Startups: Pulse Surveys are Dumb.
Founders: stop sending engagement/pulse surveys.
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Thereâs something Iâve been saying since SoapBox was first born: employee surveys are dumb. Theyâre really, frustratingly dumb. Theyâre not the solution to the employee engagement crisis. Theyâre part of the problem.
So stop filing them out â and if anyone gives you grief, send them this article.
Here are five reasons why employee engagement surveys need to go extinct.
1. On average, people who share harsh feedback quit before management acts on it âł
Youâve sent out an employee engagement survey before, right? Then you know the drill.
HR sends a survey to employees, who send their answers back to HR, who sends the responses to managers, who take action on the feedback⌠21 weeks later (or longer). By then, most of the feedback will be completely out-of-date â and any of the employees who had major issues with the way youâre running the company are already long gone â after all, it takes most employees 17 weeks to quit.
Feedback needs to be immediate and ongoing â without that urgency, employees canât see how their feedback leads to action, and so theyâll have no motivation to give the feedback in the first place.
2. HR is responsible for the feedback, but the problems are rarely HR issues âŹ
Even if youâre doing weekly pulse checks, youâre still running valuable feedback through a needless cycle of HR and senior leadership before it gets back to the person that should actually care about it: the manager.
Not only are you running a serious risk of broken telephone. Itâs also super inefficient and a waste of time for a number of people. Yes, itâs sometimes more awkward for the employee to deliver feedback directly to their manager, but that awkwardness is part of the vulnerability that makes the relationship strong.
Imagine youâre walking into a meeting with spinach in your teeth. Can you imagine how insane it would be if your employee stood up, walked out of the room and rushed to HR to let them know that you had food stuck between your teeth? Is that seriously less awkward?!
But most importantly, it sends a horrible cultural message: that feedback SHOULD come through HR â and managers arenât responsible for pulling feedback from their team. Really, surveys are a cover for bad managers who donât care to take the time to talk to their team.
Instead of doing surveys, you should be coaching your bad managers on asking the right questions and creating the right environment. Or for that matter, spending the time fixing the fact that youâve hired bad managers in the first place (after all, companies fail to choose the right manager for the job 82% of the time).
3. They train people to care about the averages, not the individual đ¤ˇââď¸
Engagement surveys lack context. In other words, itâs really easy to ask a great question â at the wrong time.
Letâs say you did a company-wide kickoff where you went over the strategy and goals for the year. And you have a pulse question about whether employees feel connected to the companyâs vision. If you send out that pulse question a day or two after the kickoff, youâre going to get a very different answer than if you asked in seven months.
Whether youâre doing regular pulsing or annual surveys, itâs really easy for employees to only get the really meaningful questions once a year â and so the insights youâre collecting arenât really going to improve their experience or performance.
And even if you do ask the right question at the right time, you still risk a lack of context. The question âHow accountable are your co-workers? 1â10â can mean so many things to so many people. Itâs relative to personality types, departmentsâŚlet alone each individual personâs approach to ranking.
Or, the fact that an average score of, say, 7.21 contains âfar greater a distortion than if it simply surveyed one person.â
Plus, 25% of people make up random answers. So the aggregate data is skewed anywayâŚ
On the other hand, if youâre asking a similar question to a direct report in a one-on-one meeting, you can get the additional context and can ask follow up questions to make it a much more meaningful discussion.
4. Theyâre annoying, 20-minute distractions from real work đ
Thereâs a reason why HR always worries that surveys are annoying the team. Itâs because surveys ARE annoying the team. No one likes surveys. And if you add in the time it takes to switch tasks, even the simplest survey takes an employee away from their work for upwards of 20 minutes. Itâs basic maker vs. manager stuff.
87% of people donât want the distraction. And the other 13% who welcome a distraction are the actively disengaged people. So⌠youâre annoying the people you want more of, and youâre providing an outlet for people you want less of.
Donât get me wrong: I think itâs super important to know what will make employees happy and satisfied at work. BUT, survey or no survey, 70% of the variance is proven to come directly from their manager. Doesnât it make more sense to double down on that 70% than to waste everyoneâs time addressing that other 30% with another survey that will hinder more than help.
Everyone hates filling out surveys. Everyone. Even HR. But we love sending them because they are a cheap way to have someone else do your work. Itâs their work. Let them do it.
5. Weâve been doing this for 40 years and the numbers have NEVER CHANGED đ
I can tell you right now: if you do an employee engagement survey, youâre going to learn that 30% of your employees are engaged, 18% are disengaged. Or youâll have an eNPS score of like 15.
If itâs not that, itâs because:
- Your company has less than 10 employees, and engagement is staggeringly high because the CEO is your manager (then youâd have 41% engaged employees).
- Everyone at the company has started in the past six months (then youâd have 52%).
- Your company is that rare unicorn where every manager is amazing (if you work at this company, never leave your job â and tell your boss you appreciate them).
- Your HR or management team has gamed the system by sending out the survey immediately after announcing that youâll be offering free lunches three times a week.
But really, at a certain size youâll have 30% engaged people.
And this number hasnât changed in 40 years.
Why? Itâs not because people are born engaged or disengaged. They can switch teams in the same company and go from engaged to disengaged.
OK, so then why? Because 70% of the variance is managers⌠and weâre still trying to FIX the problem by sending our surveys.
Letâs face it, it doesnât work.
And going from once-a-year surveys to weekly pulses wonât fix it.
Why havenât we fixed the problem? Because itâs not HRâs job to keep employees engaged. Itâs bad culture, bad awareness, and lazy thinking to put that task onto HR. Itâs the managerâs job to keep employees engaged. Itâs the CEOâs job. Itâs the CTOâs job. Everyone that manages someone else has a responsibility to help that person thrive and grow on an ongoing basis â and thatâs not something you can delegate out to HR, or anyone for that matter.
Stop with the employee engagement surveys đ. Take that budget, that energy, that time and put it toward empowering your managers to be amazing.
Because when managers are amazing, your employees will be, too.
Thanks for reading!
Brennan
p.s. If your startup has hired a few employees (or youâre a manager), you should really check out our product SoapBox now.
Brennan is the CEO & Co-founder of SoapBox â the managerâs sidekick app, bot, and platform. Build better agendas, have better one-on-ones, team meetings, AMAs, town-halls and more, with your team.
If you liked this article, you should give it 12 đâs (one for each pulse youâll skip out on this year) to help others find it!đ