Promptly after I posted the 9 Questions Every Company Should Ask Employees, @WeberJon tweeted me, asking how a company could interpret its results. Sort of like a Cosmo quiz…but instead of grading yourself on how well you please your mate, we’ll predict your employees’ satisfaction and future financial performance.
Ready? Let’s go.
To review, here’s the 9-Question Survey (and at the bottom of this post are all the reasons it matters).
Directions: Using the following scale, please rate your level of agreement with the following statements.
Scale: 1=Completely Agree, 2=Agree, 3=Neither Agree nor Disagree, 4=Disagree, or 5=Completely Disagree
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- Client satisfaction is a top priority in our company.
- People within our office always treat each other with respect.
- The quality of the professionals in our company is as high as can be expected.
- We have no room for those who put their own (selfish) personal agendas ahead of the interests of our clients or the company.
- Management gets the best work out of everybody on our team.
- The quality of supervision on client projects is uniformly high.
- Those who contribute the most to the overall success of the office are the most highly rewarded.
- Around here, you are required - not just encouraged - to learn and develop new skills.
- We invest a significant amount of time in things that will payoff in the future.
Extra Credit: I recommend at least one additional, optional question: respondents’ ages. That’s because the views of 30 year olds in your firm predict 57% of the variance between financially successful and non-successful companies.
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Grading Your Company’s Results (AKA what we’ve learned in 13 years of doing surveys and studying great workplaces)
A: If over 80% of your employees respond with 1s (Completely Agree) or 2s (Agree) with seven or more of these nine questions, you’re in really good shape. You probably have a unified team of engaged employees and a healthy and/or growing balance sheet. Your clients or customers are happy with your performance, because you’re focusing on the right things. Keep your standards high - for your services and your employees’ performance. Don’t slack off and let past performance cloud your commitment to sustained greatness.
B: If 70-79% of your employees respond with 1s or 2s to most questions, you’re solid, but not stellar. Look closely at the results from your under-30 year old employees; if their agreement levels are 60% or less, you need a course correction. Look at each question’s response average. Which questions caused the lowest scores, e.g. fours and fives? Those are trouble spots you want to address. Pronto. The good news is that you’re almost there; don’t let up on the gas. Keep your expectations of your managers and employees high, and reward outstanding performance with spot awards and company-wide recognition.
C: If 60-69% of your employees gave you 1s and 2s, you might be skating on the edge of danger. You may already be hemorrhaging talent, or being poisoned by bad managers. This is gut-check time, an opportunity to ask yourself, “Do I have the right people - especially leaders and managers - in place to take this company to the top?” If the answer is “No,” don’t feel bad. Dan Sullivan once told me, “The people who take you out of the desert may not be the same ones who take you to the promised land.” Your company, its service to clients, and its culture are all about people; make sure you have the right ones on your team. The wrong people stink up the whole company for everyone else. It’s never ok to keep a prima donna if she is making everyone else miserable.
D: If 50-59% of your employees gave you 1s and 2s, things are not looking good. This is like being down by 20 points with only two minutes left in the game. Morale is probably terrible, customers are hanging on by a thread, and your manager or CEO is hiding out - or worse, resembles Michael Scott. A drastic, course-correcting intervention is needed. I recommend addressing your survey results head on: gather the team, share all the results, and ask for their honest feedback. Listen carefully to what they’re saying. DO NOT ACT DEFENSIVELY. In 13 years, I’ve never seen employees give management the finger, when asked to help make the company better. Everyone wants to be part of something great, and employees will help you wage a comeback. So after you tune in, take action. Start small if you have to, but DO something with their ideas. They’ll love you for it, and want to help you even more.(For more ideas on how to mobilize your employees to take results, read the second part of this post, “One Firm Acts.”)
F: If fewer than half of your employees gave you 1s and 2s, you are in deep pile of agricultural waste. People have checked out emotionally from work. From a management perspective, it may look like the inmates have taken over the asylum. Employees at your company are probably just punching a clock, putting in their time. You may also have rapid customer turnover, and are not gaining traction in the market. Your whole ship feels like its sinking, and it’s just a matter of time before you’re in the bottom of the ocean. Pull up your big boy/big girl pants and follow the same advice as in “D” above: do something courageous now.
A few other thoughts:
- Most companies score really well in some questions, and worse in others. Celebrate your 1s and 2s, and closely examine your 4s and 5s. Sometimes, a company event - like a restructuring - can explain why people might not agree with a statement like, “Management gets the best work out of everyone on our team.” If those are one-time events, take them in stride, and re-survey your employees in 9-12 months.
- Remember, the smaller your organization is, the more your results can be skewed. My team won’t use a survey for companies smaller than 10 employees; we do in-depth interviews instead.
- Employee engagement is like the laundry - it’s never finished. Your first survey is baseline information that can help you get stronger. Each year, continue to measure, and note whether you’re making progress or back-sliding. Remember, “progress, not perfection.”
Every employee deserves a great workplace. And every company should mobilize its people for excellence. What is your company doing to be great?
