I don’t believe in annual engagement surveys

I do, truly, believe in the greatest number of the most engaged people.

Annual surveys are percentages, dashboards, benchmarks. Just numbers. Which don’t tell you:

• why your employees think how they do
• what to do next

There’s three main problems:

• Lack of Voice:
  You canvas broad opinion from staff. But waste their energy answering YOUR questions. What would THEIR questions be? What’s most important? How would they innovate / improve?
• Reliance on Benchmarks:
  No external organisation is like yours, all are on a different journey. That benchmark is irrelevant AND perhaps grants permission to be average, not excellent. Who wants to be average?
• Measuring the wrong thing:
  You want greater productivity, more sales, better customer experience, longer employee tenure etc. Surveys measure elements of engagement (and don’t all agree). It’s Goodhart’s Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." You try to improve the measure, not what makes you a better organisation.

AND they may not feel a safe space, don’t get leadership commitment, aren’t shared back openly and take too damn long.

I believe in employee opinion. But with human interaction, and with a true voice for how their experience can be better and how your organisation can improve.

What do you think? What’s your experience?