Board members and staff surveys: Yes, get them AND be careful!

The staff survey is a long-standing, valuable way to get feedback about the organization for all involved, top to bottom. Board members should absolutely pay close attention to them, but they should also be very careful with them. They can be misleading.

by Kevin Smith, TEAM Resources

Board members are you getting the full value that the CU can get from the staff survey? Are you getting the results and do you know what’s being done as a result of the information? The value of staff surveys can be tremendous, for all involved. If you’re not using them, you’re missing out. But simply running a survey every year and “using” a survey to its full effectiveness are two very different things. Often, in the TEAM Resources experience, the board is not seeing the full value of this resource; they could be getting significantly more out of them. Boards must make sure they know what they’re looking at and how to understand the context of the survey so that they interpret the results correctly. It’s trickier than it sounds.

Value to Staff

  • Being heard
  • Being part of transparent two-way communication
  • Building a trusting environment

Staff members may or may not appreciate the survey. It depends. If there’s an annual survey but then no one ever hears about the results, then much of the value is gone. The board and management may be getting some great insights, but that’s one-sided value. There’s much more value if everyone hears about what the results are and, most importantly what action is happening as a result of information in the survey. (No this is not a knee jerk reaction to say that if the staff complains about stuff in the survey they automatically get what they want.) It does mean that, at an absolute bare minimum, the staff needs to know by clear communication and acknowledgement, that they have been heard by the board and senior management. And when the staff sees something, any kind of action, that comes as a result of the survey, it signals that the leadership is paying attention to some details. (You’d be surprised at how often this doesn’t happen.)

 

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