I send them out annually for this very reason. It is in essence, management’s review. I find it is the easiest way to pin point dissatisfaction from the themes that tend to run through the surveys. Since I always act on at least one issue, it does indeed boost morale and allows the non management employees a chance to be heard without repercussions. However, without anonymity, it is useless unless it is being used to spy like dgrdfd suspects.
I would not advise people to never fill them out but I may say while new with a company, you might want to skip the first couple to see what results from the responses.
I’ve been in companies where those surveys were truly anonymous (unless you chose to give your email “in case we want to contact you for clarification”) and treated seriously. One of the guys who worked preparing them told me they saw the fact that some people were filling in the email as a good sign; it didn’t happen at all the first few times they did the survey, only once people saw it was being taken seriously.
There was for example one case where the company got many remarks about “the language in some corporate courses is too complicated;” the first time, the training team just huffed; the second time, they went to a few people who’d told them the same to their face and said “ok, how do you think the language is too complicated? We’re getting the same from the users.”
Companies that do listen to their employees are a jewel. Companies that take a useful tool from the wrong end are left wondering why their fingers bleed…
We just had an anonymous survey. Mostly multiple choice (Definitely Agree, Mostly Agree, etc.), but there was one small box for comments. With a character limit, so you couldn’t really say all you wanted to say. My comment:
You may notice that I have not given the company top marks in any category. At performance review time, we are told that only the truly exceptional employee “Consistently Exceeds Expectations”. I have taken that comment to heart.
I am married, but I will declare my love for Una right here, right now. That was beautiful.
At my last company anonymous surveys were just that. We fucked around on them a few times and it never came back on us. One year part of my boss’s evaluation was what percentage of his department responded to the survey. Him being a good guy we took the Chicago attitude toward the process: Vote early, vote often.
IIRC our department had a 150% participation in that survey.
My company uses Gallup. As far as I can tell (and I’m one of management), it truly is anonymous. There’s not even a place to enter free-form comments, and if you choose, you don’t have to enter any information that tells who you are. The only thing they do is report the results for my department to me, completely anonymously. Since I have 10 direct reports, I have no way of knowing who answered how. And if you manage a smaller department (less than 5), they don’t even do that, but roll up your department into your manager’s results.
eta Of course, as a manager and as an associate, I think some of the questions they ask are either incredibly irrelevant, or way too vague.
Our company periodically puts “anonymous” surveys on the intranet. The thing is, they REQUIRE us to put in our department number when we submit our answers.
Give me a break. Depending on what department you are in, that’s going to be a dead giveaway!
We had an anonymous survey here recently. Go to a third party website and answer some multiple choice questions. There were a few free-form comment boxes, but they were optional.
The closest we had to come to identifying anything about ourselves was to say which department we’re in. Mine has enough people that it would be impossible to tell who picked what answers in most cases - except where there is an obvious problem.
Apparently all of us in my particular office selected the same answer to one of the questions, so now they know how you answered it - because everyone gave the same answer. It’s also the first problem the company is set to address.
elfkin, that’s EXACTLY what I’m thinking. I think you can put in any department number, so I wonder how often people actually select their actual number or make one up.
We’ve had “anonymous” how-did-the-project-go surveys - though they’re only anonymous to the other emplyees, not the managers. They’re open about this; fair enough. However:
The question is all essay questions. They included things like “What was your role in the project” and other obviously identifying questions.
There are only about three dozen of us answering. (Small company.)
And the kicker: the results are sent back in an email to everyone: everyone’s responses to each question, in the same order from question to question. As in, if you were the third answer listed for the first question, then you’re also the third one on the second question, the third question, etc.
Anonymous my butt; anybody with half an interest and a passing awareness of who does what around here could reassemble everyone’s complete set of answers. Mostly it’s pretty innocuous-seeming even so but I was real leery of answering frankly on that last one, since most of my answers would boil down to “The new director of Product Management was a pain in my ass”.
Ah, the anonymous survey… like the ones at my hospital (Press-Ganey) that ask what unit, what level of education you have and how long have you worked there–yep, that’s a dead giveaway for me (the only BSN, worked there for 6 years on the stepdown unit). I might as well have signed my name.
I have thrown them out in recent months. And then we all got yelled at for NOT filling them out. Improved morale no end.
I just started giggling in class and got dirty looks because of you. No, it’s not my fault for reading the Dope in class, so don’t even try to blame this on me, missy!
Although, as I said above, I never respond to surveys, I have saved Una’s words on my computer (incidentally, why does Word’s Save dialog always start out trying to save things to My Documents even though for seven years I’ve been saving things to Asst Shit?) and if the occasion ever arises, I’ll have the answer ready to hand.
…because you need to change the default save location in Word. From random page:[ol][li]From the Tools menu, select Options…[]Select the File Locations tab.[]From the list, select Documents, and then click Modify…[*]Type the name of the new directory or browse to it. Click OK to make the change.[/ol][/li]</hijack>
And while I’m here, I’ll also leverage a synergistic, value-added glass to Una Persson’s “dinosauric penis” remark. Posts like that really drive the paradigm-shifting humor engines that continue to deliver a high level of subscriber value in this organization. Layoffs next week, btw.
