For many years I worked in the corporate environment in large organizations. These organizations had substantial Human Resource and Information Technology departments. When it came to running an employee survey it was only natural that they should use these vast resources. Typically response rates to employee surveys were less than 25%. These response rates were considered to be the norm and aside from a few comments lamenting the low response rate, no one paid much attention.
Today I am on the other side of the fence. I have worked with corporate clients for the past nine years providing various kinds of employee surveys. Recently, I had the opportunity of speaking with HR staff from several organizations. These organizations were scouring the internet to collect questions so that they could create their own employee survey. Once they assembled these questions they were planning on running their own survey process in-house.
At first blush this does not sound like an unreasonable approach. However, I asked the HR staff to consider the following.
Privacy and Confidentiality
One of the most significant issues from an employee’s perspective...