How Leaders Who Listen Can Transform Organizations With Paul Mastrangelo
On this episode of Leading Through Listening, I’m joined by Paul Mastrangelo, president and owner at First Domino Consulting. Paul brings a wealth of knowledge as an organizational psychologist, specializing in workplace behavior and the transformation of organizations through employee insights. In this conversation, we dive into how listening — not just hearing, but truly […]
How to Get More Value Out Of Your Survey
There are some Internet voices out there that claim that employee surveys are on the way out. But a Harvard Business Review article called Employee Surveys Are Still One of the Best Ways to Measure Engagement, by Scott Judd, Eric O’Rourke, and Adam Grant says, “it would be a big mistake to abandon them today.” Many […]
The Real Reasons Your Employees Don’t Answer Surveys
You’ve probably noticed that for years now, a lot of organizations have been asking people to “take a few minutes to fill out a survey.” People are getting hit with it in bookstores, at the end of telecom calls, when they chat with technical support teams online, after they get a haircut — the list […]
Top 5 Mistakes To Avoid In Your Next Engagement Survey
For many years now, organizations have used surveys to measure their employees’ engagement. But as described in this Deloitte article entitled, “Becoming Irresistible. A New Model for Employee Engagement,” written by Josh Bersin, if they aren’t utilized properly, they won’t be as effective. Common survey mistakes The following are common mistakes many organizations make when […]
Why Measuring Employee Engagement is Critical
Measuring employee engagement with an effective, proven measurement tool will provide your organization with a snapshot of the current landscape. It will identify areas of strength, weakness, and what the drivers of engagement are for your organization. In addition, when surveying with TalentMap, our clients receive Benchmark data of comparable organizations so that you get […]
The Top 11 Myths About Employee Surveys
Think you know everything about Employee Surveys? Think again. 1.We already know what our employees will say You may feel strongly that you already have your finger on the pulse of your staff, so there is no point in surveying them. Well, we don’t mean to startle you, but your perception may not be r. […]
What is the TalentMap Engagement Questionnaire Based On?
In 2000, Sean Fitzpatrick (founder of TalentMap) and Dr. Tom Foard collaborated to develop the original TalentMap employee satisfaction survey. The TalentMap survey was based on a review of the best practices of other organizations and through active participation in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). Our review included a detailed study of […]
Why You Should Run an Employee Engagement Survey
We believe every organization with more than a handful of employees should run an employee engagement survey annually or biennially (depending on your circumstances). Employee surveys ‘done right’ are the most efficient and effective tool to open up two-way conversations between management and staff. The top four reasons why our clients use employee engagement surveys: […]
The Pitfalls of Using Shortcuts (like Net Promoter Score)
Customers and employees are like the chicken and egg thing. Which takes precedence or comes first in an organization’s priorities can be long debated without resolve. Customers pay the bills, right? But those products and services customers purchase are produced by employees. The bigger question is how to optimally measure, attain and retain customer satisfaction […]
Seeing Employee Surveys Through a Clear Lens
Imagine visiting the Grand Canyon on a blue-sky kind of day, taking in the sweeping vistas of mountainous formations millions of years in the making. Talk about a high-level view. Sometimes your organization’s leadership can have a high-level view from their own tower offices. But things aren’t always as they seem – especially from a […]
What to do with Neutral Employee Survey Responses
The never-ending debate on employee surveys Social psychologist Rensis Likert was a visionary guru. His contributions to organizational psychology influenced businesses of the day. And his theories of participative management can be said to have shaped today’s concepts of employee engagement. But it’s the five-point scale developed for people to respond to questions that’s his greatest […]
Why Aren’t Your Employees Filling Out Your Employee Surveys?
