What would you think if I told you that 26% of your employees either blatantly lied on employee surveys or unintentionally misidentified themselves on demographic questions?
If you think like many of the managers we work with, you will immediately lose confidence in the survey process and the results, and that's normal.
The fact is that when employees are asked demographic questions (for example: department, manager, age or gender), 26% of them answer incorrectly. We never know exactly why employees give wrong answers, maybe they have doubts about the confidentiality of the survey, maybe such employees lie because they don't trust the intentions behind the survey and try to sabotage its validity. Whatever the reason for the errors, the statistics are always valid; we have tested and verified this with many of our clients to date and we continue to find the same error rate.
How do we know this? When we conduct employee surveys, we track the process by email address or other identifiers. We receive a file from human resources with demographic information such as staff, department, manager, etc. before the survey and match it with the data after the survey. In some surveys, we also ask for demographic information during the survey and compare the responses with the data provided from the employee file to find inconsistencies.
Inadequate Demographic Data Ruins the Action Planning Process.
Even if questions about engagement and satisfaction in cumulative employee survey results are accurate in their own clusters, these responses cannot be effectively disaggregated by department or manager based on employee responses to demographic questions. This is especially important when giving feedback to frontline managers and trying to plan for organization-wide action. There is nothing more embarrassing than presenting an operations manager with a report listing a total of 122 respondents for his department when there are only 97 employees in his department.
So what is the solution? Design a survey that encodes demographic data in the background... Instead of asking employees self-identifying questions (which can lead to people not taking the survey), use a system that allows you to track the responses. This is a practice we use and a strategy we recommend to all our clients. By making demographic data a pre-programmed part of the survey, your results will be as accurate as the company's HR records.
If you are in an environment of low trust, don't start tracking demographics right away, wait a year or two. During the first 2 years, report the data in full detail to senior management and share the results with employees. In subsequent years, create separate working groups for specific demographics of the management team to discuss what employees should do about the results of their group. As long as the data is collected in groups of 5 or more responses, anonymity and confidentiality will be maintained. Holistic employee survey results covering all demographic categories and departments should only be accessible to the senior management team and Human Resources. This will ensure that employees feel more comfortable responding.
When you are ready to start your employee survey this year, ask yourself how you want to track the responses. If you plan to use the demographic data collected from the survey, you better not plan to provide full reports to department managers.
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