Culture and Employee Opinion Surveys

“...the only thing of real importance leaders do is to create and manage culture.... and the unique talent of leaders is their ability to work with cultures.”

Edgar Schein

Organisations may use an Organisational Culture Survey and/or an Employee Opinion Survey as tools to identify their current organisational culture and obtain valuable feedback from their employees.

These can effectively monitor the state of your company’s psychological contract with its employees and are valuable tools which allow your employees to express their views and opinions on a range of issues.

Managers can monitor employee morale and motivation, enabling action to be taken before problems arise.

By understanding your employees' views about working in your company, you can reduce staff turnover and use the information to design strategies to attract future staff.

A climate survey will also allow you to identify potential problems and rectify them before they develop into major difficulties. Employee satisfaction is one of the critical success factors to customer satisfaction.

The key outcomes from conducting such a survey include:

•  Highlighting the key areas for management to focus on;
•  Providing information about whether or not the organisation is on the right track in executing its business and strategic plans;
•  Helping monitor the progress of organisational change initiatives;
•  Facilitating two way communication with employees;
•  Engaging people in the process of change by asking them to evaluate the current programs and offer suggestions for action.

The Human Synergistics Organisation Culture Inventory (OCI)

The Human Synergistics Organisation Culture Inventory (OCI) is a sophisticated framework for organisations to identify and develop their actual and preferred culture. This enables the organisation to develop a Culture Development Program to turn their culture around to be constructive and outcomes oriented. The OCI examines:

• the ideal or preferred culture
• the existing culture
• the elements which are driving the culture
• the areas that may need special attention
• the gaps between the ideal culture and the existing culture
• how to close the gaps.

This will create a benchmark for all future surveys, and enable you to benchmark with other organisations who use the Human Synergistics culture model.

Once this information is known a comprehensive culture development plan can be prepared which will give a blueprint to work by in creating the ideal culture.

It is important to understand that the Human Synergistics culture survey measures specific cultural drivers. This information cannot be gathered through staff attitude/climate surveys which measure different aspects of the organisation, and is therefore not a replacement for such surveys. Hence we find that some clients use both types of surveys to provide maximum information.

The diagrams below illustrate how an adaptive culture returns far greater benefits to your organisation than a non-adaptive culture.

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE	ADAPTIVE CULTURE	NON – ADAPTIVE CULTURE
	(Constructive)	(Aggressive/Defensive)
Increase in Revenue	682%	166%
Expansion of Workforce	282%	36%
Growth of Stock Prices	901%	74%
Improvement in Net Incomes	756%	1%

Source: Kotter J. P. and Heskett J.L. (1992)

Further Reading:

Case Study: Impact of Management style on Change Management and Staff Development (download .pdf 376KB)
Case Study: Creating a Customer Service Culture in the Public Sector (download .pdf 242KB)

Employee Opinion Surveys

The Employee Opinion Survey is based on the leading International Baldrige Criteria for performance excellence, an internationally recognised framework that reflects a balanced scorecard approach to organisational effectiveness.

As such, not only will it identify the 'gaps' in your organisation and define the priorities, it may also be used to benchmark your organisation against other Australian and New Zealand organisations.

The Employee Opinion Survey measures satisfaction across key themes which include:

• Customers
  
• Communications
  
• Culture
  
• Motivation
  
• Leadership
  
• Accountability
  
• Teamwork

For further information about the Employee Opinion Survey, refer to our Fact Sheet (download .pdf 206KB)

The Process:

1: Project Planning

Pre-survey consultations with employees
Optional focus groups to define survey issues

2: Survey

Design questionnaire, pilot testing, review of pilot results
Distribution and collection of questionnaires
Analysis of findings (quantitative and qualitative) and interpretation of findings
Report on survey results
Feedback to key stakeholders

3: Post survey consultations with employees

Focus groups to enrich the data
Optional Analysis of findings and preparation of report
Feedback to key stakeholders

4: Acting on survey results

Action planning and implementation