Engagement Surveys = Junk Science

by paul hebert

Don’t blame me for that headline.  I’m picking it up from the interwebs. 

The American Society for Quality published an article called: “Understanding Employee Engagement and Trust; The New Math of Engagement Surveys” in which the author says that employee engagement surveys are “junk science” that destroy employee engagement.

The article is behind a paywall for the publication, but the summary states that employee engagement surveys are conducted with four corrupt practices:

• Using statistical significance to determine important findings and differences among departments,
• Using regression analysis in creating engagement ‘models’,
• Ranking of results (i.e.; best companies to work for), and
• Boiling complex concepts like employee engagement down to a single number or index.

The author further says that these are the same methods used in the 1994 best seller ‘The Bell Curve’ to ‘prove’ that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.  

It’s Not About the Survey

I’ve gone on record saying most engagement surveys are easy to manipulate and actually create the motivation for employees to provide less than truthful answers in order to drive more “perks” in their direction.  Surveys end up training employees to respond negatively so they get more bennies from the company (want doggie day-care – rate your engagement as a 1 and tell’m it’s cuz you can’t see your dog enough during the day.)

Engagement is critical to long-term success.  No one will argue that having an engaged workforce is better than not having an engaged workforce.  But surveys don’t create engagement.  Managers do. 

Managers who:

• Create emotional connections between themselves, the company and the employee. 
• Set high performance expectations – on the part of both the company and the employee.
• Hold themselves and their reports accountable for their successes and failures.
• Reward appropriate behaviors and punish inappropriate ones.
• Promote risk taking.

It’s About the Foundation

Managers (all the way up to the C-suite) are the key linchpins for whether you have engagement in your organization.  Do your managers know how important they are in the engagement mix?  Do you teach them how to create engagement?  Do they have the tools necessary for helping connect employees to your company brand?

Or do you rely on a survey that ultimately is just one consultant’s way of driving revenue?