A new report on employee engagement surveys confirms what you probably already knew: that most companies only use one or two open-ended questions on their all-important employee engagement surveys.
But what might surprise you, however, is the fact that more than three-quarters of companies report they’re unable to actually use these open-ended questions to improve employees’ engagement.
There’s a very good reason for this.
Most open-ended survey questions are worded something like: “Please share any suggestions that you feel would improve employee satisfaction at ABC.”
This question might sound innocuous enough, but unless your employees are used to offering highly-specific and actionable suggestions, there’s going to be quite a bit of fluff in their responses.
Of course, that’s one reason why companies opt for that innocuous and positive framing in the first place. This way they’re far less likely to be confronted with the terrible and unjustifiable frustrations and demotivators they regularly foist upon their employees.
But that just means it’s a wasted opportunity.
Imagine you asked a more probing open-ended question like: “What’s one frustration you have at work that you believe your manager has the authority to fix immediately?”
This is a question that Leadership IQ regularly uses in surveys and research, including in the study Frustrations At Work.
It sometimes feels a little painful to read about these real-life frustrations, but the answers tend to be incredibly specific and actionable.
Here are some actual answers from real-life employees:
If you’re a manager or member of the executive team, it’s likely to take a few minutes (or an hour), before you can process those responses without anger or defensiveness.
We find it often takes a solid hour of training before managers and executives can respond appropriately to those comments.
But painful though they may be to read, they contain a wealth of insight as to how to actually dramatically improve employees’ engagement.
In the typical open-ended survey responses to questions like: “Please share any suggestions that you feel would improve employee satisfaction at ABC,” you’ll see comments like:
Those are certainly valid complaints, but you’ll notice how the responses are far more vague and generic than asking about “one frustration you have at work that you believe your manager has the authority to fix immediately.”
The lesson from all of this – I believe – is that you need to write more specific questions, and then be prepared to actually train your managers and executives about how to respond to really specific answers.
If you simply give managers pages of open-ended responses, there’s a very good chance their natural reaction will be to determine the author of each comment, and that will destroy your culture.
But if you’re willing to teach leaders how to take feedback appropriately and without defensiveness, there’s a mountain of data waiting to be revealed and used to dramatically improve employee engagement.
