UPMC administers surveys to all 80,000 employees across 20 different hospital systems, doctors’ offices, clinics, and long-term care facilities to understand the employee voice.
Has living in a COVID-19 world left you or your team with emotional exhaustion, a reduced sense of personal accomplishment, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, or a sense of ineffectiveness?
On this episode of the Engaging People Podcast, we’re joined by DecisionWise President, Matt Wride, and Senior Consultants, Charles Rogel, and Spencer Taylor. As champions of caring leadership, they share 10 questions that we use on employee engagement surveys to measure employee burnout and workload.
On this episode of the Engaging People Podcast, we’re joined by VP of Consulting, Christian Nielson, and Senior Consultants, Charles Rogel and Spencer Taylor.
Recently, our consultants have been spending more time advising our clients on their employee listening strategy during a crisis. Many organizations haven’t surveyed during these circumstances and need extra guidance on the following:
Should we proceed with the survey?
Should we add COVID-19 related questions to our current survey design?
Should we switch to a different type of survey?
How will this survey during a crisis affect our trending progress, year after year?
How can I convince our executive team to seek employee feedback right now?
Our team goes into depth on these questions and more in an effort to help you engage employees with two-way communication.
Listen to more of this insightful conversation on best practices for surveying during a crisis.
In this video message, DecisionWise President, Matthew Wride, talks about the importance of employee feedback during a crisis and the DecisionWise pledge to help your business listen, understand, and act, even during tough times.
Hello, my name is Matt Wride, and I am the President of DecisionWise. Before I get to my main message, I want to touch briefly on the COVID-19 pandemic. If feels like we are making some progress. This is encouraging, and I hope you are well and safe.
Despite the stress and heavy disruptions to our way of life, I am struck by the good I witness each day. For example, just a few days ago I waved to a man standing in overalls to walk through the drive-through lane ahead of me. As I waited, I wondered why he was walking through the drive-through lane, but I figured that in a COVID-19 world, he probably had a good reason. So, I nodded and smiled. When it was my turn at the window, the worker told me that the man in overalls had already paid for my lunch. I smiled as I watched this Driver saunter over to a big, loaded Kenworth. Now, I understood why he couldn’t get his vehicle to fit through the drive-through lane. So, here I was – I didn’t need his help, but he gave it anyway. So, to this unknown Driver, I flash my four ways.
This simple story illustrates why we will rise from COVID-19 better and stronger, because the vast number of employees are good people, and they are doing their best in challenging times and circumstances. It’s easy to forget them amidst the stress, the draining cash balances, and slumping sales reports. We can’t. We mustn’t. We must acknowledge them, and the best way to do this is to listen to their feelings.
At DecisionWise we survey employees. You might raise an eyebrow and say, “Of course they are going to tell me to survey my employees.” You’re right. We are. We know that budgets are tight, and we know that employee surveys seem unnecessary when we are focused on keeping jobs. We get it. We promise to work with you to identify the essential services you need to stay on budget and continue working towards achieving your organizational goals.
Humans aren’t resources. They aren’t widgets to be tracked on a spreadsheet. They are people who represent an organization’s pathway to success. Now, more than ever, we need to engage with our workers, so they will engage in their jobs. We are trying to keep their hearts, hands, minds, and spirit with us. We need them so that we can meet the challenges that lay ahead.
At DecisionWise, we have adopted the phrase “The Obstacle is the Way,” as our COVID-19 metaphor. We know that if our clients are to overcome their obstacles, it will be through the hard work and engaged efforts of their employees – those good people, just like the Driver that paid for my lunch!
Please reach out to us. We have experienced consultants ready to assist, and we will do what we can to craft a employee listening program within the budget you give us.
Our clients are worried. Their employees are worried. Our friends, families, and neighbors are worried. It’s frightening, and it’s tough. In fact, I just noticed that “Coronavirus” is now a recognized word in my spell-check dictionary. Will life ever be normal again? Of course, things will improve, and a good slogan to follow comes from some English WWII propaganda.[i]
“Keep calm and carry on!”
You’ll find variations on this theme everywhere, and some feel apropos,
like: “Keep calm, oh who are we kidding?”
