To Improve Employee Survey Credibility and Impact, Focus on Near-Term Points of Pain

November’s Harvard Business Review (HBR) and Quality Progress (QP) both presented articles on enhancing the impact of employee feedback. The HBR article addresses general employee surveys with a focus on Microsoft. QP focuses on employees in the Quality profession enhancing the Culture of Quality within their 1200 companies. [1]

However, both articles failed to deliver on one aspect that assures rapid, measurable impact while showing the staff their time was not wasted. Quick impact almost always comes from fixing granular points of pain (POP) rather than strategic issues. Thus, every employee survey MUST identify some granular POP as short-term targets for action.

In both articles, the authors stressed three actions that, while useful, undermined rapid issue fixes, and, therefore survey credibility.

1. Gather detailed data on all dimensions. The HBR’s first section is to “make sense of all that data.” The proliferation of data collection techniques does not necessarily make you smarter, adds costs (and profits for survey companies) and muddles the message. The QP article also focuses on broad dimensions such as “tools and resources,” “data driven,” and “upward voice.” Such broad dimensions usually produce responses of “it could be better.” Too much analysis is required, and broad dimensions are too general to be actionable. “Systems” is too broad, as are “tools,” “communication,” or even “upward voice.” Which specific system defect leads to the most employee and customer frustration and which type or topic of communication, both channel and topic, is most maddening?
2. Do not bury bad news. Good idea but don’t just highlight a dimension, such as communication — quantify it! How many employees are frustrated and how much time does it waste each time it occurs? Also, importantly, how many external customers are impacted? General bad news diffuses accountability and defies rapid action. On the other hand, pinpointing granular issues allows identification of the number of occurrences, the time wasted on each occurrence, and whether external customers are impacted.
3. Assure employees feel heard and provide meaningful follow-up. Follow-up is not the same as taking decisive action. In employee surveys, issues usually address empowerment; internal service and communication; systems; or policies/incentives. Burris states that all employees must feel heard and places responsibility on managers to communicate this fact to the front line. While managers saying, “I hear you” is good, action is much better. Having “been heard” on one survey leads to greater engagement in the next wave of employee surveys. Burris notes a 24% increase in one company, and I’ve seen a doubling of response rates at a technology company. Specifying actions taken based on the previous survey in the invitation results in higher participation in the next for both employee and customer surveys.

Designing the Employee Survey to Enhance Short-Term Actionability

An alternative or supplemental approach to the general dimension survey that assures impact is to disaggregate the broad issues into a list of 20-30 POP with the ability to specify the type of transaction — such as empowerment on invoice adjustments, communication of lead times, response to emails, a specific system tweak, or need for a rationale for a policy. Also, always provide an “other- describe,” category. This list of granular POP is not comprehensive, but if articulated by several employees they are most likely also of concern to scores or hundreds of others.

The list is also more successful if it focuses on key employee POP in doing their jobs successfully — a key driver of fulfillment. One universal POP is failure to get timely responses on customer quote requests. This is a POP in most companies but is specific enough to allow the promulgation of a response time standard for marketing and sales. Surprisingly, we’ve seen that less than half of companies have internal service response time standards for key types of communication or information needs. Such a policy can be at least pilot-tested in one area in less than a month.

Ask employees how often the issue arises, the specific topic, e.g. failure to get a response to emails or phone calls about late charges or customer price quotes. Ask what the cost is when the issue occurs, e.g. time wasted chasing down the information or lost sales. One electronics company found that if a customer could not get a quote within 48 hours, they would move on to the next vendor, leading to over a million dollars a month in lost sales while wasting 10-30 minutes of labor per occurrence chasing down the information. This finding led to creating standards for replying to emails about quotes, which reduced frustration and increased sales.

Fixing specific POP is an easy win-win-win for the employee, company, and customer. Granular POP allows:

• The issue to be fixed or mitigated via a tactical policy/empowerment change or even a systems tweak taking a few hours of a developer’s time. The impact of the change can be measured via process measures and the number of occurrences (e.g. calls, escalations, or chargebacks), often already available in operational reporting systems.
• Action to be tied to employee success when POP are eliminated can be translated into incremental enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty and positive WOM. POP are events that occurred and can be counted. Elimination of the can, in turn, be translated into enhanced customer impacts. Empowerment translates into fewer employee and customer escalations which are both costly and damaging.
• Focus on time wasted per occurrence of POP, e.g. time for getting supervisor approval, information search, calling other departments three times, or handling a disappointed customer.

