Jim Dunn is EVP and chief people and culture officer for Advocate Health, a highly integrated national not-for-profit healthcare system.
getty
I asked my LinkedIn network the following: Who is still using annual surveys as a primary metric for employee happiness, and who uses something else? To my surprise, over half of the respondents said they’ve stuck with the traditional survey. But my organization has over 150,000 teammates, which limits the value of a traditional approach. If we followed the path of an annual survey, it could take months to receive the aggregated results, another month or so to stratify them and maybe another month to come up with an action plan for each functional area. By the time we collect and analyze, we’ve taken the pulse of a moment that is no longer happening.
The solution? Anniversary surveys have worked tremendously for us. Recently, I laid out arguments favoring broader implementation, which I'd like to share here.
Why Annual Surveys Aren’t Working
Ninety days is a long time to ask folks to endure stuff that’s broken. By the time you’ve translated employee feedback into action, it’s likely that:
• New problems have cropped up
• Employees have figured out their own solutions (which is not always a positive thing)
• Employees have become further entrenched in negativity
Not to mention the business disruption that occurs when you take on such a monstrous task. It’s a whole event. Annual surveys may work for organizations with fewer employees, but when you’re managing a city’s worth of team members, your efforts may be better redirected elsewhere.
Checking Vital Signs
A yearly physical gives you some idea of how your body is doing, but many of us have experienced firsthand how illness can go undetected or undiagnosed for months because the symptoms simply weren’t obvious enough. Regular monitoring of your vital signs could potentially give you more insight. This might be more possible in the life of an organization than in the life of a human being.
While employee engagement surveys are intended to measure aspects of the employee’s experience that are somewhat stable, like their willingness to give extra effort or their intent to stay with the organization, these reflections do vary from day to day. Studies in cognitive psychology dating back to the 1960s found that a person’s immediate experience not only impacts their perception today but also colors their memory of past events. This means an organization’s current environment has the power to influence how employees respond to questions that were intended to capture a longer-term view.
For instance, you may have an employee who has been generally happy with their pay, schedule, duties and leadership for the last five years. One of their teammates, who has many strengths that do not include verbal affirmation, got promoted three months ago and is now overseeing this individual. Minor issues or inconveniences that used to roll off the employee’s back now become thorns in their side because the person is constantly second-guessing whether they’re doing a good job. Without realizing it, the employee’s memory of the last five years becomes tainted.
Gossip among team members begins, and now, this leader’s communication deficits have yielded four disgruntled employees. Enter anniversary surveys. Dysfunction on this team has metastasized, and the annual survey would have been eight months away, but next week is one team member’s work anniversary. They provide honest feedback about their experience on the team (paving the way for candid comments is critical!) and HR is alerted to come in and provide support. They set up meetings with each member of the team to take a pulse on their experience and coach the new manager on how to give appropriate feedback.
Why the anniversary?
Anniversary surveys capitalize on the natural tendency to regard work anniversaries as opportunities for deep introspection, personal betterment and goal orientation, yielding a more consistent flow of employee feedback and, more importantly, a higher percentage of completed surveys, with increased depth of thought and insight. Research also suggests a “two-year itch” phenomenon—dissatisfied employees are likely to look elsewhere for employment at around the two-year mark.
That’s why we switched over, but here are a few ways to implement them effectively in your organization:
1. Keep the surveys short and focused: Limit the questions to six to 10. We use a simple, six-question survey that targets what we want to know so that leadership can have a pulse and adjust in real time. It’s simple: How are you doing? What would you recommend to your manager? Do you have all the resources you need to do your job?
2. Use a combination of closed- and open-ended questions: Given the sheer number of folks we are dealing with, we have stuck with the former. But it’s never a bad idea to provide an opportunity for employees to answer at greater length. Encourage candor.
3. Implement a concrete follow-up process: The best thing about anniversary surveys is that they let you address problems in real time. Every day, we get hundreds of these surveys back and each is an opportunity to drill down into hotspots where employees need assistance. They are like a culture map that can guide you to where help is needed.
4. Maintain consistency but plan to evolve: You can’t be casual about changing the questions because they provide a benchmark over the course of the year. But be attentive to any areas that you’d like to explore so that you can integrate relevant questions to address those concerns.
By seeking to enhance a better survey experience for employees, we managed to design an insight-gathering tool that has become far more valuable than we expected.
If you’re delivering employee satisfaction surveys on a rolling basis throughout the year, these surveys can feel less like an event to be endured and more like the fuel you need for continuous organizational improvement. The larger the organization, the more crucial this approach can be. I’ve seen it firsthand with the recent strategic combination of healthcare organizations I’ve been a part of. Implementing this approach across a larger geographic footprint can be a true test of their viability across audiences and teams. I’ll keep you posted.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
