Stop The Annual Employee Survey

“Well, that’s not what our annual employee survey said last year.”

About two weeks ago, I was mid-way through a conversation with a senior leader about some culture issues at his company when he threw out this line. He had been having conversations with a few different employees at different levels about the same unspoken tension. But he couldn’t seem to reconcile their issues with the lack of any signs of it on last year’s annual engagement survey. So, I threw two questions at him:

“What percentage of your employees actually completed the survey?”

He told me about 25 percent, which was down from previous years.

“What percentage of those who took it actually believe it is anonymous?”

This one took a bit of explaining. He eventually realized that a survey emailed out to everyone’s company email address, despite claiming anonymity multiple times, might not actually be thought of by participants as truly anonymous. And if it’s not seen as truly anonymous, the employees who actually bother to respond might be disproportionately more likely to say good things and minimize criticism. Leaving constructive feedback or complaints might make them a target for more conversations, and most of the time they just want to be left alone to do their job.