Don’t disengage employees with a survey

Measurement expert Theresa Welbourne recommends quicker, shorter, more frequent surveys to measure employee engagement

As a researcher and professor who spent many years in academic settings, I was trained to do surveys. I did very long surveys because the more data you get, the more papers you can write.

However, the more questions you ask in employee surveys, the more you irritate employees, managers and leaders. Annual employee surveys, whether you call them an engagement survey or not, simply do not engage. In fact, I would argue that they do a great job of disengaging your work force.

Take a moment to complete this engagement/disengagement profile:

How many days was the survey open?

How many days after the survey did it take for you to see the results?

How many questions were on your survey?

How many days did it take for you to give a summary of the survey to your senior leadership team?

How many days did it take to get results to the managers who have responsibility for doing something with the data?

How many days did it take to get results to employees?

How long did it take for the first action to occur in response to the data? (If you do not know the answer to this question, put 500 in the column.)

If your score is between: