Hello, I am about to conduct our first employee survey as part of our performance management review.

8 Comments

1. AnonymousJune 6,2023 at 12:33PM UTC

   I would definitely make it anonymous. But give them a way to make their identity known if they want to discuss something but they need to trust that it will be anonymous.

2. Jeannette SeiblyJune 6,2023 at 4:09PM UTC

   If there is low morale, I would have conversations 1:1 with people to find out why. Many times, the low morale is due to bad bosses or bad work rules (time to upgrade). Focus on fixing these. Then, when you do conduct an employee survey, they will more likely to participate and feel comfortable offering their true thoughts and opinions.

3. AnonymousJune 6,2023 at 6:39PM UTC

   A survey isn't truly anonymous unless there is an unbiased and unrelated 3rd party reviewing the results and summarizing them for you. Otherwise, in a suspicious environment, nobody will want to say anything that could tip you off who's doing the reporting.

4. Patricia CrookJune 7,2023 at 1:26PM UTC

   Yes. You will not get honest answers if there are identifiers like email and time stamps. Hire an Executive coach or Organizational Leadership coach who can run a 3rd party survey or focus group with no retribution.

5. AnonymousJune 7,2023 at 9:34PM UTC

   I think you mean morale, but the moral of the story is this. They generally won't do it unless it is mandatory. As for how to message it, I would have a 1-1 with each of your direct reports. Let them know that you want real feedback as long as it's constructive not destructive and you will support them through anything that is difficult to say and if they need help to write it you are open to doing that. If you truly can make it anonymous do, but it will be harder to remediate if you do it that way and there will still be cynics who believe it is not anonymous.

6. Joan Williams, Senior Talent Acquisition SpecialistJune 8,2023 at 3:00AM UTC

   Not sure if you're the person who posted above so here's my two cents.

   For surveys, I strongly recommend an outside company and even then be prepared for employees to be afraid the survey could be tracked to who said what and they won't tell the truth.

7. AnonymousJune 8,2023 at 7:37PM UTC

   I would make it anonymous - and make sure it really is that way. I like the suggestion below about using an outside firm. But in reality employees do not trust surveys and remaining anonymous.

   If morale is as low as you think - the results/responses may be few.

   If you are located or surveying employees in Europe and even in some states - there are strict privacy laws relating to surveys/data gathered. Personal identifiable information is off limits in many cases and can result in a lawsuit.

8. AnonymousJune 16,2023 at 3:07PM UTC

   My company has done employee surveys a couple ways. They will send out periodic emails that link to a third party survey site to keep the answers anonymous, which does of course make them feel like they can be more honest about it.
   But we've also changed from doing the typical annual review to what they first called a "stay interview" but now just call it a 1:1 interview. Basically, you sit down with your manager and they go through a bunch of questions that are more like a review of the company, not the employee. There are questions like "What do you look forward to most when you start your day?", "When was the last time you thought about leaving the company and why?", and "Do you feel like you have opportunities to learn and grow?". All of these tend to have supplemental questions to prompt thinking and help the manager with helpful follow-up questions to engage the employee more.
   Now, not all employees have a good relationship with their manager, and not all managers make the effort to build good relationships with their employees so that they feel they can speak more honestly. I lucked out and have a manager that fully understand the frustrations I and a lot of the other people at our site have, and commented that he had pretty accurately guessed what most of our guys' answers were going to be. This last year, I've been dealt some pretty crappy hands by our HR department, and had a lot of negative feedback. Because of the rapport my manager has built with me (I'm his admin for a production facility so we have a different kind of interaction relationship than he has with most of the other guys here), I felt I could be *mostly* honest with him about all of it. He is well aware of my frustrations so he pretty accurately guess what my answers were going to be, and even laughed when I answered that second question above with a very quick "last week" because he was unsurprised by it. I aired a lot of my grievances with him and we were able to craft an honest response to put down on the survey.
   Honestly, for your situation, I'd probably start with an anonymous survey, and then after implementing changes to improve things based on the biggest/most commonly noted problems, do a follow up survey 3-6 months later to gauge how well those changes are effective at improving moral.
   And personally, I'd also recommend having your managers sit down with their employees with a structured survey (and strict instructions to be open-minded) so they can get direct feedback that could improve their particular department and hopefully work on building good relationships with their employees.