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The employee survey: benefits, problems in practice, and the relation with the
high performance organization

Article  in  Strategic HR Review · October 2014

DOI: 10.1108/SHR-07-2014-0041

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 Strategic HR Review
The employee survey: benefits, problems in practice, and the relation with the high performance
organization
André de Waal
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André de Waal , (2014),"The employee survey: benefits, problems in practice, and the relation with the high performance
organization", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 13 Iss 6 pp. 227 - 232
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 The employee survey: benefits, problems
in practice, and the relation with the high
performance organization
André de Waal
Downloaded by Doctor A.A. de Waal At 09:16 24 November 2014 (PT)
André de Waal is based
at Maastricht School of
Management, Maastricht,
The Netherlands.
DOI 10.1108/SHR-07-2014-0041
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of the employee in the high performance
organization. One of the management techniques which has gained much popularity the past 15
years is the employee satisfaction survey. Many organizations, both profit and non-profit, use a
yearly questionnaire, which measures the satisfaction of employees with all sorts of things in the
organization. Yet recently, dissenting opinions can be heard that are critical of what they call “the
yearly employee survey ritual”. The criticism focuses on the results of the survey which are not dealt
with adequately so that the employee survey gradually has become a dissatisfier for employees.
Another phenomenon is that organizations that are considering to conduct a high performance
organization (HPO) diagnosis renounce this using the justification that “we are already doing an
employee survey.”
Design/methodology/approach – In this article the purpose of the employee survey, its advantages,
its problems in practice and its relation with the HPO Framework are discussed.
Findings – It is shown how the employee survey can be improved. In addition, its is shown that the
employee survey and the HPO Framework are two different but complementary techniques that can and
should be used in conjunction with each other.
Originality/value – This article is one of the first to discuss the relation between two important
management improvement techniques: the employee survey and the HPO framework.
Keywords Employee survey, High performance organization
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
One of the management techniques which has gained much popularity the past fifteen
years is the employee satisfaction survey (Hartley, 2001; Wiley, 2012). Many organizations,
both profit and non-profit, use a yearly questionnaire, which measures the satisfaction of
employees with all sorts of things in the organization. Yet recently, dissenting opinions can
be heard that are critical of what they call “the yearly employee survey ritual”. The criticism
focuses on the results of the survey which are not dealt with adequately so that the
employee survey gradually has become a dissatisfier for employees and has not helped
the organization to improve in a sustainable manner. Another phenomenon is that
organizations that are considering to conduct a high performance organization (HPO)
diagnosis – in which it is evaluated by means of a questionnaire and interviews how high
performing an organization currently is and what improvements are needed to achieve high
performance (de Waal, 2012a) – in the end, do not do this diagnosis using the justification
that “we are already doing an employee survey”. In this article, the purpose of the employee
survey, its advantages, its problems in practice and its relation with high performance are
discussed. In the latter, it is shown that the employee survey and the HPO Diagnosis are
two different but complementary techniques that can and should be used in conjunction
with each other.
VOL. 13 NO. 6 2014, pp. 227-232, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 227
 ‘‘Employee satisfaction is equated to employee engagement.’’

Benefits of the employee survey

In the literature, it is has been commonly accepted that there is a strong positive relation
between employee satisfaction and organizational results (Heskett et al., 1997; Lau, 2000;
Schneider et al., 2003; Irvine, 2009; Pech, 2009; Gable et al., 2010). Employees that are
more satisfied will help customers better, which in turn makes these more satisfied, which
increases the chances on customers being loyal and returning to the organization to spend
more (Temkin, 2011; Xu and Van der Heijden, 2005). This even applies to employees who
do not have direct customer contact: if they are more satisfied they will perform their tasks
with more energy and higher quality which causes increased (internal) performance.
Employee satisfaction is equated to employee engagement: the higher the satisfaction with
an organization, the higher the commitment to this organization (Bowles and Cooper,
2009). To measure employee satisfaction (or engagement) organizations often use a
periodic employee survey. In this survey, employees are asked to rate their satisfaction with
the organization on a number of aspects. Individual scores are averaged and analyzed,
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often by the Human Resources department. From the analysis, several attention points are
derived which lead to improvement actions by management. By executing these
improvement actions, the satisfaction and engagement with the organization will increase
which in turn will cause the organization to perform better. This makes the employee survey
one of the most important management improvement techniques (Hartley, 2001).