Yet, in some ways, these internet memes distract from this slogan’s
powerful message. We can do this. As Dory, the hippo tang in Pixar’s Finding
Nemo, says, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”
In this blog, I would like to focus on the primary question in our
business that we have been getting for several days now:
“How do we listen to our employees when it feels like the world has been turned upside down?”
1) Listen to Employees
First, rule number one is that you must keep listening. Now, more than ever, you need to understand
what your employees are feeling and experiencing. Additionally, when done correctly, the act of
reaching out to listen can demonstrate real empathy. So, the key is don’t stop listening; instead,
we need to change how we listen. Our
employees need to know that we care about them in good times, and when the
environment is more challenging.
2) Show Empathy and Care
Second, make sure your tone is empathetic and caring. When you examine employee survey questions, they typically fall into one of two camps. One set of questions is focused on scenarios that impact the employees on a personal level. For example, “I have the tools and resources I need to do my job well.” These types of questions demonstrate concern and will likely be well received. The other group of questions is focused on settings that involve the organization like, “I would recommend this organization as a great place to work.” This latter question implies that we are more worried about the organizations’ reputation than about our employees’ immediate needs. Try and use questions that are employee-focused.
3) Follow the Goldilocks Principle
Third, follow the Goldilocks principle: not too much, not too little. Try and balance how often you reach out and the length of your surveys. Short surveys (1-2 questions) each week, and with the right tone, might be appreciated and welcome, but 20-question surveys each week would likely create additional internet memes that are to be avoided.
4) Include Two Open-Ended Questions in Your Surveys
Fourth, we recommend one or two open-ended text questions. For example, “What is your experience like working remotely?” Or, “Tell us about your experience right now.” If you plan on using some standardized questions, you might consider adding something to the end of the survey like, “Is there anything else you would like to tell us?”
Good text-based questions come with no agenda, and they are neither
positively worded, such as “Tell us what is going well,” nor negatively worded,
such as “Describe what we could do better.”
Instead, a better question would be “Please describe your experience
right now.” No coaching one way or the
other. Just tell us your thoughts and
feelings.
Historically, we have used questions that were either positively or negatively framed to help us categorize the comments. Now, however, with stronger AI-driven text-analytics models, we can determine sentiment without having to prompt survey respondents one way or the other. Anytime you avoid introducing sentiment from the question itself, data quality improves. If you don’t have access to a robust text-analytics model, don’t worry. Just ask the questions and then read them. Instead of using AI to determine sentiment, you can use some HI (human intelligence).
5) Survey Soon
Fifth, try and reach out soon – ideally within the next week or so (phase one). Don’t bog down this initial survey by trying to gather demographics or other forms of metadata. If you can gather hierarchy and demographics, great, but this survey isn’t designed for your data scientists. Instead, this survey should be built to give senior leaders a quick snapshot of what is happening inside their employees’ heads and hearts.
6) Follow Up
Sixth, once you get an initial survey out to your employees (phase one), focus on designing a follow-up instrument to be administered in 90-days or so (phase two). See what insights you gather from phase one, and then use those insights to inform and guide your survey design as you develop and plan for phase 2. Phase two might include open-ended text questions, but you might have the ability to add 15-20 standardized questions. For example, maybe you discover a lot of negative comments about your messaging app. Now, you might be ready to ask a standard question to see how people feel after emotions have calmed and time has passed, or, better yet, maybe your IT team has worked out the bug and you learn that the application is performing quite well.
7) Share What You Learned
Seventh, if you ask for feedback, the rule still applies that you need
to share what you learned and what you are going to do with the feedback. Continuing our hypothetical, if you discover that
your messaging application is causing problems, then work with your IT folks to
produce some short how-to videos, but don’t forget to say, “We heard you, and
these videos have been produced to help you get more out of our messaging app.”
Again, now is the time to listen more than ever. In six to twelve months, when things have
somewhat returned to normal, our goal is to ask this question on each
anchor/annual survey for our clients: “This organization responds well during
times of crisis.” We want to see as many
favorable responses as possible!
Please contact us with any questions you might have, or if you have additional suggestions or ideas, please let us know and we will post and share your recommendations. We are in this together, and we welcome any idea that can help each of us keep calm and carry on.
