Culture Surveys - A Brief Intro
62% of employees claim toxic culture was the main reason for quitting their job. (FlexJobs)
This next stat is speculation, but I would be willing to guess 90% of the time bosses do not realize the [real] main reason their employees quit. Think about it... An employee gets burnt out due to cultural issues so they apply to different jobs. They get an offer for more pay and when they go to put in their two weeks, what do they tell their boss? Nine out of ten employees are going to say, “I’m leaving because I got a job offer for more money.” Because… that’s the easy answer. That answer avoids a more difficult conversation. Telling the boss their culture sucks is a conversation most employees wouldn’t want to have on their way out. Not only that, what if they need to use their boss as a reference one day? Very few people want to take a chance at causing issues when they already have a path to greener grass.
And to be honest, bosses with toxic cultures don’t mind hearing the “leaving for more money” excuse. It’s an easy excuse to live with, and it’s easy to explain to others. They can justify it… “Well they got a 20% higher offer and we just couldn’t afford to compete with that right now. It’s crazy what these other companies are willing to pay. No way it’s sustainable. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come begging for their job back in two months.” Nope. Not going to happen. Because it was never really about the money in the first place.
And companies usually try to find out the real reasons their employees quit during exit interviews. Don’t get me wrong, exit Interviews can be great... but they're reactive tools. Their purpose, normally, is to garner feedback in hopes of making the company better, and maybe preventing more employees from leaving. I’ve rarely seen this happen because these interviews are usually completed to check a box for HR. On top of that, the departing employee’s feedback is typically either half-hearted and watered down or discredited by management (i.e, “We can’t trust their responses. They never fit in here anyways.”)
If our main goal of an exit interview is to get better as a company… isn’t there a better way than to ask employees as they walk out the door for the last time?
One answer? Culture Surveys, or “Stay Interviews.”
What is a Culture Survey?
Put simply, a Culture Survey is a survey given to current employees that elicits feedback on what’s working with the culture, and what’s not.
At Axiom, we use REACH Culture Surveys with our clients. REACH Culture Surveys ask a variety of questions aimed at determining the areas of strength and weakness in an organization’s culture and leadership. There are certainly others out there, but we have yet to find one as comprehensive, straight forward, and useful as REACH’s.
The key elements of a great Culture Survey include…
Anonymity & transparency - The employee must believe their feedback will remain anonymous. They must also believe they are safe to give difficult/hard-to-hear feedback. If you are too insecure as a leader to allow your employees to share difficult feedback anonymously, well… we’ll save that for another blog post.
Encourage comments - REACH Culture Surveys ask several questions and give multiple choice answers (i.e., Agree, Disagree, Strongly Agree, etc.), however, we get the best feedback from the comments sections. We encourage every employee to be as transparent as possible with their comments - this is usually where the most helpful information comes from.
Ask purposeful questions - Questions like, “How would you describe our culture?” are okay, but try to get more specific. Questions like, “Do you believe your daily contributions play a significant role in the success of our company?” are far better.
Do something with the results - One of the most discouraging things to employees is when they speak up… and nothing happens. After you receive the results, you need to acknowledge the overall sentiments of the team and share what your plan is to improve on their suggestions.
While this may seem like a shameless plug… We highly recommend having a third party conduct the survey. When company’s try to handle these internally, there is typically a level of skepticism around the true anonymity and ability to be transparent. You are far more likely to collect false responses out of fear - which would actually be more detrimental to your company than if you hadn’t done one at all. Employees may give you the impression everything is great (due to fear that it’s not actually anonymous) when in reality, it isn’t.
The third party would inform the employees of everything they needed to know beforehand, then send the culture surveys, collect the results, then pass them along to management with suggestions on what action to take as a response.
We have seen culture surveys change company’s cultures in truly incredible ways. Of course, like we mentioned, it’s not the survey itself that is magical. It’s simply a tool that collects the feedback necessary to identify what needs to change in order to get better. Even our clients with the best and most fulfilling cultures still benefit and learn something new every time they conduct a culture survey.
Feel free to reach out to us if you have questions or want to learn more about our culture surveys. If you can’t tell… we’re pretty passionate about them.