As you can see, we’re talking a LOT about measurement in May. But so many times when I talk to communicators about conducting internal surveys, I hear this:

“Surveys just don’t work for our organization. No one pays attention to them.” When it comes to using surveys to measure your internal communications, does this statement ring true to you and your organization?

It’s a popular issue with many companies and organizations of all sizes. In my opinion, you need to start out by identifying why they don’t work, and it usually comes down to these five reasons:

1. You survey too much

Take a look at the calendar and see how often you are sending surveys. Even better, compare your schedule to other departments that may be sending surveys as well (marketing, HR, etc.). This can be a very eye opening exercise, and a crucial one. I mean, c’mon! How do you expect anyone to get any work done? Collaborate with other departments and do more with less.

2. It’s too long

One of my past clients had to deal with a consulting group who considered themselves to be “engagement specialists.” This meant that they saw it necessary to send out an engagement survey that was 106 questions long. That’s right. 106. And, do you think they were surprised when only less than five percent of the internal audience submitted a survey? Or were they surprised that out of those submitted, 90% of them were only partially completed?

Well, no they weren’t, because this consulting group consisted of the type of people who give consultants a bad name.  We need to respect our audiences, and especially with an internal survey, realize that people are trying to get their work done. Unless there is a REALLY good incentive (extra days off or a brand new car) don’t expect people to trudge through lengthy surveys. It’s just plain unrealistic.

It’s also good practice to tell employees how much time it should approximately take to complete the survey. By giving them a little insight into how much time they need to set aside to take your survey, you’ll help reduce the number of incomplete surveys.

Finally, when choosing which questions to include in your survey, ask yourself this question: “What will I do with the answers I receive?” If you don’t have an answer to this question, then why are you asking for this information in your survey?

You’re not only cluttering up your survey, you’re setting false expectations. If people are asked their opinion, they expect you to do something with it. If you can’t, simply don’t ask. The best surveys are all about keeping things simple.

3. Participants don’t understand the value or purpose.

This might be one of the most important reasons why surveys don’t work for your organization. If your audience doesn’t understand why they should give you their input, then why should they take the time?

When you administer the survey, let them know why their input matters. What will you do with the information? And, most importantly, AFTER the survey was sent and the results are tabulated, follow-up! Communicate the results at a high-level and then tell them what will be done based off the results.

Finally, don’t be afraid to use incentives. From cafeteria gift cards to company baseball hats, you’d be surprised what works. If you have the budget for it, use it to your advantage.

4. The survey isn’t relevant to all of your participants

Before you send out your survey ask yourself these two questions. 1) Can everyonewho takes this survey answer all the questions? 2) Can everyone who takes this survey understand these questions?

If your answer is “no” to either of these questions you either have to a) re-think who you’re sending your survey to, or b) edit down your questions so they are relevant to everyone.

5. You don’t have manager buy-in

So many times employees don’t think they are “allowed” to take the time to participate in these surveys. I always recommend internal communicators work with their management team to help increase employee response on surveys.

Again, let them know why it’s valuable and why it’s important to get their employee’s input. Then, ask them to discuss the survey at their next team meeting and encourage employees to fill them out.

If your management team is reluctant, then you need to start at the top and get your executive or leadership team on board and have them encourage managers to get employees to participate.

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar to you? If so, think about doing things differently. In good time you’ll start to see your response numbers on the rise … along with the valuable input you need to create communications with impact.

In the communications biz, we like to throw the word “engagement” around a lot. We’re  always trying to figure out if our workforce is “highly engaged,” or “somewhat engaged” or “disengaged” or some other kind of engaged.

But the problem that none of the high-priced engagement consultants want to admit is, it’s really, really hard to tell if an employee is engaged in his work, and in the company as a whole.

Supposedly, these consultants, like Gallup, have ways of telling. They do intensive surveys, and ask magic questions (such as, “Do you have a best friend at work?” and “Do you feel your coworkers do great work?”) that will reveal the level of someone’s engagement.

Which is all bullshit, of course. Because you can’t tell anything from a survey like that. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you are a male employee in a manufacturing environment. And let’s say that you are having a torrid sex affair with a female coworker.

It’s a scenario everybody should be allowed to experience once in their lives: sex at work!

And you have all kinds of cool code words and phrases with your coworker/lover.

For instance, if you say: “I’m going to get a bagel. Do you want one?” It really means:

“Grab the grease gun and go wait for me in the janitor’s closet.”

And, “Where are you going for lunch?” really means:

“Go in the tool shed and take off everything except your hard hat and your boots.”

And all kinds of cool stuff like that.

So you’re having sex two or three times a day, while you’re supposed to be working? And why can you do that? Because you’re not really doing any work! In addition to screwing your coworker, you’re also screwing the pooch on any one of a number of projects.

