Human Resources and the Surveys they Purvey!

 

Employee-Engagement Surveys

T

he first quarter of every financial year is when the Human Resources community is abuzz with excitement and angst.

They are busy either administering the ‘how-did-we-do-this-year’ survey to employees or agonizing over how to develop a picture that the management would be pleased to see from the results of a  survey that was sent out earlier.

 A poor approval rating gives cause for tremors in the upper echelons of Management and triggers calls for introspection and penance. Then starts the quest for people from the lower levels of the pecking order who are asked to develop ‘action plans' to address ‘areas of improvement’ - a euphemism for negative feedback.

Now, these surveys are majorly managed by expensive third-party consultants whom the companies hire. I suspect that the main criterion for HR to choose a consulting company is its name; the more exotic the better. Savor these – Murray, Murray, and Kilmann, Adrian Cox Consultants Inc., Ferroit Associates (pronounced Fewwoaah, thank you). 

Anyway, the survey administered by these outfits is supposedly curated by the best psychologists in the business and other experts in the dynamics of human behaviour. The questions are ‘customized’ to cater to the ‘unique ethos’ of the client organization and are ‘calibrated to normalize’ variations that can occur due to the time of the day that the respondents might choose to take the survey, their state of mind at the time, etc.

What is interesting is that a company that has its global headquarters in say Denmark hires a consultant from that country and asks them to administer their survey to the company’s subsidiaries worldwide. The survey asks the employees in India, for instance, if they “feel inspired by the vision and direction of the senior leadership” (whose members work out of Denmark).  Or if they feel that their immediate manager” invests his or her personal time in helping you take forward your goals and aspirations?” I have not made these up. These are real questions that appear in a survey of a giant MNC. I wonder sometimes if the respondents – who may not be native English speakers – even understand many of the questions!

The poll results are then sliced and diced and put in all manner of charts to create an executive summary, a ‘hard copy’ of which is printed out on perfumed stationery and ceremoniously presented to the top dog of the HR organization who, with his creative team, starts to work on how to give the feedback a positive spin before it goes to the corner office suite!

It is hardly a secret that precious little happens after all this buzz! There is invariably a solemn ‘all hands’ meeting that the head honcho addresses where he thanks all those that participated in the survey and reveals how close to his heart this survey is because he gets to ‘feel the pulse' of the team on a regular basis. He ends his speech by exhorting ‘everyone’ to act on the ‘areas of improvement’ blithely transferring the onus of making improvement to those that gave him feedback!  The survey results are archived thereafter, and the HR Manager heads off to the nearest pub for a well-earned drink. And for the rest of the ‘everyone’, it is business as usual until the next survey!

Having seen this annual ritual for several years, I’ve often wondered if such surveys are worth the resources the companies expend on them. While the intent of this exercise cannot be faulted, what is curious is that the management expects to get - rather unreasonably, I think - a near-total approval of the employees on how the company is being run.

Notwithstanding the technology, the art, and the science that these consultants claim goes into preparing their survey questionnaire, the employee approval rating stays more or less the same every year - between 60 and 70%; unfathomably however, the management seems to be ‘disappointed’  every year!

Regardless of a company’s size and geographical footprint, I believe the goal of the leadership team should be to devise a robust communication channel with the employees so that they are aware of the employees’ general mood at all times. This could be in any form: suggestion /grievance boxes placed at easily-accessible areas within the company or a digital platform if all employees have access to computers, and so on. The inputs so received have to be given an honest evaluation and response personally by members of the senior leadership team as expeditiously as possible. The employees then come to believe that their opinions matter to the powers that be. I believe it is HR’s job to make sure this system works well.

It is also important that the management creates mechanisms where the employee is enabled to see the impact of his/her output on the fortunes of the company. When employees, regardless of their position in the hierarchy, are made participants in a company’s performance, they become invested in its success in spite of themselves.

To be fair, several of the more progressive manufacturing companies have been making efforts to communicate with their employees. One such company has put up large electronic signboards on the shop floor that display the day’s output against the mutually agreed target. I have witnessed spontaneous applause by the workmen when the day’s or month’s target is met. Most companies do have committees comprising members from different levels of the hierarchy that sit together and decide on things like the menu of the office cafeteria, employee transportation, cultural events, celebrations, and so on.

I believe, however, that the success of such initiatives depends largely on the honesty of intent of the management team. For instance, I’ve seen suggestion boxes in many companies that have remained unopened for years! Many times the management is more interested in getting to know who made a particular suggestion or complaint rather than focusing on its merits!

Does the HR organization in a company have a role to play in positively influencing the morale of the employees? I read several years ago that an enterprise is akin to a family with the management being the ‘father’, the HR organization being the ‘mother’, and the employees the ‘children.’  A pretty evocative description indeed! The mother in any family does the balancing act between the tough love of the father and the evolving needs of the children, making sure there is peace and harmony at home. So should be the role of HR in a company!

Sadly, this is far from reality in most organizations. HR has now more or less abdicated its role of being a trustworthy friend with whom the employees can share their concerns without fear of being judged or punished. Nowadays, across industry segments, this function is generally viewed with mistrust, even suspicion, since they are seen to be like bouncers in a bar – doing the dirty work that the management is unwilling to do themselves.

It is a no-brainer therefore that companies should encourage their HR teams to reinvent themselves and get back to being what I imagine they were conceived to be: a powerful friend of the employee, the eyes and ears of the Management, and a force that works to promote a healthy relationship among all that have a stake in the company’s growth and success.

In conclusion, so long as a company regards its employees as more than just paid workers, sets up mechanisms to actively and effectively address their suggestions/ grievances in a fair and expeditious manner, and creates an ecosystem in which the employee participation in the company’s growth story is welcomed with warmth and enthusiasm, I believe its leadership does not have to lose sleep agonizing over what the results of these engagement surveys might be even if they feel the need to deploy them from time to time.

                                                      

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