Yes! Nothing more relatable than the source of dissatisfaction asking for solutions after employees take the "anonymous" employee engagement survey. I absolutely do not miss this!
Original "anonymous" survey results: only 12% of the company responded.
So, managers in my department walked around from desk to desk to the people that hadn't responded, and ordered them to fill in the survey. So they did. Management then proudly emailed that 85% of our department had "voluntarily" answered the survey.
HR was suitably impressed. That was, until they started asking the staff in person, and found that (a) they had been directly ordered to fill in the supposedly voluntary survey, and (b) the fact that managers knew who had and who had not filled in the survey meant that it wasn't anonymous, so no one was sticking their neck out.
HR was horrified, and asked IT to look into how confidential, anonymous survey results had been exposed. HR said "Oh, management just asks us for the results, and we forward them to them. They've always done that".
HR asked some of us in engineering for alternatives. We recommended SurveyMonkey, and other similar public sites. The next survey was done that way. Over 90% of the people did the survey, quite an improvement over 12%. Most did it from home, not their company PC. And more than 50% of the responses listed the biggest obstacle and impediment in their job to be... their immediate superior.
They all know he’s telling them to improve their surveys by next month. At which point he will take credit for increasing employee morale. He told them what they need to do to fix the issue. He knew what needs doing and only him. There’s now more managers than there are ICs in the world.
Once I heard the head honcho tell the plebs ... I mean, the employees, that if they really dislike the company so much, they should leave.
I sh*t you not. I heard that with my own two ears, from a company wide broadcast. I had to check the recording and replay the segment several times to make sure that I wasn't misunderstanding or misrepresenting or just plain had sh*t in my ears.
He proceeded to proffer that when all the people who disliked they company have left, only people who like they company will have stayed and thus the employee satisfaction feedback shall be positive. Can't beat the mathematics on that one.
I'm not confident that the plan panned out, though, but a few dozen people did quit during the past 12 months. So that's two dozen negative Nancies less. They are still, a year down the line, trying to hire someone to cover my position.
Don't take people for granted, I said. It's going to come back to bite you in the buttocks, I said. It's going to be easier for me to replace you, than for you to replace me, I said. Yeah. Some days I wonder that I should have been a fortune teller, my predictions are THAT GOOD.
One more time, this reflects real life 😅
Yes! Nothing more relatable than the source of dissatisfaction asking for solutions after employees take the "anonymous" employee engagement survey. I absolutely do not miss this!
1. Ask the inmates if they like the asylum.
2. …
3. Profit!
Original "anonymous" survey results: only 12% of the company responded.
So, managers in my department walked around from desk to desk to the people that hadn't responded, and ordered them to fill in the survey. So they did. Management then proudly emailed that 85% of our department had "voluntarily" answered the survey.
HR was suitably impressed. That was, until they started asking the staff in person, and found that (a) they had been directly ordered to fill in the supposedly voluntary survey, and (b) the fact that managers knew who had and who had not filled in the survey meant that it wasn't anonymous, so no one was sticking their neck out.
HR was horrified, and asked IT to look into how confidential, anonymous survey results had been exposed. HR said "Oh, management just asks us for the results, and we forward them to them. They've always done that".
HR asked some of us in engineering for alternatives. We recommended SurveyMonkey, and other similar public sites. The next survey was done that way. Over 90% of the people did the survey, quite an improvement over 12%. Most did it from home, not their company PC. And more than 50% of the responses listed the biggest obstacle and impediment in their job to be... their immediate superior.
Middle management running companies into the ground? Impossible!
They all know he’s telling them to improve their surveys by next month. At which point he will take credit for increasing employee morale. He told them what they need to do to fix the issue. He knew what needs doing and only him. There’s now more managers than there are ICs in the world.
Yeap…. Or just skip the engagement survey when you know the results will be bad and do nothing about it
That would be the reasonable thing to do.
Once I heard the head honcho tell the plebs ... I mean, the employees, that if they really dislike the company so much, they should leave.
I sh*t you not. I heard that with my own two ears, from a company wide broadcast. I had to check the recording and replay the segment several times to make sure that I wasn't misunderstanding or misrepresenting or just plain had sh*t in my ears.
He proceeded to proffer that when all the people who disliked they company have left, only people who like they company will have stayed and thus the employee satisfaction feedback shall be positive. Can't beat the mathematics on that one.
I'm not confident that the plan panned out, though, but a few dozen people did quit during the past 12 months. So that's two dozen negative Nancies less. They are still, a year down the line, trying to hire someone to cover my position.
Don't take people for granted, I said. It's going to come back to bite you in the buttocks, I said. It's going to be easier for me to replace you, than for you to replace me, I said. Yeah. Some days I wonder that I should have been a fortune teller, my predictions are THAT GOOD.