Knowledge Center
Your Many Kinds of Surveys
By Timothy Bentley
There are literally dozens of ways the Panoramic Feedback survey can inform you and encourage development. Here are a few:
Climate of the organization
An annual climate survey can provide vital information about key issues within the organization.
Single-issue surveys
The use of surveys limited to specific topics allows those responsible for particular aspects of performance to plan winning strategies.
Single-area surveys
Asking questions of a particular department, job group, or job site can generate valuable, clearly-focused information.
360-degree feedback
360-degree feedback is a specialized subset of survey methodology. Panoramic Feedback provides a highly customizable 360-degree feedback instrument which has been used by discriminating organizations and consultants around the world for years, providing tens of thousands of managers with insight, and guidance for development.
Team evaluation
High-performing teams become that way by constantly gathering and digesting new information. Surveys can quickly provide some of the data they need.
Preparation for organizational development
No survey can remove the discomfort of making profound changes in how the organization operates, but the use of diagnostic surveys can contribute vital wisdom, increasing the chances of successful decision-making.
Readiness surveys
These surveys assess whether the responders themselves feel prepared for changes and upcoming events.
Measuring the success of organizational change
With new organizational programs, surveys help evaluate the outcome. So you can fine-tune the initiative. That way the exercise and its leaders maintain credibility.
As a replacement for interviewing
It sometimes requires many interviews conducted by highly skilled interviewers to gather information from enough stakeholders to allow diagnosis of problems or support the change process.
As a contribution to a communications strategy
Panoramic Feedback Surveys provide employees with an objective reminder of the organization's commitment to communicate with its people.
Conveying information to employees
Surveys can be effective in signaling change, enabling leaders to share ownership of a developing vision for the organization.
Career development and succession planning
Responding to a standard questionnaire can assist employees in clarifying their career development hopes and needs. Succession planners have a powerful new data source.
Exit interview preparation
When departing employees respond to a questionnaire prior to their exit interview, it helps them organize their thoughts. The report alerts the interviewer, allowing her or him to plan a more tightly-focused interview.
Conflict resolution
When there's tension in the air, a well-designed questionnaire can encourage people to confront issues in a thoughtful manner, reducing the heat of confrontation and casting light on the options.
Information for consultants
Without intending it, those who hire outside consultants to help them with process change or problem-solving often omit vital information. An initial survey can fill in the blanks; subsequent surveys can evaluate success.
Discovering learning/training needs
Panoramic Feedback surveys enable training departments to conduct needs assessments, to discover the true requirements of areas they service.
Customer satisfaction, experiences, and preferences
Organizations use surveys not only to hold onto existing clients or associates, but to increase the quantity of the business they do together. That's always less expensive than finding new prospects.
Supplier experiences and preferences
A survey process can form a vital part of the relationship with the supplier. It provides a standardized way of discovering what is working in the relationship and what is not.
Referenda, voting, and polling
The use of secret passwords enables governments and voluntary associations to collect information, and conduct referenda and votes, with reliable results.
Information from the public
Surveying the public via the Internet allows you to assess the attitudes, hopes, and needs of potential customers, adherents of political parties, supporters of non-profit organizations, and others.
Academic articles and studies
Panoramic Feedback surveys are an ideal tool for collecting the raw material required for academic articles and studies.
More Detail About The Uses Of Surveys
Climate of the organization
An annual Panoramic Feedback climate survey can provide information about key issues within the organization. It helps assess the overall satisfaction of employees and indicates areas which are in need of specific attention.
The strength of climate surveys is that they provide wide-spectrum results that can be benchmarked against the previous year, indicating areas of improvement and slippage.
In times of change, by dropping certain old topics from an annual survey and introducing new ones, the organizers can signal emerging trends and commitments to employees, and receive feedback about how realistic new initiatives might be.
When a climate survey is used in preparation for process changes, major re-organization, changes in ownership, and so on, it is crucial to provide as much information as possible up-front to responders (in fact to all stakeholders) about the contemplated changes. Otherwise, the survey may be more effective at feeding the rumor mill than in eliciting useful information.
On the other hand, climate surveys may attempt to cover too large a variety of issues, becoming so long that they cause responder fatigue and generate an invisible but enormous cost in staff response time. For that reason it can be more effective in some circumstances to mount short single-issue surveys. (See more below.)
Single-issue surveys
The use of surveys limited to specific topics allows those responsible for particular aspects of performance to plan winning strategies. These surveys can be short, with as few as 5 questions, plus space to add unstructured comments.
