these same skills in doing their "regular jobs."

In the final post in this series (next week), I'll offer up a few final suggestions that I believe will improve your next employee survey significantly - stay tuned!

Tips on Making Employee Survey Initiatives Successful (Part 3 of 5)

Employee Survey Feedback Reports

The employee survey reports are critical to successful survey initiatives because they summarize the employee survey results and provide the basis for identifying the best opportunities for implementing changes to improve organizational effectiveness and employee commitment/engagement. In a sense, they are the main "deliverables" from the vendor or internal personnel managing the survey project.

Here are a few tips related to the employee survey reports:

• Choose a employee survey vendor whose reports are easily interpreted by line managers. The primary statistic reported should be something they can easily understand and that has intuitive meaning (e.g., percent favorable or unfavorable). Employee survey reports should also clearly highlight the most significant results.
• Provide reports to line managers at all levels in the organization, down to first line mangers, if possible. As noted earlier, empowering managers with data to improve conditions in their units is a powerful way to reap the most benefit from the employee survey initiative.
• Ensure the survey reports provide clear answers to the questions line managers will have, such as:
  
  
  • What are the major strengths on which I can build?
  • What are the key opportunities for improvement?
  • How does my group compare with other groups in the organization?
  • What are the strengths/improvement opportunities in the subordinate groups below me?
  • What are the trends over time, and where are things getting better/worse?
  • What specific actions can I take to improve employee satisfaction and organizational effectiveness?

In regard to three of the preceding questions, note the following:

• First, internal normative comparisons are very helpful to managers in identifying strengths and improvement opportunities (much more so, in fact, than external normative comparisons).
• Second, how subordinate groups performed is only relevant when the person getting the employee survey report isn't a first-level manager, and trend results are relevant only when it's a repeat survey.
• Third, and most importantly, the ideal employee survey reports will not only provide information on strengths and areas needing improvement, but also practical suggestions on specific actions the managers can take to improve those areas most in need of improvement.

 

So how do you transition from insight to action?  Stay tuned for next week’s post as I outline a process for conducting feedback-action planning meetings.

Tips on Making Employee Survey Initiatives Successful (Part 2 of 5)

Steps in the Employee Survey Process

With the Feedback-Action Planning Model (covered in last week’s post) as our basis, let’s quickly dive into the process in more detail…

Here are a few tips for each of the eight basic steps in the employee survey process:

1.  Project planning. Employee survey projects often become bigger and more complex than is necessary, and they take longer than they should. We've seen few employee survey projects fail because they were too simple, but many fail because they became too complex. Keep things as simple and streamlined as possible. A sound project plan can help keep tasks within scope, and on schedule. Another thing that can help is to have one internal project manager for the employee survey, and not a committee. However, that project manager must still get input and buy-in from all the key stakeholder groups. The project plan should also specify which tasks will be performed by the consultant, if one is involved, versus internal resources.

2.  Employee survey development. Censeo’s white paper titled Developing an Effective Employee Survey provides a more in-depth discussion on this topic. The main points we'll reiterate here are to make sure the employee survey content is linked to what's important to the business, write items and the response scale that meet sound psychometric criteria, and keep the employee survey relatively short and focused.

3.  Prior communications. Communicate the employee survey objectives, and how the results will be used, well in advance of survey administration. Encourage the employees to participate, assure them that their responses will be anonymous, and state that the results will be shared with them (and, of course, you'll have to then do so!). It's more impactful if employee survey related communications come from a senior line executive than from HR; use multiple communications, not just a single memo or announcement. Good communications prior to the employee survey are the best way to increase the response rate.

If line managers will be expected to play a key role in using the employee survey results to make improvements (and that normally will be the case), then those expectations should be clearly communicated in advance. This will lay a good foundation for accountability later.

4.  Employee survey administration. These days, most companies are using technology in some fashion (e.g., Internet-based survey platforms) for reasons of speed, cost and ease of implementation, and they usually use a vendor for employee survey administration and report generation. Our main tip for this step is to select an employee survey vendor whose platform can fully meet your needs. If paper-based administration will also be required for some employees, make sure the vendor can efficiently and quickly process the off-line surveys, and create an integrated database at the end of the campaign.

5.  Report generation. Good survey reports are absolutely critical to a successful employee survey initiative. Because of the importance of this step, our tips are covered in a little more detail in next week's post. The only point we'll make here is that the survey reports should be generated within 1-3 days after the survey closeout date, not weeks or months. "Old data" don't have credibility, and the whole initiative loses momentum.

6.  Feedback and communications. Once the employee survey has been administered, and reports generated, feedback and communications often occur in two ways. First, a summary of the overall company results is shared with employees via the company newsletter or some other media. Second, and this is an enormously powerful method leading to change, line managers conduct feedback meetings with their employees. Tips for this step are also discussed in more detail in part 4.

