Why you should not take an employee survey when manic

Moreta · Mar 25, 2010, 08:58 AM

The company I work for is "reorganizing" (or in other words, "weeding out the incompotent people") and the new "Equity Group"/Board of Directors decided that we needed to do an employee survey. We had until the end of the month to complete it, but I felt that I had to do it yesterday. Most of the questions where based on a scale of 0-10, 10 being great, and consisted mostly of how you felt about the company, communication across the company, being a team player, etc. But then of course at the end of the survey, they let you make comments. Here's how I was thinking yesterday:

1. How can we make our company a better place to work?
-Have better communication within the organization and department, as to what is expected from employees.
-Work on ways to boost employee morale.
-Be able to participate in team building exercises within the department.
-Have computers that actually work, and not have an IT department that tells you your best solution to fix your computer, would be to toss it out the window.
-Hold all employees to the same standard of work output.
-Hold employees accountable for their work, without having exceptions like "we can't lay-off (insert name) because they have knowledge about customers/product/etc," especially when they are not held accountable for the actual work, or lack thereof, that they do (or don't do) on a daily basis.
-Compensate employees based on their work, not on their position or how long they have been with the company.

2. Please provide any additional comments that you feel would be helpful
-Take the old pictures down on the Intranet. It is depressing to see all the people that used to work here but have been laid off over the past 3 years.

They did say that this was completely confidential, and that they wanted our honest opinions. But still, they're going to know it was me that made those comments, since I have been making most of them for the past 2 years. ha.

AAAAA · Mar 25, 2010, 10:25 AM

People shouldn't ask for your honest opinion if they don't want it. I'm also in my manic stage (getting loads of things done YEA!). It's that time of year for our corporate office to have the employees rate the management. No clue what I'll put down, it'll be a surprise to us all.

My boss does her own in house survey to get an idea of what we'll tell corporate. Hmmm, you give me a survey, watch me fill it out, I hand it back, you read it, and comment pubically as to what I wrote. OR (corporate version) I go into a locked office, fill out survey, put it into an envelope and seal it yeah, you're DEFINATELY going to get the same information.

Kudos to you though, sound like outstanding suggestions.

phlashback · Mar 25, 2010, 10:49 AM

Well I had an employee survey that was requiered, and the questions all had to do with clinical situations. I work in IT at a hospital, and our concerns were completly overlooked, as there was no way for us to provide feedback of any value. A 100 quesation survey witch was not applicable for 90 questions.

It was nice of them to waist my time with this, as due to my "salaried" status I was requiered to fill it out after hours. Then they wonder why participation is so low in the support areas of the organization.. maybe it has to do with bieng second class citizens. I can't count the number of times that I have been called in at 2:00am because a person is having trouble with a printer, and demands I come in to load the stinking paper. The part that frost me most is that they just assume that I get the same call in benifit that they do. $100 cash, plus a shift defferintial and double time.

The joys of bieng non profit.

Moreta · Mar 25, 2010, 05:12 PM

Quote:

They did say that this was completely confidential, and that they wanted our honest opinions.

So yeah, my boss told me that somebody brought up the fact that, yeah, that it's going to be pretty easy to figure out who took the survey.....since:

a.) It asks what department you're in.
b.) It asks if you are hourly or salaried.
c.) It asks how long you've worked there.

So now everybody's freaking out since it's a pretty small company (<200) and by answering those 3 questions, they will pretty much know who you are.

But I did give them my honest opinion like they wanted, so I'm not sure how they can let you go for doing what was asked. I asked my boss about it, and she said she was going to do basically the same thing that I did, so I'm not that concerned about it. I just have this fear that more than the Board/Equity Group will see the results, and I'd rather not make the actual people I work with angry.....

Well now I'm paranoid.

grizmom · Mar 25, 2010, 05:27 PM

Those all sound like reasonable requests to me. It's dumb that it's supposed to be anonymous but then you have to fill out all that personal info...next time you fill out a survey, add that to the suggestions (at least I would).

I would be frustrated to if I got called in to do something that my cat could figure out. If they don't know how to put paper in a printer, they should be getting a job application somewhere else imho.

If you can, find something to take your mind off of it...I like suduko puzzles because I need to concentrate fully on them. Take care!

Moreta · Mar 25, 2010, 05:38 PM

Quote:

I like suduko puzzles because I need to concentrate fully on them.

You would think that since I do the numbers, I would be good at Soduko, but I'm actually quite bad at trying to figure them out. I usually play MJBUEL. It's slight odd, now that I think about it......?

grizmom · Mar 25, 2010, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by QueenAccountant

You would think that since I do the numbers, I would be good at Soduko, but I'm actually quite bad at trying to figure them out. I usually play MJBUEL. It's slight odd, now that I think about it......?

What is mjbuel? Is it online somewhere? I like games!