And how can you get away with this? Because your boss doesn’t give a shit! He’s been on the job forever, and he’s just treading water until retirement. On top of that, he’s a raging alcoholic who suffers from back-breaking, mind-crushing hangovers every morning, up until 11:30, when he goes to lunch for two hours and drinks seven beers.

Then, in the afternoon, he sits at his computer and plays with the stock market.

Now, let’s say you’re that employee who is having sex on the job rather than working. And now, the annual “Engagement Survey” comes in. You’ve got to answer all these questions about your boss.

What would you do? I know what I would do . . . I’d give the son of a bitch the highest ratings I possibly could, that’s what! Because if I grade him low, they’re going to make him actually work! And I don’t want that!

If you think this is unrealistic, you’ve never heard of the “Mark Five to Survive” mentality. I first heard about it when I was doing some focus groups for a large company that did this kind of engagement survey every year. In the group, I asked the participants about it.

“Oh, yeah,” said one woman. “We call that the ‘write five to survive’ survey.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, in my best focus-group-moderator voice.

“It means if you just give the manager all fives across the board, they’ll leave you alone,” she told me. “If you give him lower ratings, they’re going to start messing with you.”

Of course they are! Who wants someone from corporate to come nosing around, trying to fix your work group when it isn’t broken to begin with?

That’s why I’m so suspicious of those engagement surveys.

Communicators, where do you stand? Do you think it’s worth it to spend the tens of thousands of dollars that some companies spend to try and measure “engagement?” If so, why? If not, why not?

They should, and the only way to find out if they are is to get out and have conversations with the people you’re trying to reach

You have a kick-ass website that really resonates with your target audience. It reflects your brand: cool, hip, a bit irreverent and modern. In fact your marketing efforts have won awards!

Communicators … high fives all around, right? Well … not so fast.

Here’s the deal. Only your employees can actually bring your brand to life in the eyes of your audience. You can have the best website and award winning marketing efforts, but they mean nothing if your internal brand doesn’t match up.

This was the situation at Houlihan’s restaurants. They nailed their brand … at least externally. Internally … well, not so much. To their credit, they recognized the gap.

That’s when we got the call to work on a really fun project. The goal:  help them with their internal training materials. When we started the project, this is what their funky, cool award-winning website looked like:

And this is what their internal training materials for employees looked like:

Antiquated. Old-fashioned. Walls of text. Just plain boring.  Lots of jargon. In other words, like just about every other company in their industry.

You can see how see how dangerous this situation is. They’re in the business of selling not only food—but a complete dining and drinking experience. The materials they use to build that experience looked like they came from the 1950s – certainly not the way to get your employees onboard and ready to deliver the hip, cool and fun vibe you’re selling.

The fact of the matter is the line between external and internal communications is blurred, if not erased all together. Thanks to social media, anyone and everyone can spread the word about how good or bad you are in seconds.

You’ve got to get it right and make sure your internal communications match your external brand. You’ve got to make sure your employees not only work according to your brand and values but they reflect your brand and values.

So, how did we start the transformation? First, we listened. This was the crucial element of this project. We started by talking to employees and leaders throughout the organization.

We had them tell us what was working and what wasn’t. What did they love the most about their jobs? What was most challenging? How did they use the current training materials? In a perfect world, what would the training program look like? What kind of people are hired at Houliahan’s? What would the perfect candidate for a position look like?

The answers and insights to these questions were pure gold. When you look at the old materials, anyone could go in and just edit the copy. That part was easy. The trick was to understand the program, the culture and the business so we could bring the training program to the next level, not just update the materials.

There were three major ‘A-ha’ moments after we talked to the Houlihan’s employees:

1. Clearly a good explanation of the culture and personality was missing from the training materials. Dry, corporate canned copy along with some pretty boring graphics wasn’t getting the job done.
2. There was too much stuff. Most of the trainers and managers didn’t even use half of the materials given to them. They literally cherry picked the pages (out of hundreds of pages of information available to them) that they actually used and basically built their own training structure. The rest of it just sat on the shelf, collecting dust.
3. There wasn’t enough about sales. Outside of serving, one of the most important responsibilities a server has in any restaurant is to sell more food and drinks. After reviewing over a thousand pages of training materials, not only was the sales aspect of the job not highlighted, it was completely absent.

We completely blew up the training pieces they had and we simplified. Hundreds of pages were cut from the training materials and put online for additional reference. We updated the copy to match their brand, culture and demographic. We paid attention to the graphics, and made them just as important as the words themselves.

We also created two pieces: A culture piece and a sales piece. These are the foundation of their training program and really help trainers introduce the Houlihan’s culture and explain the experience that the servers are expected to deliver.