7.  Action planning. Improvements in some survey areas are best addressed systemically on a company-wide basis (e.g., the need to improve medical claims processing). However, most areas surfaced by the employee survey are best addressed by line managers at various levels in the organization, hopefully with a high degree of employee involvement. There are many tips one could give line managers regarding this step (which are covered in training), but probably the most important is to focus on the 2-4 improvement opportunities that are most important, and not try to take on too many actions at the same time.

It's helpful to document action plans because it increases the likelihood that the actions will be taken, it makes it easier to monitor progress, and the plans can be shared with others (e.g., line managers with their bosses). The format for the documentation isn't particularly important, as long as it includes goals (areas to be addressed), tasks, responsibilities and target dates.

8.  Implementation. Action plans are of no benefit if they aren't implemented. Managers should be held accountable for making change happen based on the survey results, and be given the support and resources they need. A perennial problem in this phase of survey initiatives is that line managers don't have enough time for survey-related tasks because they're too busy meeting the demands of their "real jobs." The solution is to integrate the survey actions with their other responsibilities, and make them just as important as other areas where the managers are accountable.

We've already given you the most important tip, and here's the second most important, which is actually just another way of thinking about the first: strive to get every manager in your company to make at least two positive changes based on the survey results. Even if you're only 50% successful on this goal, the survey initiative will have profound and long lasting benefits to the organization. It really doesn't matter whether the actions are primarily aimed at organizational effectiveness issues or employee commitment/engagement issues — actions in either domain will have a significant bottom line impact.

 

OK – a lot of ground covered this week.  Next week we’ll shift our attention to the reporting of survey results.

Tips on Making Employee Survey Initiatives Successful (Part 1 of 5)

Employee surveys can be a powerful way of improving organizational effectiveness and increasing commitment and retention. However, employee survey initiatives are often not as successful as they might be. Over the next five blog posts, we'll explore ways to make employee surveys more successful in terms of an overall feedback-action planning model, and suggestions for each of the steps in a survey project.

Feedback-Action Planning Model

 

The model shown above has been associated with employee survey research for more than 50 years. It is based on the concept that valid data collected on employee perceptions can be fed back to leaders in the business, and used to improve organizational effectiveness and morale/commitment. This embodies the most important tip we can offer on making employee surveys successful: focus the entire initiative around making change happen in the organization - systemic change for broader issues, and actions taken by line managers in their work units. This may seem too obvious a point to emphasize, but often employee surveys don't result in much real change because companies don't follow through on the action planning and implementation phases.

Here are a few other key points about the model:

• Data should be collected on areas related to the employee survey's objectives - usually a combination of organizational effectiveness issues and employee commitment issues - and be tied in with the business' strategies.
• Line managers at all levels in the organization play an active role in identifying and implementing improvement actions. They must be given the resources and support they need (including skills training), and be held accountable. It should be a management-driven, not an HR-driven, process. Most importantly, the employee survey process should not be a consultant-driven process, although consultants can play a facilitation role, and efficiently collect and process the survey data.
• A high degree of employee involvement throughout the initiative will increase the likelihood of positive change occurring, and of the employee survey process itself having positive benefits. The mindset should be one of "we're all in this together and have a shared responsibility for success," versus the employees thinking, "we've told management our views, let's wait and see what they do about them.

In next week's post, we dig more specifically into the steps in conducting a quality employee survey process.

Leadership Assessment with 360-Degree Feedback: Ensuring a High-Quality Rater Group

This time of year, many of Censeo's clients turn their attention to leadership assessment via 360 degree feedback.  It's a great time to take stock of the past year, establish a new benchmark of leadership performance, and use assessment results to identify and prioritize goals for the coming year.

One important factor in conducting an effective and accurate 360 degree feedback process involves the selection of high-quality raters - raters who are well positioned to provide candid and objective feedback.  So how can organizations accomplish this?  If 360 participants are given full control to assign their own raters does the quality of the process suffer?

In this short video, Censeo's Director of Consulting, Dr. Michael Zia Mian addresses this issue, and offers a specific best practice of ensuring a high-quality 360 rater population.

The Value of Employee Assessment (Part 5 of 5)

So... this will wrap up my five-part series on the Value of Assessment.  I thought I'd leave you with a few summary thoughts. 

As the business environment becomes more competitive, people, not processes and technology, increasingly become the differentiators. As a result, it is more important than ever to implement the best possible assessment systems in order to select, retain and develop talented people.

The value of assessment in this kind of environment is that it gets the "right people on the bus" and the "wrong people off," thereby decreasing the costs associated with bad hires and increasing revenue potential as a result of talented employees. In addition, assessment plays a vital role in employee development as it streamlines the development process by targeting KSAs in need of development.