Problems in practice
Unfortunately, in practice, the employee survey leads to less benefits than expected. This
is because there are four main well-known problems with the survey:

1. The results of the employee survey are hardly acted upon by management. A lot of
time, effort and money have been spend on questioning employees but subsequently
there is hardly any improvement action. Reasons for this inactivity are downplaying the
survey results, not enough knowledge to remove the sources of discontent, or the belief
that measuring satisfaction equals creating satisfaction. In addition, there is not enough
time to address all issues, as the employee survey is conducted every year. Managers
do not get sufficient time to substantially work on the issues before the next survey is
upon them. So they have to turn to band-aids that do not work sufficiently. As a logical
consequence both managers and employees get frustrated: managers because they
cannot get the survey scores up enough, and employees because they do not feel
taken seriously by management as their grievances are not addressed (Mastrangelo,
2009; Edwards et al., 1997; Sugheir et al., 2011).
2. The employee survey does not measure what management thinks it is measuring and
what it can act upon: “We now have a complete picture of whether employees are
satisfied or not and we can do something about it”. However, not all aspects of working
life can be measured in terms of (dis)satisfaction. Sometimes the survey simply
measures employee understanding (“Do you know the organization’s strategy?”) not
whether they are satisfied with it; or measures if things are present according to
employees (“Are there enough possibilities for you to suggest ideas?”) and again not
whether they are satisfied with this; or it is unclear whether satisfaction is measured on
function, manager or organization. In addition, the survey can inquire about aspects
management cannot or is not allowed to fix (“Are you satisfied with your pay?”). The
problem is that employees, because their opinion is asked about these things, get the
impression management will do something about issues, while this in reality it is not

PAGE 228 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 13 NO. 6 2014

 going to happen. Again this creates frustration and resentment (Bowles and Cooper,
2009; Mastrangelo, 2009).
3. The employee survey is either too short and is limited to only issues that directly affect
employee satisfaction, or much too long and asking after so many issues that it is
impossible for management to address these all in the coming year (Mastrangelo,
2009; Kennedy and Daim, 2010).
4. The employee survey only asks about the satisfaction of employees with internal issues
and affairs that directly affects them, like working conditions, work environment and the
exploitation of their potential by the organization. This strict focus on “internal employee
satisfaction” causes potential relevant issues to be excluded. In addition, not enough
connection is made between employees’ opinions and how these affect the execution
of the organization’s strategy. Through this, issues which have to do with the effectivity
of the organization, suppliers or customers, quality of management and quality of
interaction and dialogue between managers and employees and cooperation between
organizational units stay off screen; issues of which employees often have a good
picture, as they are dealing with these on a daily basis. The consequence is that
management gets a partial view on the organization and by definition cannot take
comprehensive improvement actions to create a HPO (Wiley et al., 2006; Sugheir et al.,
2011; Wiley, 2012).
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What to do?
The benefits of doing an employee survey are evident, but so are the problems. It seems
in recent years the latter have gained the upper hand, explaining why organizations seem
to be loosing their taste for conducting another employee survey. Therefore, there is an
urgent need for the employee survey to be improved. This requires addressing and
remedying the four aforementioned problems as follows:
 The first problem – Poor follow-up of the survey results – is in fact not a limitation of the
survey itself but of management as insufficiently reacting on research results
unfortunately also happens with many other studies. There are several reasons for this,
but the main one is lack of discipline. When management decides to conduct an
employee survey it in fact makes a promise to employees: “We find your opinion
important and we pledge that if there are problems we will deal with these”. Such a
promise requires a degree of discipline to actually tackle the problems adequately.
This behaviour is part of a continuous improvement culture and of a performance
culture in which promises are always kept.
 The second problem – Not accurately measuring employee satisfaction or not being
able to act upon the results – is relatively easy to solve by checking the survey
questions thoroughly on whether they indeed measure satisfaction and also measure
aspects which actually can be influenced by management. The questions which do not
satisfy these requirements have to be changed or removed.
 The third and fourth problems – The scope of the employee survey being too limited –
require a more fundamental solution. These problems ask for a holistic approach in
which management looks broader than just employee satisfaction to be able to create
a HPO. It means that the employee survey on itself cannot be improved in such a way
that the third and fourth problems can be remedied. Thus, the employee survey will

‘‘The benefits of doing an employee survey are evident, but so

are the problems.’’

VOL. 13 NO. 6 2014 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 229

 never be able to provide the information required to get the holistic overview of an
organization to identify and pinpoint the issues which need to be addressed, so that an
organization can become high performing. There is strong scientific evidence that this
holistic overview can be obtained by a combination of measuring the status on the
characteristics of an HPO and augmenting this with an employee survey (Wiley, 2012).
Therefore, the organization has to conduct an HPO Diagnosis to obtain the status on all
the important organizational characteristics. In the next two sections, this HPO
Diagnosis, and its relation with the employee survey are described in more detail.

