Replacing the Workplace Survey

Mary Bleech

December 2 2022

“Ugh, not this again.” Be honest, you know what your employees are thinking every time a company-wide or team survey goes out to assess their experience in the work-place. Time consuming and repetitive questionnaires have been one of the tried and true ways companies have employed to gauge worker happiness and get a pulse on the workplace desires of staff. And how helpful are they to your team anyway? Well, according to Harvard Business Review, they can be useful if created with the right strategies: valuable content, formatting, and relevant measurements (to name a few). More often than not, though, assigned workplace surveys are incredibly outdated and don’t actually tackle the information that they might seem to seek.

‍Here’s the big picture of why these questionnaires might not contribute to optimizing your company’s value: workplace survey creators are often aiming to solely measure current employee engagement when the whole point of the workplace survey is to actually improve employee engagement. Just think about it; is asking about the likelihood someone will attend the upcoming holiday party really getting to the heart of workplace culture? Furthermore, there can be a lot of anxiety for employees around online surveys that claim to be fully anonymous – because what can’t technology track these days? Pressures that someone might learn the identity of a survey responder makes that author much more likely to adjust feedback in a way that suggests a higher rate of work satisfaction than internally felt.

‍What constitutes a survey that actually makes a difference then? Harvard Business Review advocates for the importance of including quantifiers that deliver frequency. For example, a simple “yes” or “no” won’t be enough to uncover how employees are really feeling about the dedication of team members around them, but offering them some percentages or rankings to work with might do the trick. Another tip is to ensure that the linguistic content of the survey allows for the capture of observable behavior (as opposed to subjective thought/motivation). It’s anyone’s prerogative to think that the team leader isn’t looking at projects through an attentive lens, but this opinion alone doesn’t get after the larger issue. Each of these suggested factors depend on one key variable for workplace success: engagement. Now, what if you could capture this key ingredient without the dreadful time commitments of the typical questionnaire? You guessed it: we’ve got just the solution for you.

ChattyKathi not only offers the tools for your team to grow both individually and within their work setting, but you can also check in on how they’re doing through its sentiment analysis feature. The metrics provided for you will let you know which members are thriving among their coworkers, who could use a little extra support, and how you can help. In the meantime, Kathi, our trusty digital assistant, will continue to check out every team member’s customized user profile to help tailor conversations and group activities in a way that makes engagement both fun and inviting for all. The struggle of maintaining work-life balance can be especially tough around the holidays, and helping to lift your group up in the workspace will set everyone up for greater success going into the new year. So, don’t wait any longer: archive your digital survey and let Kathi do the work for you.