Possible objections to tactical, granular POP list

• Strategic issues are more important and have a greater impact in the long term. This is true but the short- and intermediate-term is key to maintaining momentum before other issues lead to the input being overtaken by events (OTE).
• Not all employees will see impact of fixing just two issues. Again, true but everyone will know that some frustrating issues have been fixed, creating universal hope. Word of mouth among the staff is powerful.
• The list of POP will not be comprehensive. Building on the preceding point, some action is better than no action and creates a precedent to fix the next system or empowerment issue.
• Focusing on two POP will distract from more strategic issues. Management can focus on two sets of issues at once, the Bankers Financial IT example is on point. Developer resources were diverted for a finite period (less than a week) to address a set of tactical issues.

Six Mini-Case studies

At Bankers Financial, the former CIO solicited employee input on what small system tweaks would make employees’ lives easier. He then reallocated developer time for a week to fix several dozen items. Employees were ecstatic and customers also saw significant improvements. 

Likewise, the logistics company mentioned above reengineered the invoice adjustment process in a few weeks, using process metrics like repeat calls and escalations to measure impact. Improvement was obvious within weeks and the CEO sent an open letter to both employees and customers saying they had been heard and the invoice issue as well as several others had been fixed. The response from employees as well as the market was enthusiastic.

The credit union mentioned above went on to empower the front line in several other areas while closely monitoring losses, complaints, and efficiency. It then attacked consumer incompetence in applying for mortgages by motivating them to watch a four-minute video on responsibilities and pitfalls in first-time home buying, giving them a quarter-point rate reduction if the video was watched.

An auto company required central consumer advocates to gain permission from field district managers before authorizing out-of-warranty repairs. When well-trained CSRs were empowered, the field found they would have made the same decision 90% of the time, cutting two days delay and many irate customer calls.

An electronics parts manufacturer created an eight-business-hour standard for quote requests after learning that 48-hour delays led to the loss of almost all opportunities because the buyer moved on to the next vendor. The change delighted service and inside sales staff and recouped over $1 million in sales per month.

Employees in three companies, steel making, technology, and a CPG company all faced the same employee frustration of stale data in critical databases, whether products schedule, complete documentation to allow technical support, or data on allergens in food products. The mandating of timely updates by operational and supply chain functions led to enhanced data quality and much happier employees. In each case, customer success in self-service also rose significantly.

Getting started

Step 1: Conduct four focus groups of employees, front line internal service, e.g. HR and IT, front-line external serviced, support, consumer affairs and sales support, operational employees, and managers. Ask about their frustrations in delivering great service to their customers. Be sure to include some disruptive employees as well as top performers. Lead the witness a bit by asking about empowerment, communication, timewasters, systems glitches, and training gaps. Ask for specific examples to identify the type of transaction needing attention.

Step 2: Obtain a commitment from management to act on two or three tactical issues even if they are not the most important – the key is rapid, successful, measurable mitigation or elimination of the frustration.

Step 3: Design a survey that includes the strategic dimensions but also a second list of POP as well as opportunity to note other tactical issues. Ask about frequency, time wasted, and impact on external customers. Also, get a rating from each respondent as to whether they would recommend the company as a great place to work. Promise survey respondents they’ll get findings and actions within 90 days. Once this is in writing, you can use it to force management to take action. While management grumbles, we’ve never had anyone fail to agree to the public promise or fail to take action after the fact.

Step 4: Identify two to five viable candidates for action in 30-60 days. Allow management to decide which to act upon but ensure that at least 2 receive strong support and action. Identify process metrics that allow tracking the POP frequency and impact.

Step 5: Take action on three issues, one internal service, one external service, and one general operational and or communication/systems oriented. Measure aggressively in every way possible.

Step 6: Communicate results and actions withing 60 days if possible. Communicate to customers as well – most employee POP also overlap customer POP so you get a two-fer (see my article on this topic).

Summary

You don’t need to fix strategic issues. Fix one granular, operational process and report the metrics and you’ll earn support for the survey for the next two years.

Notes

[1] Ethan Burris et. All, “Turn employee feedback into action.” Harvard Business Review, Nov 2024 and Jenny Chu and Max Hansen, “An Uprising,” Quality Progress, November 2024.