The topics you can address in such surveys are limited only by your imagination. Here are some of the topics more commonly addressed:
- safety
- respect and diversity
- job security
- human rights
- benefits and compensation
- opportunities for recognition and advancement
- team effectiveness
- attitudes to organizational challenges or new initiatives
- readiness for change generally
- efficiency concerns and improvements to work processes
There are a host of other topics. As organizations enter a twenty-first century mind-set of continuous change and development, Panoramic Feedback surveys can provide a powerful support, enabling management to involve employees in understanding and planning for change. The result? They're with you, not against you.
Single-area surveys
Asking questions of a particular department, job group, or job site can generate valuable, clearly-focused information.
It allows the survey writer to focus clearly on specific areas of concern, avoiding the "muddiness" that sometimes accompanies wide-spectrum questionnaires.
360-degree feedback
360-degree feedback is a specialized subset of survey methodology. It enables individuals to discover how their work is viewed by people at every point of their compass. The results provide powerful assistance in developing more effective work skills and maintaining their most valued (and sometimes unexpected) strengths.
Panoramic Feedback provides a highly customizable 360-degree feedback instrument which employs the same engine as our Survey. It has been used by discriminating organizations and consultants around the world for years, providing tens of thousands of managers with insight, and guidance for development. For more information about 360-degree feedback, visit our 360 website or contact us.
Team evaluation
High-performing teams become that way by constantly gathering information. They continuously inquire about the resources they provide, about their efficiency, about improvements they can make, about their successes, about the needs of other stakeholders.
Informed by the feedback this generates, they are able to maintain their strengths and rejuvenate their less successful efforts.
As part of this process of continuous learning, Panoramic Feedback surveys provide the working team with special benefits. Their questionnaires can ask all those who have an investment in the team's success, whether internal or external, to identify its strengths and areas needing growth.
New ideas are sometimes viewed (rightly or wrongly) as attempts to bolster the ego of the team member who presents them. By contrast, the feedback from surveys is generally seen to be free of such competitive impulses, and can stimulate discussions that lead to valuable actions.
Preparation for organizational development
To make profound changes in how the organization operates is, for most leaders, a terrifying leap in the dark. No matter how much careful preparation has been done, no matter how many consultants have been asked for recommendations, ultimately the leadership has to take a chance, make decisions which, if they were easy to choose, would have been made long ago.
No survey can remove the discomfort associated with such crucial changes in course, but the use of Panoramic Feedback surveys can contribute vital wisdom that increases the chances of successful planning.
A diagnostic survey makes it possible to collect and analyze data that pinpoints the causes of particular problems in the organization, leading to more accurate goal-setting, interventions, and action planning. Solutions informed by survey information are likely to be not only more successful but more acceptable. Instead of appearing to be imposed arbitrarily from outside, they are seen to be generated from within.
Such surveys are not necessarily one-time events. The process of change is never at an end. The importance of all employees committing themselves to continuous learning is modeled convincingly by the ongoing use of surveys. And such sustained interaction can greatly reduce the pain of making major changes.
Readiness surveys
These surveys assess whether the responders themselves feel prepared for changes and upcoming events.
For instance, a Panoramic Feedback survey to assess the organization's readiness for a new 360-degree feedback process would ask questions of a wide range of employees. It might assess such topics as whether they felt they understand 360-degree feedback and how it works, believe people in general will provide honest, fair feedback, and feel ready to give or receive feedback.
They can be asked whether they believe that information gathered by the 360 will be kept confidential, and whether effective supports are in place to support the development of those who receive feedback.
Measuring the success of organizational change
When new organizational programs are mounted, it is essential to carefully evaluate outcomes -- not only so that the exercise and its proponents maintain credibility, but so that the initiative can be fine-tuned to greatest efficacy.
It used to be that the measurement of changes in organizational functioning and performance was limited to those aspects that could be quantified by the accounting function: for example, production rates, accident statistics, sales, profits. Indeed, this examination of organizational records has the advantage of being a generally unobtrusive method of gathering data. It can be used repeatedly without drawing attention to itself.
But such measurements tend to be one-dimensional. To provide an effective new-program review, they need to be used together with surveys of the human beings involved, eliciting comments and wisdom from participants, clients, and even observers.
Organizational change is a long-term systemic commitment, not a one-time intervention. Surveys that benchmark the organization against itself, year over year, contribute valuable data to the growing knowledge base within the organization, informing the direction of future change initiatives.
