Questioning results of colleagues’ questionnaire

[Plonv]

About 6 weeks ago colleagues were invited to do a company wide survey into happiness, management support etc.

New store manager has completely destroyed our morale and made almost everyone (including me) upset. Several colleagues have left since he started. Everyone who has discussed what they answered responded negatively. He is the worst store manager at the store ever based on the four colleagues who have been there since the beginning- 40 years ago. Plus have several others working 25 years plus. I have been there for 18 years. No other manager has made me feel like this.

Results came back and the store manager said 73% of staff responded with they enjoy their work. Yeah right!

Absolute BS. There must be some skull duggery going on.

Do you think that either store manager or the area manager can manipulate the figures?

People might not believe it's anonymous and won't tell the truth. I would be very concerned if I was the manager though and 25pc of my team were unhappy. Specially coming up to Christmas with a ton of retail opportunities arising

How was the survey conducted, on paper or computer, and where were the results sent?

People aren't always entirely honest in staff surveys, especially if they don't trust it to not to be traceable. Likewise, when people leave, they might tell individuals it's because of a crap manager or the like, but they'll probably tell HR it's because better pay, more possibilities for promotion, more flexible, etc, and never mention the micromanaging git they all whinge about.

How did you score your answers - was it on a sliding scale, yes/no, multi-choice?

The short answer is, of course they can fudge the figures, but the type of scoring determines whether they outright make them up, or whether they pretend to themselves they are not manipulating them, by setting low boundaries for sliding scales and so on.

It was a sliding scale strongly agree, agree, neither, disagree and strongly disagree. Plus some answers had not applicable as some questions were about working nights etc

Done on our employer’s intranet which we sign in to do training modules etc

What percentage of eligible employees on the site in question completed the survey and how does this compare with other sites? Disengaged colleagues tend not to bother completing these types of surveys.

So with that kind of thing they can, for example, choose to count 'neither' as a positive. They could also invent spurious reasons for weighting the answers - i.e. because such and such a thing, we'd expect answers to be 20% lower, so we will bump the score by 20%.

Or, they could say to themselves, if we release a low score it will make morale worse, so we have a valid reason to present a higher score.

And the pp's point is a good one, that people might not answer honestly because they don't trust the anonymity.

However, these are all moot points - whether the survey rates staff satisfaction at 100% or 1% it doesn't change the fact you're unhappy there.

Most people are not honest with these type of surveys. I never complet them, but if I did I wouldn't want HR or my manager to know how much I dislike my job or the company etc.

And even if they are anonymous, chuck in a couple of open questions and it's quite easy to figure out who's who by the answers.

"Do you enjoy your work" is not the same question as "Do you like your manager".

I can enjoy my work and still find that the manager makes me feel like shit and I think he's terrible.

25% of employees being miserable is a very low score. I wonder how much lower it would be if the question was "Are you happy at work"?

I always tick things are good on those things and won't write a word on them. As they waste of time n not worth the effort I barely read the questions just tick middle box for all

Depends on the response options. Often they group together the "strongly agree", "agree", "neither agree nor disagree". Also 75% of how many actual responses?

Yeah there’s no way I’m telling the truth on that I’d be worried it would be traced back to me individually.

In my store staff used to get picked to do the survey and then they'd make the rest up by doing enough of them to hit the target. Only the ones who they thought would answer positively were picked for obvious reasons.

Personally I think everyone should have the link emailed to them to stop store managers submitting multiple surveys. Saying that people definitely wouldn't be honest then because they'd worry it was linked to their email account. Basically you can't win.

At my previous company, everyone got sent a link. Managers got stats on who had responded in terms of numbers, e.g. 5 of 8, but not details. Free text comments were redacted so, if you complained about an individual manager or something, it would be removed. Fine to say, "my manager can't sort out the rotas properly," not okay to say, "my manager John Smith can't sort out the rotas properly." Then there were various graphs generated from the questions with answer scales, so it could be reviewed by manager, department, division, and if managers had more than 5 (possibly, can't remember) DRs, they got the free text comments, but not if they had fewer. Although even with a larger team, if you knew them well, you could tell by the style or particular comments.

It was a huge company, though. The fewer people, the less anonymity.

I've always shared feedback with my managers. Good ones appreciate it and discuss it. The others don't.

My experience of working for a large high street chain is that these surveys are not anonymous in the slightest. We had a major change in operations which took months to launch and trial. We were invited to an interview to anonymously report our thoughts after the trial period which would help the company to determine whether to roll out the change across all branches. About a week before, we had a small meeting between managers of local branches and every single one of them was dissatisfied with the change. We then had our separate interviews at HQ. A months later my area manager came down on me like a ton of bricks. Apparently, I was the only person who expressed negativity (I actually gave a very measured response highlighting both positive elements and also how the change which sounded good on paper was not working in practice). Clearly all my colleagues chickened out and I was the only person who was honest. The company breached confidentiality in a big way and I resigned there and then and never looked back.
People can say whatever they feel in the staff room but when it comes to expressing their views to the management, it’s a different story. I certainly won’t be taking one for the team in the future and I now ignore all workplace feedback invitations.

If the only people who responded (because it's an absolute doddle to work out who gave what response - even before you have to sign in to complete the survey) were the 4 or so people that haven't been pissed off, plus you, then it's accurate, albeit shit, data.

Add in that people will say they enjoy their work - but they detest management - so you take the 'I enjoy my work' answer. Or you include all but the lowest ranking answer as enjoying it. And you word questions in a way that makes it ambiguous or nudges the respondent to agree with you - 'do you agree that people should be paid as your manager is amazing?' gives you either people should be paid or they shouldn't - and the manager takes the answer as 'I'm amazing'.

Statistics are incredibly easy to juggle around - even more so when responses are reduced due to fear/suspicion/justified worries of identification and victimisation - to get what outcomes you want to show.