Business is a game. This is a game with a lot on the line, including the wellbeing of your workers, as well as the economy. The game has two crucial parts, mental and tactical.
There is a tendency among you to focus solely on the tactical aspects, overlooking the mental aspect. Hence, you send your workers an engagement survey to find out how they're doing. As a result of your strategies and tactics, you believe the survey will provide you with insight into your organization. Some of you use surveys to develop strategies. Using someone else's opinion to determine your own! Wrong!
You can run your business however you want. But how much of what you're doing actually comes from you and not experts or mentors?
Listen to them, but you are the expert in your business. What they say is not the truth, it's their truth.
It is believed that your survey results indicate your workers are:
- Productive
- Committed
- Safer
- Interested
- Happy
- Innovative and implement improved processes, policies and performance
- Ensuring the business is compliant with industry standards
There are very few of you investigating the popular belief about engagement surveys and asking if they are reliable? I don't think so. It's not true, since you can't know if it's true, right now, for your business. Many people lie on engagement surveys, believing their answers are not anonymous and will have negative repercussions. Besides, surveys don't reflect reality. It's a moment in the past or a future imagined.
Engagement surveys are a snapshot of time and do not represent the worker's mindset. Because you believe it does, you create entire strategies to respond to the results that you or your delegates interpret. Thus, you respond to yourself or the delegate, not your workers.
This misperception takes away the very thing you seek, the opportunity to engage with an innovative and creative workforce, predictable profits and performance.
Let's replace engagement surveys with real connection and eliminate them once and for all.
Shall we?
Where do you start to replace your useless engagement surveys and understand the pulse of your organization?
Get out of your office, meet people, tell them what you do, and offer to help them. Make sure your leaders do it! Make it frequent.
You're welcome!
Want to talk about worker engagement? Let's see if there's a better way for your business.
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