Do Leaders Know What Employees Really, Really Want?

Source: www.lovetoknow.com

Fortune's Phil Wahba has written an intriguing article titled, "Too many CEOs don’t know what their workers need. Employee ‘engagement’ surveys can make the problem even worse." Wahba starts by giving an interesting example from Starbucks. He points out that former CEO Howard Schultz often took great pride in the tuition assistance program offered to company employees. Wahba writes:

It turns out that for many Starbucks “partners,” as the company calls its employees, tuition help at an online university wasn’t that crucial. They’ve proven to be far more interested in prosaic matters such as flexible scheduling, work conditions, and more predictable hours—the kinds of issues that have a much greater short-term impact on their income and quality of life.

Wahba goes on to critique employee engagement surveys administered annually by many organizations.  He notes that many questions are fuzzy and unclear.  The responses do not necessarily provide clear direction as to how leaders should change policies or behaviors.  At times, companies present the data in ways that make things appear better than they actually are.  He gives the example of firms that sometimes lump "4" and "5" responses together when reporting the data.  Of course, a "4" might be quite different than a "5" response.  Moreover, while the overall mean might look good on a particular question, certain subsets of the employee population might be responding much more negatively.  Finally, leaders don't always close the loop by communicating clearly to employees how they are making changes based on the survey results.  Employees think to themselves, "Why are we doing this? Are they actually taking our views into consideration? Is it just a waste of time?"  

Wharton's Peter Capelli offers a simple suggestion: ask managers to talk to their reports! He tells Wahba, "You could have supervisors actually go talk to people. Employees are usually not shy about telling their direct boss what’s going on."  In short, there's no substitute for one-on-one communication in which managers listen to employee concerns and then circle back to address them.  No survey can replace those valuable conversations.