As a replacement for interviewing
It sometimes requires many interviews conducted by highly skilled interviewers to gather information from enough stakeholders to allow diagnosis of problems or support the change process. The use of standardized surveys can reduce or (in some cases) eliminate the need for personal interviews, saving time and resources, and lessening the impact of the interviewer's biases.
A well-designed survey can ensure that all responders have the same experience of the information- gathering process, reducing nuances in questioning, and helping to make the results truly comparable with each other.
As a contribution to a communications strategy
Surveys provide employees with an objective reminder of the organization's commitment to communicate with its people. Watson Wyatt & Co.'s Human Capital Index studied 400 US and Canadian public companies, showing that their market value increased when employees had easy access to technologies for communication, the opportunity to give ideas and suggestions to senior managers, and input into how the work gets done.
Here the Panoramic Feedback survey is no magic bullet, but a convenient and powerful aspect of a comprehensive communications strategy.
Conveying information to employees
Surveys can be effective in signaling change.
A less obvious benefit of the use of surveys is that they enable leaders to share ownership of a developing vision for the organization. They constitute an additional medium which can help stakeholders understand the importance of changes in structure, values, atmosphere, and alliances.
For employees, the process of answering pertinent questions can help them understand those changes that will influence their work, including new benefits and responsibilities they will experience. It assists them in anticipating areas in which they will be expected to make special contributions.
Where there is change, there is usually pain. Surveys encourage people to surface their experiences and concerns, helping minimize the distress. As a result, it is less likely to be transformed into cynicism, disloyalty, or mistrust.
Leaders sometimes forget that every communication they send conveys hidden information ("meta-information"), as well as the overt text on which they may have focused their efforts. The meta-information conveyed by well-conceived surveys might include their view of the joint nature of the enterprise, or the fact that leaders really care what workers or customers, suppliers or the general public, think.
Career development and succession planning
Responding to a standard questionnaire can assist employees in clarifying their career development hopes and needs. The collected responses can replace guesswork for succession and career planning professionals, providing solid information that allows them to hone their offerings, to plan for a less uncertain future.
A succession planning questionnaire can emphasize unstructured narrative comments. It may ask for specific examples of past performance in each of the skills or behaviors relevant to advancement. By allowing responders more time to think than in a live interview, it actually increases the comfort level of the participant, and the quality and accuracy of the replies.
Exit interview preparation
When departing employees respond to a questionnaire prior to their exit interview, the process helps them organize their thoughts before the actual interview. The questionnaire may ask such questions as: "What are your major reasons for leaving?" "What could have been done to encourage you to stay?" People leaving their job often wish they had the opportunity to offer feedback about the organization.
To make sure you receive valuable responses, it is important to assure responders that their contributions will be kept confidential within the HR area, and will not go on their employee record -- in other words, they are not being asked to burn their bridges.
The results can be extremely valuable to the person conducting the exit interview. They alert the interviewer to key issues that concern the employee, allowing her or him to plan a more tightly-focused interview.
Exit surveys are particularly potent in cases where several people leave a department over a period of time. The results, once compiled, allow departments to assess whether there is a pattern worth paying attention to. Because the reports are presented in an objective manner, managers of those areas often feel less threatened than they would in an in-person discussion.
To see the common patterns over time among those leaving, keeps managers from deluding themselves. It prevents them from characterizing each person who quits as a single dissatisfied and unappreciative individual. Using the information they gain, they can examine their procedures and attitudes, look for emerging trends, and begin to make changes.
The end result is that departments can learn how to encourage people to stay. As the workplace becomes more appealing to valued employees, retention figures improve. Higher retention lowers search and replacement costs significantly, raising morale and productivity.
For further leverage, an exit survey can be used in conjunction with a survey of employees who choose to remain, elucidating the differences between those who stay and those who leave, catching problems before more valuable people leave. The impact is that managers have an additional incentive to make the changes necessary for stability.
Conflict resolution
When there's tension in the air, a well-designed questionnaire can encourage people to confront issues in a thoughtful manner, reducing the heat of confrontation and casting light on the options. Sometimes you can carry on an important argument more effectively when you're not looking at the angry reactions on the other person's face, or blurting the first thing that comes into your mind.
Surveys certainly don't solve problems, but they are powerful in indicating where disparate groups have common interests, providing those responsible for solutions with valuable information, and helping to germinate the seeds of resolution.
Information for consultants
Without intending to, those who hire outside consultants to help them with process change or problem-solving often omit vital information. Sometimes the data is not available to them; sometimes they simply don't know what they don't know.
