“Top Management is Part of the Process”
In the special issue “Employee Survey Special” of the specialist journal Personalwirtschaft from September 2017, research partner Dr. Jürgen Kaschube, in an interview with Winfried Gertz, examines the success factors for exploiting the potential of an employee survey and provides an insight into the pitfalls of organizational development.
“Top Management is Part of the Process”
Employee surveys are becoming increasingly popular, but their potential has not yet been fully exploited.
We spoke about the reasons with psychologist Jürgen Kaschube, who, as a researcher and consultant, gives us an insight into the pitfalls of organizational development.
Interview: Winfried Gertz
Personalwirtschaft: Mr. Kaschube, on what topics and occasions do companies survey their employees?
Jürgen Kaschube:
In addition to the classic mood picture of the workforce in terms of commitment, loyalty and satisfaction, surveys also address legal issues, such as psychological risk assessment. However, employee surveys are usually used as an instrument of organizational development. People want to find out where the problems are in the company and what needs to be worked on as a priority. Last but not least, an employee survey can also be considered as an evaluation tool: How is the culture, leadership or digitalization?
How well are companies doing?
The awareness that survey results should be taken seriously and that work must be done on them has noticeably grown. However, the necessary depth is lacking. People are aware that something should be done, but the organization is not yet reacting adequately. Nevertheless, many organizations have clearly learned from the common mistake of keeping quiet about the employee survey when the results are presented.
What are companies focusing on?
It can be observed that people are taking a more differentiated approach to individual topics. Targeted surveys are increasing. The potential of the instrument is known, but there is often still uncertainty about its operational implementation. Both the project operators and their operational partners have not yet coordinated sufficiently in advance. Marketing, HR or the organizational department often lack reliable resources for measures in the follow-up process.
Under what conditions can an employee survey develop its full potential?
In principle, an employee survey should be understood as part of the overall process of organizational development. It provides key impulses. Operationally, the instrument is ideally geared towards a specific goal and thus provides precise derivations for the follow-up process. A questionnaire with just 20 points is just as unsuitable for this as an overflowing catalog of hundreds of questions. The task is to find a reasonable balance between the depth of the topic and the selection of questions in order to formulate initial approaches for the follow-up process. Ultimately, top management should be aware of its role: it is not the client, but part of the process.
What prevents companies from effectively using the instrument of organizational development?
Let’s stay with top management. It is responsible as a driver for the positive direction of change. It must also be open about where and why there is no scope for change. This obligation defines the role of management in the process, but this understanding is still somewhat lacking here and there. It is advantageous if all parties involved, including the works council and consultants, agree on goals, process and framework conditions beforehand. While banks find this easier thanks to their extensive experience with change projects, medium-sized manufacturing companies need more patience.
A shortcoming of many surveys was and is that management is not happy with the results and the follow-up that is actually necessary is not carried out.
What can you do about this as a scientific consultant?
In preliminary discussions, I have to point out the great opportunities for shared change, but also the risks of an insincere employee survey: Management loses credibility and employee commitment declines. It is more difficult when the topics primarily surveyed are assessed quite well, but there is an unexpected need for action elsewhere. By drawing on research results, I can then show how lurking dangers can be identified early on and targeted countermeasures can be taken.
Employee surveys often deal with leadership issues. Why is leadership being put to the test?
An example: Many decision-makers owe their leadership position to their high level of technical expertise. In the future, the ability to promote employee development and open collaboration at interfaces will be more important. If I do not align leadership with this, I run the risk of managers and their teams becoming entrenched behind wagons in the future.
As a consultant, you want to raise awareness here too. What is the crux of the matter?
Managers are certainly aware of the need for change. I find them to be self-reflective. What is lacking is awareness of the path. How much do we control and how much do we allow participation at the same time? Many managers are struggling to find this balance.
In the age of digitalization, one currently gets the impression that central changes should be implemented almost overnight. How do you slow down such considerations, which are also triggered by economic pressure?
I don’t want to slow things down, but rather raise awareness of the learning process. If you first consider how long it takes an individual person to learn something, you can also realistically estimate how long an organization made up of learning individuals who learn from one another will need to do this. This only works if top management lives the learning process step by step. The task is to break down cultural change into many small learning steps.
What time frame do you think makes sense?
It is not enough to just flip a switch. You have to keep turning it. If you record small successes as “quick wins” in the process, you will develop positively and stay on the ball. In sports, I don’t decide to run a marathon the next day, but rather in about two years. Through targeted training, I gain stamina, which motivates me even more.
Back to the topic of leadership. What blocks companies on the way to more participation, how can they overcome the hurdles?
This problem is particularly evident in the middle management level. Generation Y, for example, demands more freedom for communication, cooperation and self-determined work, but does not experience their superiors as being so participatory. They themselves, in turn, are more likely to be “led” from above. Only when the top management level models this participatory behavior does the change take hold. My boss can do it, then I can do it too – that is the positive driver.
The desire for more intensive communication and cooperation is also expressed in the use of new feedback instruments. How much substance is there in these tools, where do you see their limits?
If the attitude is right, a tool can certainly show its strengths. If it is lacking, however, the tool provides data immediately, but this is of no use to me. A tool does not change the attitude. To put it bluntly, you could also say that technology solves part of the problem and at the same time creates a new one. As a scientist, I need a model into which I can incorporate my findings in order to evaluate them. In relation to employee surveys, this means: I always need the joint interpretation of the results. A tool cannot do that. Basically, IT is just a “facilitator”, not a driver.
Let’s look to the future. You say that the classic employee survey is becoming increasingly obsolete. What exactly are you observing?
The employee survey is becoming a survey of employees on specific topics. The instrument is changing into a platform for exchange in the sense of participation. In the future, we will see a coexistence of the classic employee survey and forms of rapid exchange, with qualitative methods such as open space becoming more important. We must make the instrument more flexible and adapt it more to needs.
What does this mean for consultants?
In view of increasing demands, they will have to offer more quality in the future. They will no longer be able to be successful with a solution offer alone, but only as part of consulting networks. From these, teams with solution-competent skills are recruited for each highly individual problem.