At work this week, we went over employee feedback survey results from a survey originally taken last fall. This is a survey used by many organizations and while some interesting information is presented, there are limits.
My primary problem is that the approximately 75 questions were all based on a 5-point scale. That is a chief complaint for me. I believe that everyone views numerical scales differently. I can usually think of how something could be better or worse so, as a result, I very rarely select the top or bottom selection (i.e., 5 or 1 in a 5-point scale). I realize that it artificially constrains my responses which is its own problem. On the other hand, I’m sure there are plenty of people that have no qualms using 5 or 1 and probably a few that overuse 5 or 1. Does that mean everything gets evened out? Probably (to a degree).
I’m happy that we decided at work to not only review the survey looking at the top and bottom results, but emphasized the thoughts and perspectives as to why items may be high or low. In my team, we spent two hours on it and had a really good talk. Now the challenge is to do what I can to change the things I can and to affect change on the things I can’t.
We did the Q10 thing at my last job to measure company performance, satisfaction, etc. My last company took a different stance after we did it for the first year. The problem is that most people put 2, 3 or 4. There were very few 5’s or 1’s. So they made it REAL clear that if things were going good the answer was 5. We’d joke about that and walk around asking people – “what’s the answer” and you would hold up 5 fingers. The skews the data in a completely different way of course! There didn’t like the fact that everything got evened out.