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The #1 Reason To Change Your Employee Survey Vendor
It could be that your organization isn’t actively looking for an employee engagement partner. You’ve got a vendor you’ve worked with for a while now; you know their platform, their work style, their deliverables. Although it would be nice to figure out how to return to those early days of priority service, change hasn’t really crossed […]
Verbatim Comments & Protecting Anonymity
Surveys were designed in the 1930s as a way to aggregate or count the opinions of a large number of people. Scale questions – the agree versus disagree, satisfied versus not satisfied and everything in between – are ways we derive statistics, turn attitudes into mathematical equations, compile and then extrapolate insights. The thing is responses to […]
Survey Reliability vs. Survery Validity: What’s the Big Deal?
You may ask yourself or find others asking you about the “reliability” or “validity” of data that comes out of employee surveys. It’s not uncommon for those two words to be used interchangeably. But in the field of data research, the two are far from synonymous. Why is it important to know the difference? Because […]
Survey Saturation: When Is Too Much Of A Good Thing Too Much?
Pulse surveys, engagement surveys, 360 surveys, attitude surveys, organizational assessment surveys, safety surveys, entry and exit surveys – the possibilities are endless. And online survey tools make it easy. At a recent HR chapter meeting, a question was raised about survey saturation. When does asking for employee input become one survey too many? It really depends on […]
Pulse Surveys: The Right And Wrong Reasons To Do Them
The Benefits and Pitfalls of Pulse Surveys All trends take flight because they offer users a benefit over existing offerings. Pulse surveys are no different, and they can be very useful tools in understanding employee engagement and the employee mindset. However, the benefits giving rise to their increasing popularity may not be the reasons one should […]
The Imperatives of Employee Survey Identity Protection and Confidentiality
To land the big scoop journalists work hard to gain their source’s confidence. Not infrequently, identity protection accompanies trust. Without that veil of obscurity, a lot of headline stories would never see the light of day. Deep Throat, the secret informant behind Watergate, is one of the most notorious. It was 30 years before Mark […]
Where Survey Data and Open-Ended Employee Feedback Meet
How do you make sense of employee feedback from open-ended survey questions? And does this kind of feedback really help pinpoint key engagement drivers? After all, it’s not uncommon for an employee engagement survey to rack up hundreds of pages of comments. And having someone from your organization toil through massive numbers of text responses across nine or […]
15 Tips for Employee Survey Customization
Themes around employee engagement are well documented. All survey vendors have some version of standard survey questions that fall under those 12 or 15 umbrella categories (compensation, professional growth, leadership…you know the shtick). Yet strategic objectives and corporate cultures vary. Internal corporate-speak and external industry jargon differ. Geography, language and literacy rates compound differences. Sometimes employee survey customization is required or […]
How To Ask The Right Employee Survey Questions
All survey vendors have some version of standard employee survey questions. Often though customization is desired or required especially when an organization wants to measure the impact of specific concepts or initiatives. However, asking the right questions is a complex science. Researchers and statisticians spend years, decades, lifetimes honing their scholarly know-how. After all, defective data is […]
9 Ways to Increase Your Employee Survey Response Rates
High employee engagement survey response rates are vital to a successful survey program. TalentMap’s average employee survey response rate is over 81%. Below are some ways to help you hit and even beat the benchmark average. SURVEY LAUNCH: Invite employees for coffee and donuts the day the survey launches to introduce, promote and build excitement around […]
Engagement Survey Follow-up Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Organizations can say all kinds of things without uttering a single word. One of the most perilous is leadership’s big silent hush following an employee feedback survey. That quiet inaction can be a real killer. The whole purpose behind polling is to uncover information for future action planning. Earliest accounts of statistical gathering date back […]
Employee Surveys and the Stories They Tell
Think about a recent customer service experience you’ve had on the phone with an airline or cable company, in the food court, at a Starbucks’ counter or wherever. In that brief interaction, you can tell instinctively, whether that person is an engaged employee. Easily. An engaged employee goes above and beyond to make sure your […]
