26 Feb Why Your Surveys Are Not Working
Why Your Surveys Are Not Working
For many businesses, the idea of surveying is a quick and easy way to “talk” to customers and staff.
Whether it be to receive feedback of a service or product, or to gain a broad understanding of your employee morale and loyalty, many of these surveys are long and tedious. At times they are also constructed to direct the reader to a desired answer, rather than the truth. This results in a lack of interest and inaccurate answers.
So, do organisational surveys really qualify as a true consultation? If you are looking to strategically optimise your business, the simple answer is no. No, surveys do not qualify as true interaction.
The most effective way to gain the unbiased answer that management seeks from employees and customers is to talk face to face. Yet, many in the managerial positions believe this involves many hours at a large expense. However, conducting a broad and unfocused survey often leads to bad and inaccurate data.
The three main causes of accruing bad data through surveys are:
- Sampling bias: This occurs when a sample doesn’t accurately represent the population.
- Questionnaire flaws: How the survey is designed can have an effect on the quality of data that is collected. For example, a multiple-choice question may not provide the needed choice.
- The interviewer effect: This can happen when the questions can be interpreted in different ways as they are not worded correctly, or differently on each survey.
Gaining a clear understanding of what your customers, clients, employees and other stakeholders need is not always going to be successfully conveyed through a generic survey. Strategically optimising your business is going to take time, if the time and commitment is not put into it, then long-term success will be inhibited.
Nothing is better than a face to face conversation when trying to obtain an answer. There are many different ways to implement direct interviews to achieve this successfully within your business, and “having no time” is no excuse. Are you ready to find out what your stakeholders need?
Contact Hubb Strategic Workplace Consultants today.