Designing and Using Organizational Surveys

Allan H. Church, Janine Waclawski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351945073
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organizational surveys are widely recognized as a powerful tool for measuring and improving employee commitment. If poorly designed and administered, however, they can create disappointment and cynicism. There are many excellent books on sampling methodology and statistical analysis, but little has been written so far for those responsible for designing and implementing surveys in organizations. Now Allan H Church and Janine Waclawski have drawn on their extensive experience in this field to develop a seven-step model covering the entire process, from initiation to final evaluation. They explain in detail how to devise and administer different types of organizational surveys, leading the reader systematically through the various stages involved. Their text is supported throughout by examples, specimen documentation, work sheets and case studies from a variety of organizational settings. They pay particular attention to the political and human sensitivities concerned and show how to surmount the many potential barriers to a successful outcome. Designing and Using Organizational Surveys is a highly practical guide to one of the most effective methods available for organizational diagnosis and change.

STEP
1 Pooling resources

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

George Bernard Shaw

Two of the most important components of an effective organizational survey effort are involvement in and commitment to the process. Many senior managers (and some human resources and organization development personnel as well) would like to believe that conducting a survey is a relatively simple task and therefore should not require much effort beyond deciding what to ask people. However, the fact is that if a survey has not been (a) endorsed by organizational members early in its implementation and (b) integrated and linked into the existing framework of corporate initiatives and directives, it will fail to make a significant impact. This means that very early in the life of the survey effort, as with any large-scale organizational initiative, an appropriate level of support must be obtained from key players in the organizational hierarchy. Because these individuals need to be highly visible and strategically placed, they are typically either senior level managers or high-potential employees being groomed for future leadership positions. Often labelled as champions (Ulrich, 1997) of a given initiative, these proponents serve three necessary functions with respect to the survey process and can help establish the groundwork for building commitment and involvement. A survey champion provides:

• direction and leadership regarding the importance of the survey effort to the larger organizational system and its relationship to existing core business initiatives
• resources in terms of staff, time, and money to support the various phases and aspects of implementation (e.g., development, administration, analysis, integration, action planning and follow-up improvement interventions)
• validity, credibility and significance to the entire survey process for all organizational members.

The first stage in designing and implementing a world-class survey process —i.e., pooling intellectual and political resources — is centred on two subprocesses: (a) identifying the primary objectives and integrating framework of the survey effort and (b) building the alliances, support, commitment, and energy among people in the organization needed to support the successful attainment of these objectives. Once again, while it may seem like a simple and obvious idea that this type of large-scale intervention needs to be grounded in the broader strategic fabric of the organization and receive visible and vocal support from key players to be truly effective, it is none the less an idea that is often overlooked. Many organizations attempt to pursue a survey effort because of the vision of a small group of individuals in the organization development or human resources function (and even with the backing of the most senior human resources person in the organization) only to have the entire project put on hold by top management in anticipation of a more 'appropriate' time to conduct a survey. In other cases, the survey project may move forward but ends up being forced on the organization without the proper alignments and support and, therefore, is doomed to have little or no (or perhaps even negative) impact in the long ran.

A significant amount of groundwork with respect to relationship building and strategic integration is needed at the start of any such survey effort, regardless of whether the survey is intended to be used as a one-off diagnostic tool or an annual system for organization development and improvement. For the survey to be perceived by organizational members as an effective mechanism (and 'perceiving is believing' with respect to this type of initiative), it must be built into and around the existing organizational reality. Organizations are indeed social systems comprising many different interdependent components (Katz and Kahn, 1978); this means that in order to affect change in one area, other areas must be considered and/or changed as well. A survey conducted without concern for other variables in the organizational system is likely to produce only isolated and limited results.