But consultants cannot work effectively if they don't understand what's really going on in the organization. Brief surveys of the affected area can improve the consultant's effectiveness, increase the probability of success, and lower the expense of consulting time. Follow-ups can assess the success of the initiative.
Discovering learning/training needs
Training departments are often guided by needs assessments to discover the true requirements of departments they service. The credibility and effectiveness of their programs is greatly enhanced by data collected through stakeholder surveys.
Customer Satisfaction, experiences, and preferences
Panoramic Feedback surveys are valuable both inside and outside the workplace. Most organizations want not only to hold onto existing customers or associates, but to increase the quantity of the business they do together. That's always less expensive than finding new prospects.
Yet how can we satisfy our customers accurately if we fail to ask them exactly what goods and services they want, whether they are getting what they want, when they want them, how they want them? How do we monitor our relationship with them, if we don't ask what they think about it? This is information of great value to executive, production, sales, and service groups.
Studies show that over 90% of customers who are unhappy with your services or products will never take the initiative to complain to you. Most just silently disappear. Because you don't know what went wrong, you miss a vital opportunity to repair the relationship.
Of course, you can discover a lot about customer satisfaction from people in your own organization who have direct customer contact. But they are not your sole -- or best -- resource for information. Supplement their insights with direct feedback from the customers themselves, using surveys that ask well-honed questions and encourage customer representatives to reply conveniently: at any time, from any location.
With Panoramic Feedback Internet technology, it is as simple and inexpensive to survey people outside the organization as it is to survey insiders.
Keep in mind, though, that your customers may have less motivation to reply than your personnel do. So you'll need to write a survey that makes the potential benefits of responding clear, and that promises to be fast and easy to answer. (Some organizations reward those who respond to surveys with gift certificates and other incentives.)
A well-designed, brief survey appeals to customers because it tells them directly that you care about their experience. Requiring minimal time to respond, it holds out the hope to customers of valuable improvements in products and services.
It also can indicate areas where they are willing to increase the size of the orders or order products they have not asked for in the past.
A survey can tell you about the needs of your prospects too, so you're better prepared to serve them than your competitors are. You can discover what benefits are most important to them, and how they make purchase decisions.
Supplier experiences and preferences
Increasingly organizations are changing the way they view those who supply raw materials and technologies. Suppliers are no longer viewed as warehouses from which certain goods can be extracted in return for money. Sophisticated organizations see them instead as partners, and reap the benefits of a co-ordinated, respectful relationship.
A survey process can form part of the relationship with the supplier. It provides a standardized way of discovering what is working in the relationship and what is not. In particular it allows us to discover how the organization's behavior affects performance. How does the ordering procedure improve or reduce the collaboration between the partners? What is the impact of order size, payment terms, etc.? This is information that can make the difference between profit and loss, from quarter to quarter.
Referenda, voting and polling
The security techniques of Panoramic Feedback enable voluntary associations and governments to conduct referendums and votes with reliable results. Passwords ensure that no one can "stack the deck" by submitting more than a single response. Companies and other organizations (including political parties, clubs, and non-profits) can poll their stakeholders, members, or donors reliably. Executive groups who are spread out geographically can vote on urgent issues between meetings.
Companies can poll lenders and investors, to discover whether they are satisfied with their returns before they make new investment decisions, allowing the organization to be positive and proactive rather than reacting to unchangeable events.
This technology, when managed with thoughtful and broad consultation, has the potential to offer more direct information for decision-makers than ever before, contributing to the development of trusting long-term relationships and helping realize the promises of practical democracy.
Information from the public
Surveying the public via the Internet is an excellent way to assess the attitudes, hopes, and needs of an unlimited collection of groups including potential customers, adherents of political parties and supporters of non-profit organizations.
The advent of Internet technology and the use of unique personal identifiers enable users to make the survey process secure and accurate. As a result, vital information can be gathered at low cost with a substantial return on investment.
Academic articles and studies
Panoramic Feedback surveys are an ideal tool for collecting the raw material required for academic articles and studies.
For instance, the leadership at a teaching hospital was concerned about the high turnover among medical staff cross-appointed to the hospital. So they planned a study to find out what was wrong.
But they faced a major difficulty: in a strongly hierarchical system, many staff felt it was dangerous to offer honest feedback. In order to collect frank information, they planned an anonymous survey of staff, using an external Internet organization to collect and store the data confidentially off-site. Once the study was complete, they planned to share their discoveries by publishing the results in a medical journal.
Timothy Bentley is Chief Operating Officer of Panoramic Feedback.
