The Pitfalls of Employee Engagement Surveys

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This chapter examines the common challenges and disappointments associated with employee engagement surveys, revealing how they often fail to drive meaningful change within organizations. The speakers discuss the cyclical nature of these surveys, highlighting the disconnect between feedback collection and actionable outcomes, which can lead to frustration for both employees and leaders. By critiquing the methodology and inherent flaws of traditional surveys, the chapter calls into question their effectiveness in truly capturing employee sentiments and fostering genuine engagement.

No burying the lede this week: Employee engagement surveys are broken.

We expect them to tell us everything about a workplace’s culture—but they often miss the mark, capturing just a sliver of what's going on and usually only symptoms instead of underlying causes.

As leaders try to make sense of the data, there’s frequently a lot of smoke chasing, but nobody can tell where the fire is, or if there’s one at all. Add to that employee distrust around anonymity, spun-up initiatives to make changes that never go anywhere, and the fact that most surveys don’t even ask the right questions, and it’s no wonder everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline worker, suspects these surveys do more harm than good.

In this episode, Rodney and Sam explore what “engagement” actually means, what organizations should be measuring instead and why, and how to truly understand the health of your organization.

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