Culture Piece (click for a closer look):

New design by Collision Labs

Sales Piece (click for a closer look):

Most important, we changed the tone and style of the writing. We went from “corporate” to “creative.” We got hip. We spoke the language of the employees we were trying to reach.

The writing became more conversational, more relaxed, and easy to skim and still hit the main messages.

In short, working with the talented folks in Houlihan’s marketing and communications departments, we helped create a new internal “voice” for Houlihan’s. One that employees would identify with and pay attention to.

But before we ever started writing, before we ever started swapping drafts with the Houlihan’s folks, we listened. Changing the training materials wasn’t just about good copywriting. We first had to understand the culture.

That’s something every communicator should remember. In order to reach, engage, motivate, and educate your employees, and help build an internal culture that matches your external brand,  you first have to listen to your audience.

And then ask yourself: Do the communication pieces you create support what you’re trying to do? Does your internal voice reflect your brand, your desired culture, and the people you’re trying to reach?

If not, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. If you’re struggling with this, it’s time to get out of that cube and start talking to people at all levels in the organization.

Then, and only then, can you make the adjustments necessary to get noticed. And getting noticed is half the battle.

While some companies spend thousands of dollars on useless “engagement surveys” smart communicators do their own thing to drive employee engagement

This month, I’m giving a speech in Warsaw, Poland on the communicator’s role in employee engagement. And make no mistake: I believe a strategic, creative communications team do a lot to drive employee engagement.

But where I’m skeptical is how folks then turn around and measure that engagement level. And I’m also skeptical about what some companies think engagement really is.

In the communications biz, we throw the word “engagement” around a lot. We’re always trying to figure out if our workforce is “highly engaged,” or “somewhat engaged” or “disengaged” or some other kind of engaged.

But the problem that none of the high-priced engagement consultants want to admit is, it’s really, really hard to tell if an employee is engaged in his work, and in the company as a whole.

Supposedly, these consultants, like Gallup, have ways of telling. They do intensive, incredibly expensive surveys, and ask magic questions (such as, “Do you have a best friend at work?” and “Do you feel your coworkers do great work?”) that will reveal the level of someone’s engagement.

Which is all bullshit, of course. Because you can’t tell anything from a survey like that. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you are a male employee in a manufacturing environment. And let’s say that you are having a torrid sex affair with a female coworker.

It’s a scenario everybody should be allowed to experience once in their lives: sex at work!

And you have all kinds of cool code words and phrases with your coworker/lover.

For instance, if you say: “I’m going to get a bagel. Do you want one?” It really means:

“Grab the grease gun and go wait for me in the janitor’s closet.”

And, “Where are you going for lunch?” really means:

“Go in the tool shed and take off everything except your hard hat and your boots.”

And all kinds of cool stuff like that.

So you’re having sex two or three times a day, while you’re supposed to be working? And why can you do that? Because you’re not really doing any work! In addition to screwing your coworker, you’re also screwing the pooch on any one of a number of projects.

And how can you get away with this? Because your boss doesn’t give a shit! He’s been on the job forever, and he’s just treading water until retirement. On top of that, he’s a raging alcoholic who suffers from back-breaking, mind-crushing hangovers every morning, up until 11:30, when he goes to lunch for two hours and drinks seven beers.

Then, in the afternoon, he sits at his computer and plays with the stock market.

Now, let’s say you’re that employee who is having sex on the job rather than working. And now, the annual “Engagement Survey” comes in. You’ve got to answer all these questions about your boss.

What would you do? I know what I would do . . . I’d give the son of a bitch the highest ratings I possibly could, that’s what! Because if I grade him low, they’re going to make him actually work! And I don’t want that!

If you think this is unrealistic, you’ve never heard of the “Mark Five to Survive” mentality. I first heard about it when I was doing some focus groups for a large company that did this kind of engagement survey every year. In the group, I asked the participants about it.

“Oh, yeah,” said one woman. “We call that the ‘write five to survive’ survey.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, in my best focus-group-moderator voice.

“It means if you just give the manager all fives across the board, they’ll leave you alone,” she told me. “If you give him lower ratings, they’re going to start messing with you.”

Of course they are! Who wants someone from corporate to come nosing around, trying to fix your work group when it isn’t broken to begin with?

That’s why I’m so suspicious of those engagement surveys.

Now, I’m not saying communicators can’t do a whole lot to influence engagement. That’s what I’ll be talking about in Warsaw.

There are tons of things communicators can do to drive engagement . . . and none of them have to do with expensive engagement surveys that can be misleading at best, and completely off base at worst.

Next month, I’ll talk about some of the ways communicators can influence engagement. So stay tuned.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when it’s time to write a communication plan. Cindy Crescenzo shares an idea to help you create a plan that is relevant and realistic.