Employee Engagement/Organisational Culture Surveys

Has anyone else observed the phenomena of employee engagement/organisational culture surveys being conducted across organisations by Human Resource/Organisational Development/People areas and then the results being cascaded down through the hierarchy?


It’s a bit like drip feeding people information and is, well, disengaging.

Wouldn’t it be great if the results of these surveys were anonymised by your national statistical agency to provide confidence that individuals could not be identified and then the data made available to all staff and the public so they could ‘play’ with it and provide ideas to be considered and acted on.

Going down this path would, in itself, be great step towards building and engagement culture from the ground up.

As a former HR/Organisational development person myself I have to ask why so many practitioners in this area persist with an approach that is somewhat dated. Surely employee engagement starts with operating in a way that enables people to shape organisational culture themselves based on access to real and valid data?

Anyone know of any examples of HR/OD areas taking a ‘Gov 2.0 approach’ to employee engagement and organisational culture?

Steve D
originally posted on OZloop

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Craig Weiner

While not an HR specialist, the other challenge I see is that more questions should be asked as tradeoffs. Simple questions like is your job satisfaction the same better or worse when comparing 2008 to 2009. You can ask that same type of question over and over again – company performance, personal performance, pay raises, overall happiness, likelihood of leaving in next 6 months, etc. By doing so, you are really measuring the most critical thing for employee satisfaction, “is working here getting better or worse.” By throwing in a few specific questions (would depend on industry, organizational events, etc.) you could really start to dig into the ups and downs of employees, much like any financial ticker. Of course, if your employees are already just miserable and at the bottom of that ticker, hopefully you know that prior to the survey.