Culture and Employee Opinion Surveys

Culture and employee opinion surveys are valuable tools which allow your employees to express their views and opinions on a range of issues.

We are currently undertaking a major employee climate survey for NSW Health to assess the satisfaction of staff across a range of different large hospitals. The response rate to the online survey has been around 80%, a great result considering the diversity, complexity and 24x7 nature of the various locations and staff groups, from doctors, nurses to administrative staff.

What our clients say..

"I was very pleased with the employee opinion survey Pacific Consulitng undertook for our Department and the way Ross debriefed the staff to develop specific action plans for improving the way we do things" Jim Coyne, Manager Systems and New Technologies,
Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

"We have used the results of Pacific's employee survey to develop our company and our staff with great results" John Muhary, Director, Pro Management Group.

Why consider Culture and Employee Opinion Surveys?

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. Employee satisfaction is also considered one of the critical success factors to customer satisfaction. Managers can monitor employee morale and motivation, enabling action to be taken before problems arise.

We work with clients to design and implement 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. Clients find it most valuable to use these specific scales to highlight the areas needing the greatest and more urgent attention.

Surveys can:

• Provide information about whether or not the organisation is on the right track in execution of its business and strategic plans;
• Helps monitor the progress of initiative that have been started ;
• Facilitates two way communication with employees;
• Makes feedback to employees easier and quicker due to low volume of information to be communicated;
• Engages people in the process of change by asking them to evaluate the current programs and offer suggestions for action.

“...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

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