At the individual level, assessment systems increase the probability of job fit, provide a road map for development, and open the door for rewards and advancement.

Finally, HR needs to become more strategic in influencing the organization's decisions. Assessments can help in this regard because they quantify the value of HR programs and services. In order to demonstrate true value, HR needs to measure the impact of programs on the key metrics driving organizational success.

As always, I welcome your thoughts... let us know if you have any opinions or have a new perspective you can add to this topic!

The Value of Employee Assessment (Part 4 of 5)

If you’ve been tracking this series of posts, you know we’ve covered some historical perspective on the use of assessments, and spent a couple weeks digging deeper into the world of employee selection.  This week, we’ll shift our focus to a brief discussion of how assessment is being used to support ongoing employee development.

While people typically associate the term "assessment" with selection, organizations are increasingly using assessments for developmental purposes. Here are a few of the ways assessments are adding value:

• Ensure employees have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills during training. Organizations spend about $60 billion on training each year, and a modest investment in assessments can significantly leverage those resources. The data are also very helpful in fine-tuning training programs.
• Better target training resources. Rather than assuming that all employees need the same training, assessments can help identify the specific areas where training would be most beneficial on an individual basis.
• Promote continuous learning and development. Good assessment programs periodically measure employees' capabilities and provide specific feedback to help them further develop. Some assessments measure the degree to which knowledge and skills are actually being applied on the job, which, of course, is the real point of development.
• Empower managers. Managers are just as responsible for developing the talent pools in their organizations as they are for accomplishing operational goals. Unfortunately, while they get a lot of information pertaining to how they're doing on operational goals, they get no information on the knowledge and skills of their people. Good assessment programs can provide this valuable data.
• Improve organizational effectiveness. For example, a large financial institution Censeo works with administers a product knowledge test every six months to all of its employees who interact with customers. Follow-up research showed very high relationships between product knowledge and a variety of financial measures. This propelled the organization to an even greater commitment to employee development.

Increasing the Value of Assessments in Development

This graphic illustrates the strategies involved in increasing the value of assessments.

The main point relevant to this discussion is how assessments can be used strategically to build a performance-oriented organizational culture. Here are a few suggestions on how to accomplish that:

1. Understand the business drivers and strategies of the organization. Examine what the organization is trying to achieve and what metrics will be used.
2. Identify the activities to be performed and the KSAs employees need to carry out the strategies. Set performance targets and then measure proficiency
   on the critical KSAs using appropriate assessments.
3. Assess the gaps between actual performance and set targets, and then implement performance feedback sessions in which employees and their managers agree on the development activities necessary for building capabilities linked to the organization's strategies.
4. Once employees have gone through training and other developmental activities targeted to improve knowledge and performance, measure their acquired knowledge and skills to ensure learning took place.
5. Finally, after an appropriate interval, measure the effect of the assessment process and all of the developmental activities on the organization. Did the metrics important to the organization significantly improve? Were customers more satisfied? Were employees more content in their jobs? The process is a continuous loop, as all the data should be used to refine the business strategies, required KSAs, targets, etc.

From the employee's perspective, this performance-oriented system ensures that their development is focused on the things that matter — things that will help them do their jobs better and faster, possibly opening the door to greater rewards and faster advancement. The value of assessment to the organization is in the cost savings and productivity gains from a targeted development process. Giving employees exactly what they need in development when they need it will make the organization that much more effective.

The Value of Employee Assessment (Part 3 of 5)

Last week’s post made the point that including assessments in the selection process adds value. How much value depends on several actions you can take, and I’ll outline a few of these best practices in this week’s post.

1. Success profile. Build an accurate profile of the job by specifying the KSAs and personal attributes most important to success. Understand the goals of the organization and how they impact the jobs being staffed. For example, what skills are critical to the organization today, and how will that change over the next few years?

 

2. Selection tools. Based on the success profile, choose the selection tools that will provide the data needed to make sound hiring decisions. With respect to assessments, decide whether you should obtain good, valid tools from a vendor or develop your own. Aim for more assessments rather than fewer. Cost-benefit studies consistently show that even if a selection tool only marginally increases predictive validity, it will yield a very high ROI.

 

 

3. Selection process flow. Organize the tools in a logical way that will be effective, efficient and reduce costs. The graphic below illustrates the "selection funnel" approach to selection.

 

Assessments are typically very fast and relatively inexpensive. Tools that are fast and low cost are used early in the process to screen out less qualified candidates. The more time consuming and costly tools, such as interviews and assessment centers, are used later in the process.