The Burke-Litwin (B-L) model of organizational change and performance (Burke and Litwin, 1992) provides a good example of how such interdependencies operate (see Figure 1.1). Figure 1.1 shows that from a systemic perspective the higher-level factors of senior leadership, the overall culture and the mission and strategy of the entire company exert a driving force on the day-to-day behaviours of managers, the formal organizational structure and its operating systems (e.g., rewards, communication, selection, promotion, training, etc.). These factors, in turn, affect people's experience in their jobs with respect to the climate in their work group, levels of individual motivation, and the extent to which needs and values and task requirements are met. The reader is directed elsewhere (e.g., Burke, Coruzzi and Church, 1996; Burke and Litwin, 1992) for a more complete discussion of the B-L model for organizational diagnosis and intervention planning. No single facet of organizational existence exists alone. The interrelationships and interdependencies among people, systems and initiatives must be considered when planning a world-class survey process. With this in mind, the remainder of this section will explore how to set clear and strategic objectives for the survey, how to involve organizational members in the process and thereby generate support and commitment, and how to work through apathy and negative attitudes and prepare the organization for the survey rollout. In short, this step concentrates on how to ensure that the survey does indeed become a fully integrated initiative.

Figure 1.1 The Burke—Litwin model of organizational performance and change Source: Burke and Litwin (1992), p. 538.

Setting Clear Strategic Objectives

We know from the social and organizational change literature (e.g., Beckhard and Harris, 1987; Lewin, 1958) that an important early step in any change initiative is the identification of expected outcomes or the desired end-state of the process. This is the driving force behind the increasing popularity of future search (e.g., Weisbord, 1995) and whole system methodologies (e.g., Bunker and Alban, 1997), wherein large groups of people are brought together in real time to build commitment to a shared vision of the future and a means to obtain it. For any large-scale initiative including an organizational survey effort to be successful it must have a set of clear and measurable objectives that have immediate relevance and are linked strategically to the organization as a whole. Once these outcomes have been established, the means (and obstacles) by which to achieve them can be identified for those implementing the process.

It is like embarking on a journey. Before you start out you must choose a final destination. You can certainly just start travelling without an end-point in mind, but you will not know where you are going until you get there, and it may turn out that when you do finally arrive it is not a pleasant place to visit after all. Thus, having identified a desired destination for your trip, in order to find your way there you need a road-map, a guidebook, or at least a plan for how to obtain the necessary directions as you get closer. It can be very frustrating to know where you want to go but to have no idea of how to get there. There also needs to be a marker or a signpost at the other end that lets you know when you have reached your final destination.

Following this analogy, if we consider the survey as a means for getting where we are going, then we need first to establish the destination — i.e., the core statement of purpose of the survey — a simple yet pointed explanation of why the survey is going to be conducted.

At first glance this may seem like a very clear-cut and straightforward thing to do, however, as with many complex organizational issues, hidden agendas and political issues can become part of the process (see Figure 1.2). The impact of these fixed factors can be minimized or sometimes even used to enhance the total process if the goals and objectives of the survey are clearly and formally stated, and agreed upon by all constituents involved. This, of course, is why the question of 'who are the key constituents?' becomes important as well.

We have seen these political issues at work many times in organizations and in many different ways. One poignant instance occurred, for example, in an employee opinion survey effort conducted in a large financial services organization following a multiple post-acquisition situation. This organization had in the previous year acquired at least half a dozen smaller competitors in an attempt to consolidate its position in the marketplace as the local retailer of choice for its

Figure 1.2 Fixed factors influencing survey effectiveness

services. From the point of view of our client, the vice-president of human resources, the formal objectives of the survey itself were to (a) assess the general state of morale in the organization as a result of the recent changes, (b) examine the extent of differences inherent in those employees who had been acquired from various sources versus those who had been with the company prior to these actions, (c) use the results for follow-up organization improvement initiatives and (d) establish a baseline for future assessments. After several meetings with various internal constituent groups, including the second-in-command of the organization and the chair of the organization's diversity committee, it became apparent that the survey was intended to serve other purposes as well. For the second-in-command, who was championing the effort and serving as a figurehead in the organization, the survey would provide a means of communicating his new agenda and interest in employees in preparation for his impending move into the chief executive officer (CEO) position the following year. He intended to use the results to drive his changes, many of which had already been planned in advance, through the organization. The chair of the diversity committee, on the other hand, was interested in exploring trends in employee attit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Step 1 Pooling resources
• Step 2 Developing a world-class survey
• Step 3 Communicating objectives
• Step 4 Administering the survey
• Step 5 Interpreting results
• Step 6 Delivering the findings
• Step 7 Learning into action
• References
• Subject index
• Index of authors cited