The Value of Open-Ended Survey Questions
If you’ve ever spent time with a two or three or four-year-old you know how exhausting it can be. Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to wear socks? Why does it rain? Why? How come? Why?! Those never-ending questions are a young mind’s foray into the wonder filled world of learning. Open-ended […]
Employee Survey Methodologies: The Case for Likert’s Five-Point Scale
Named after its inventor, psychologist Rensis Likert, the Likert five-point scale is the most widely used method in employee survey research. It measures attitudes and opinions by posing a series of questions or items that ask respondents to select a rating on a scale that ranges from one extreme to another, such as “completely agree” […]
Employee Engagement Best Practice Series Verbatim Comments – Walking the Tightrope
One of the most common questions we at TalentMap receive almost on a weekly basis is how to handle and distribute verbatim comments. On the one hand, comments submitted by individual employees provide essential insight into the issues and root causes underlying the different scale responses. They need to be read. However, unlike marketing or public opinion […]
Eight Easy Pre-Survey Communication Tactics
Pre-Survey Communication is a must do before launching any kind of employee engagement survey. Your organization’s leaders, managers, and general employee population need to understand the purpose and their part in its success. Depending on the size and structure of your organization, communication about a forthcoming employee survey may fall to members of the HR […]
8 Reasons Why a 3rd Party is Best for Presenting Survey Results to the Exec Team
Employee engagement surveys invariably surface negative or sensitive leadership issues. It’s an industry norm. A predictable key driver. And a top opportunity for improvement with relation to engaging people in their workplace environments. But when executive team members are gathered together hearing unwelcome news about themselves, a certain expression comes to mind: don’t shoot the messenger. For […]
Don’t Judge a Questionnaire by Its Cover
A Well-Designed Employee Survey Goes Well Beyond Layout Design It’s no wonder some folks spend years earning their PhD in the art and science of surveys. Complexities abound. Like just about anything, everything can be argued one way or another. Granted, there are very specific clearly defined, not-to-be-deviated-from truths when it comes to good survey […]
DIY or Outsourced Employee Engagement Surveys?
What does workplace breach of confidentiality mean? Well, what if you were to say something disparaging about Big Boss, to someone you “trust”, yet somehow Big Boss learns about those criticisms? For a good many employees, worry about confidentiality is an oppressive fear factor when an Employee Engagement survey arrives in their inbox. “Just how secure are my comments?” […]
Can I Customize The Questionnaire?
Yes, you can. Most of our clients start with our standard questionnaire TalentGage Classic and then decide if they need to customize it. For those that do customize, changes can be made to any text, the items (questions) and the sections to align with specific goals and to resonate better with staff. We can accommodate […]
Before You Launch a 360 Survey… Read This!
A word of caution here: questions about implementing 360° feedback (360 survey) are easy to ask but not so to answer. Often times, management assumes the answers but does not openly discuss them, resulting in much chaos and confusion down the road. An Exceptional Tool for New Managers CASE STUDY: Based in Montreal Canada, a leading software […]
10 Guidelines for Successfully Deploying an Employee Survey
A client of TalentMap’s recently achieved a remarkable 96 percent participation rate on their employee engagement survey. The organization’s internal efforts deserve praise. At 7:00 am members of the HR team were at entrance ways greeting people with chocolate bars and reminder notes to fill out the employee survey launching that morning. Simple. Smart. Effective. Deploying […]
7 Key Factors When Choosing a Survey Provider
The views of your staff are critical. Their ideas and attitudes about the organization have a serious effect on financial performance and growth, so you need to do the research right to get a true picture. A seasoned research partner can help you choose which survey option meets your organization’s needs. Consider the following criteria […]
6 Tips for Reliable Employee Survey Data
Plenty of universities offer survey design and stat courses. If “stats” was a mandatory requirement for your post-secondary degree (and math’s not your thing) you probably fell into the big pool of students drowning in all the formula and despising the subject. Far from throwing a few questions together and tossing them out for responses, […]