Are External Norms in Employee Surveys Useful? (PART 2 of 2)

Last week I presented the case for and against external norms. This week I present my perspective on who wins the argument.

In my opinion, the value of external norms is a bit overrated, and sometimes results in companies achieving less, not more, positive change as a result of employee survey initiatives. Too often, companies don't ask the right questions, or use an inappropriate response scale, only because they want to make normative comparisons. Worst of all, norms can lead to complacency when managers and HR professionals fail to act on improvement opportunities because they conclude, "We're no more negative than the average."

However, external norms are not without some value. Censeo collects normative data on 100 key items when clients use some of those items, with either identical wording or essentially the same meaning, and the identical response scale (5-point agree-disagree scale). In those cases, there can be a one-to-one normative comparison on equivalent items, but the greater value is being able to help clients understand the relative relationships among the items (e.g., on average, how much lower are employees on opportunities for advancement than on satisfaction with the work itself?).

In fairness to the "For" side of the argument, I do point out that I have cast the whole discussion assuming that line managers at various levels in the organization are involved in the employee survey process - getting employee survey reports on their people, planning improvement actions, etc. When that kind of survey model is used, the external norms shouldn't even be shared with lower-level managers, because internal norm comparisons are much more useful, and it would be confusing to show both. However, if the purpose of the employee survey is only to take a temperature check of the total company, and not report results for lower organizational levels, then using external norms makes more sense. (Note that there can't be internal norms for the total company, but there can be for all groups below the total company.) However, I would strongly argue that trend comparisons, when they are available in repeat surveys, are far better than external norms.

If You're Going to Use External Norms...

Here are a few suggestions on using external norms in the most effective manner:

• Find the best norms you can, considering both accuracy and comparability, but don't get hung up trying to find the perfect norms. Other factors are much more important.
• If you can, and this is very difficult, find norms that are classified by employment status (exempt, nonexempt, hourly) and manager versus non-manager, in addition to industry, company size, etc.
• In addition to getting information on how employees in other companies responded on average, ask the survey vendor for data on how the best companies are doing.
• Focus on those survey areas where external comparisons will be most interesting. Issues related to pay, benefits and career opportunities are good examples.
• Report the norm comparisons only for the total company, and perhaps for major divisions, not for lower-level organizational units.

I offer two final comments on the subject of using external norms in employee surveys. First, the whole issue has become somewhat self-perpetuating, and for the wrong reasons. Employee survey process owners look for vendors who have norms because they think senior managers will ask the "but how do we compare?" question. Employee survey vendors build large normative databases, even though they may agree they're actually of limited value relative to other comparisons one could make. And then they tout the value of their norms, which further convinces clients that they need them. Second, in spite of the self-perpetuating point, the interest in external norms is decreasing each year. The reason is that companies are realizing they are less important than many other employee survey-related issues.