Someone I know is looking for information on the Gallup Employee Engagement Survey. The questions are:
1 I know what is expected of me at work.
2 I have the materials and equipment I need to do my job right.
3 At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4 In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5 My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6 There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7 At work, my opinions seem to count.
8 The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9 My associates (fellow employees) are committed to doing quality
work.
10 I have a best friend at work.
11 In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress. 12 This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
I’ve done a bit of googling and there’s a ton out there on Employee Engagement Surveys, but in my (admittedly cursory) looking I can’t find much in the way of critical materials… Are the bosses just throwing away money? Or does this stuff have a use for them? One article at a job seeker site linked disengagement with efforts to prevent unionization: “In Europe, union coverage is often set at the industrial or regional level, so individual employers have less incentive to foster social relations at work to discourage union organizing.” Another piece from a blog by either a scab or management also links disengagement with unionization (duh), and adds that when the time comes
Communicators should be ready to discuss organized labor with workers. We need to be prepared to articulate what the company is doing right. It’s our task, or it will be handed off to HR or Legal. And you know what happens then…
HR or Legal get more jobs and Communication gets less? I don’t know. In any case, the “articulate what’s right” strikes as at most only a part of the surveys, but I could be wrong. They’re not writing questions, just yes/no or numerical ranges of agreement/disagreement. A bit more googling, turned up these two blog entries on the topic, much clearer. Disengaged = bad employee (”disruptive, unproductive, disloyal and unenthused” as one of those two blog articles defines it). The point, then, seems to be that the surveys are, at least in part, a way for management to get employees to self-report, by having them answer questions and correlating certain answers to likely misbehavors. (It reminds me of when I applied for a job at WalMart one of the times I’ve been hard up. There was a pre-employment screening, questions like “it is always/sometimes/rarely/never wrong to steal from your employer [or to show up to work high, etc etc]”. There were also a number of scenario questions a la “I know my co-worker’s spouse has just been laid off and they can’t afford their mortgage or their child’s medical bills. I see my co-worker take a ten dollar bill out of the register and put it into their pocket. I do/do not tell a manager.”) I’m also told that in some cases employee engagment can be used as a factor in evaluating the frontline managerial staff (who, in a situation where the workers are unionized, are often among the most vulnerable and pressed-upon people in the shop. They get fucked over a lot when push comes to shove. It serves them right for being management, though they’re just the pus, not the disease itself.) That’s probably another function, to police and manage the lower level managerial staff, to motivate them to get one with their managing. Have to read and think more about this. Any of the handful of people who peruse this site got any experience with these surveys, or read material on them?