 

4. Administration. Ensure that consistent practices are followed during the selection process, particularly with respect to how assessments are administered. Inconsistent administration can lead to lower utility and legal problems. Read and carefully follow the instructions in the manual.

 

5. Adverse impact. Examine whether or not the assessment adversely impacts protected groups. (Is the minority group selection ratio less than four-fifths of the majority group's selection ratio?) This is more often found in instruments measuring reasoning or cognitive ability. Use the instrument if it's a valid predictor of job performance, and a better, less adverse instrument cannot be found.

 

 

6. Follow-up validation. After some time on the job, collect performance-related data (as well as other indices like turnover and employee attitudes) and compare it with scores from the assessment. Use the results to make any necessary adjustments to the selection process.

 

With next week’s post, I’ll shift gears a bit and focus on the employee development side of things.

The US Supreme Court Ruling on Ricci v. DeStefano – An overview of the case and what the decision really means for test users (Part 2 of 2)

Last week I summarized the Ricci case - the issues and sequence in rulings all the way to the USSC decision. I also noted that the case points out the growing tension between making "race-conscious" decisions when there is adverse impact and making decisions which are "color blind" (ensuring equal protection).

It's clear that this case was really about ensuring "equal protection" and so the court's ruling was in alignment with what it was given to deliberate (unfair treatment of the firefighters who would have been selected had the results not been thrown out). That said, there were some major issues with the construction and validity of the exam, which led to the lower courts upholding the City's decision to throw out the results. What exactly were some of those issues and why did 5 of the Justices disregard that information? Let's deal with some of the issues first:

Issue 1: There seemed to be little expert advice/input on the relatedness of the exam to the job. Specifically, the exam (combination of a multiple choice test and an oral interview) left out some critical competencies required for success - e.g., "Command Presence."

Issue 2: The passing score was arbitrarily set at 70%. Having no rationale other than it's equivalent to getting a "C" has many negative repercussions, the most important being that it leaves the employer open to litigation when certain groups or individuals fail.

Issue 3: The exam's components were weighted (60% Written, 40% interview) solely based on the collective bargaining agreement and not on any rigorous methodology. Ideally the weights should reflect the relative importance of the KSAOs, measured in each component, to the jobs being performed.

Issue 4: The City used a strict rank ordering approach on the tests to identify the best candidates for promotion. In other words, the firefighter with the highest test score would be the first considered for an open position, second highest score would be considered for the next open position... and so on. According to the EEOC "Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures" you cannot infer incremental differences in job performance from small differences in test scores without research evidence. In this particular case it's especially problematic since the job-relatedness of the exam was in question. Given that the City collected no such evidence, this selection method was not justified.

So why did these issues not get weighed more heavily in the ruling of the 5 supporting Justices? Essentially, they point to the fact that there was not a "strong basis in evidence" to invalidate the results. The City only threw out the results when they saw the possibility of an adverse impact claim coming (which discriminates against those who performed well) and did not present a record of thorough due diligence on the exam prior to the results. Their attempts to undermine the validity of the exam all happened after the fact. Some evidence to support these assertions include:

• A formal validation study was never submitted to the City or the court
• A substantive challenge regarding the job-relatedness of the exam was never presented to any court for review

Some concluding thoughts about the case:

1. The City of New Haven put themselves in a "no win" situation - certifying the results, would have surely brought an adverse impact claim, which I believe would have been easily won, given the issues with the exam. We know the answer to the reverse scenario.
2. Had the results looked different (no adverse impact) the City may have certified them, however, given what we've learned about the issues with the exam it probably would not have been a very good predictor of job success.
3. Had the City followed a more rigorous process of due diligence with regards to the development of the exam the USSC might have ruled differently... along with the lower courts.  

Some implications for employers/test users:

1. The ruling upholds the use of tests for selection and promotion - it is not a ruling against test use.
2. Well constructed and valid tests will sometimes adversely impact protected groups. In these cases, users cannot just throw out the results.
3. A "strong basis in evidence" is necessary to demonstrate poor test validity and support the decision to throw out results when there is adverse impact.
4. Follow the principles for creating valid and legally defensible selection/promotion tests. Seek out experts to help you in designing these tests, as well as the systems in which they will be used.
5. Beforehand, research if equally valid assessments exist that might have lower adverse impact. For example, simulation type assessments (assessment centers, situational judgment tests) historically have lower incidence of adverse impact.

The Ricci v. DeStefano case will be discussed for many months and years to come. I welcome your comments and opinions on how you perceive the case and its potential impact on employee selection/promotion systems.

Note: An in-depth coverage of the exams issues in the Ricci case is covered in the amicus brief submitted by fellows from the Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/pdfs/07-08/08-328_RespondentAmCuIndus-OrgPsychologists.pdf)