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Is It Time to Get Rid of Annual Surveys?

Happy employees work better. Many companies believe that happiness inspires productivity and in order to understand their employees better, annual surveys play an important role. The reasons why companies conduct these surveys are many. One of them is that this provides them with data to analyze issues and the overall environment in the organization. By being able to analyze, they are also made aware of the potential problems that could arise in the future thus giving them the opportunity to nip it in the bud. Conducting surveys also helps in deciding what changes are to be made in the company to increase the efficiency of its employees. These surveys also makes the employees feel valued, like they have a voice and that their opinion matters.

Why then is it time to get rid of Annual Surveys?

As human beings, we are driven by self-interests and emotions which are highly unlikely to remain constant throughout the year. Having these surveys conducted once a year gives us a very narrow, extremely subjective idea of the issues and it is not something we should rely on completely. What seems like an issue today, may not seem so, six months from now and surveys fail in reflecting that.

We should also refrain from confusing the truth with majority opinion. With surveys, attention is usually given to larger or more critical issues and the smaller ones are pushed to the margins. This again is problematic since these minor issues could become a cause of worriment later.

An alternative to the long and tedious process of conducting annual surveys is to use tools that are engaging and dynamic and provide pulse data. Dynamic survey tools facilitate deep dive into problem statements specific to locations, departments or individuals. Leadership hence can respond to issues while it’s hot and encourage honest conversations, building trust, openness and transparency.

With distances, remote working, conflicting schedules,technology can play an important role in encouraging conversations. By engaging in these conversations, we can take a step forward towards being able to attend to issues that are relevant at the particular time.

It is time to re-think the concept of annual surveys as the goals that it aims to achieve can also be achieved through a more efficient and cost effective method.