March 2002
Standards
Career Corner
Link Employee Surveys and Quality
Avoid what happens if an organization has gaps between
its values and measurements perceptions
by Hank Lindborg
A small manufacturer with significant commitments to career
development, customer satisfaction and continual improvement administers
its first employee survey.
A good response rate, high levels of satisfaction with
supervision and safety, and positive employee comments about having their
voices heard encourage management. Issues of pay, praise and promotion
are identified as topics for planning.
To build trust, survey results are shared with all employees.
Sound good? Unfortunately, this promising beginning was also a lost opportunity.
The company, preparing itself for an ISO 9000 audit, didn't
ask a single question directly related to the standard's eight principles.
Customer focus, process, continual improvement and employee involvement
were neglected, while pay--about which little could be done--was a major
theme.
Strategically, the survey instrument had limited usefulness
because it was mute on leadership, systems, suppliers and factual approaches
to decisions. Why was the organization blind to the gap?
Nancy Dixon suggests failure to survey a range of strategic
measures may have its origin in our professional history.1
Human resources and quality disciplines developed along
parallel tracks. In many organizations they did not intersect, with hard
measures the focus of quality and soft measures the domain of human resources.
This separation, which also led to distinct training programs, has lessened
but not disappeared.
A study of people measurement by the Metrus Group and Quality
Progress found only 42% of respondents used surveys, and fewer used them
strategically.2 Organizations miss opportunities
to integrate metrics, often preferring separate people (soft) and process
(hard) measures.
Our sample company represents a common failure to bring
all parties to the table to think broadly about strategic issues. The
authors of the Metrus study say balanced scorecard approaches help overcome
turf wars, but professionals in quality, marketing and human resources
often think differently about measures.
So our hard-soft thinking may have perpetuated measurement
system silos, with quality professionals sometimes deprived of strategically
important organizational effectiveness feedback.
Lynn Priddy Rozumalski, associate director of the Academic
Quality Improvement Project (AQIP) of the Higher Learning Commission of
the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, has developed an
integrated strategic approach to surveys in higher education.
Rozumalski sees the instrument being used to identify action
improvement projects on campus as "the beginning of a conversation." Designed
around AQIP's criteria and values, "it frames a strategic discussion of
quality," she says, and provides an index of opportunities for improvement
through focused action.
Realizing the strategic advantage of balanced employee
surveys, some organizations have begun to integrate quality and satisfaction
measures. The Louisville, KY, Water Co. has developed a variety of assessment
instruments including team effectiveness, climate and culture, and systems
assessments.
Nora Freeman, business systems owner for quality and organizational
effectiveness for the water company, is leading an initiative to combine
instruments and interpretation systems. "We want to bring together our
sets of data for better understanding," she says.
Freeman sees additional benefits: reducing costs and time
spent administering separate instruments, avoiding employee resistance
to repeated surveys and creating focused follow-up to a single instrument
that can help strengthen a quality culture.
If your organization fragments measures and regularly deploys
surveys without collecting perceptions of quality systems, here are five
suggestions:
1. Research who is conducting surveys, when and
why. You may find a variety of uncoordinated efforts that annoy employees,
lead to few improvements and fragment understanding. Or you may discover
some best practices in using feedback--although they may not have been
shared organizationwide.
2. Track back to strategy. Review surveys in
use to see if they are measuring key strategic objectives. Identify gaps
between espoused values and measures.
3. Clearly define what you need to know. Be
able to translate criteria and standards into questions that will help
identify opportunities for improvement. If feedback will help for an audit,
you have a strong practical reason for designing quality issues into a
survey.
4. Look for partners. Costs and survey fatigue
affect everyone. If other areas still get the data they need, a centralized
survey may seem attractive.
5. Engage senior leaders. Surveys that are
clearly designed around quality values, translate values into significant
measures and provide opportunity for interpretation across functional
boundaries facilitate the work of leaders.
REFERENCES
1. Nancy Dixon, Common Knowledge: How
Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Business School Press, 2000).
2. Brian S. Morgan and William A. Schiemann,
"Measuring People and Performance: Closing the Gaps," Quality Progress,
January 1999, pp. 47-53.
HENRY J. LINDBORG is executive director and CEO
of the National Institute for Quality Improvement, which provides consulting
in strategic planning, organizational development and assessment. He holds
a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and teaches in a
leadership and quality graduate program. Lindborg is past chair of ASQ's
Education Division and currently serves on the Education and Training
Board.