The HPO Diagnosis

Based on a review of 290 academic and management publications in the area of high
performance and excellence, the characteristics of high performance were identified
(de Waal, 2012a). These were put in a questionnaire that was distributed worldwide.
Approximately 3,200 respondents from 1,475 organizations (both large, medium sized and
small; both profit, non-profit and governmental) in 50 countries filled in this questionnaire in
which they indicated how their organization scored on these characteristics and performed
against their peer groups. Subsequent statistical analysis of the collected data showed that
there are 35 characteristics that have a direct positive relation with competitive
performance. These characteristics always appear in five groups, the so-called HPO
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factors. When an organization scores higher on these five HPO factors than its peer group,
the organization also surpasses its peers financially and non-financially. Subsequent
testing revealed that these five factors are valid for both all types of company sizes, all
industries and all countries (de Waal, 2012b).
The first HPO factor is the quality of management of the organization. In an HPO, managers
at all organizational levels maintain trust relationships with employees. They work with
integrity and are a role model to others: they are honest and sincere, show commitment,
enthusiasm and respect, have a strong set of ethics and standards, are credible and
consistent, maintain a sense of vulnerability and are not self-complacent. They are
decisive, action-focused decision-makers. The second HPO factor is openness & action
orientation. In an HPO, management demonstrates that it values the opinions of employees
by having frequent dialogues with them and involving them in all important business and
organizational processes. HPO management allows experiments and mistakes by seeing
these as opportunities to learn. In this respect, management welcomes and stimulates
change by continuously striving for renewal. The third HPO factor is long-term orientation.
In an HPO, long-term gain is far more important than short-term profit. An HPO continuously
strives to enhance customer value creation by learning what customers want,
understanding their values and being responsive to them. In addition, an HPO maintains
good long-term relationships with all stakeholders by networking broadly, taking an interest
in and giving back to society and creating mutual, beneficial opportunities and win-win
relationships. The fourth HPO factor is continuous improvement & renewal. An HPO adopts
a unique strategy that will set the organization apart by developing many new alternatives
to compensate for dying strategies. After that, an HPO continuously simplifies, improves
and aligns all its processes to improve its ability to respond to events efficiently and
effectively and to eliminate unnecessary procedures, work and information overload. The
fifth and final HPO factor is employee quality. An HPO makes sure it assembles a diverse
and complementary workforce and recruits people with maximum flexibility to help detect
problems in business processes and incite creativity in solving them. An HPO also
continuously works on the development of its workforce by training staff to be both resilient
and flexible, letting them learn from others by going into partnerships with suppliers and
customers, and inspiring them to improve their skills, so they can accomplish extraordinary
results.
An organization can determine its HPO status by conducting an HPO Diagnosis. During this
diagnosis, managers and employees fill in the HPO questionnaire, in which they indicate

PAGE 230 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 13 NO. 6 2014

 how well the organization performs on the 35 characteristics, on a scale of 1 (very bad) to
10 (excellent). Thereupon, the average scores on the five HPO factors are calculated and
put into a graph. From this graph, it can be seen whether the organization is already an
HPO (which means a score of at least 8.5 on all HPO factors) and which HPO factors show
a dip in the graph and, therefore, have to be improved. During a workshop with
management and employees the results of the HPO Diagnosis and the HPO graph are
discussed and an action agenda, with actions to improve the HPO scores, is drafted. In the
next one to two years, the organization then has to work dedicatedly on these actions to
improve its HPO scores and its competitive performance. By now, 130 organizations
worldwide have conducted an HPO Diagnosis. Research over the past seven years at 23
organizations that have conducted the HPO Diagnosis at least twice over a period of two
years showed that those organizations that achieve higher HP scores indeed achieve
better financial and non-financial results (de Waal, 2012a). This makes the HPO Framework
the only scientifically validated improvement technique.

Relation between the HPO Diagnosis and the employee survey

The HPO Diagnosis causes managers and employees to focus on those organizational
areas that require improving to create an excellent organization. The employee survey
comes into play when the HPO factors that deal with human interactions – such as quality
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of management, quality of employees, openness and action orientation – need deepening

and strengthening. As the HPO Diagnosis serves as an overarching umbrella which
indicates which areas need further investigation, the employee survey can provide the
required detailed information on the specific human areas that need attention. At several of
the organizations who conducted an HPO Diagnosis, a subsequent employee survey
provided the required information on human resource related issues in such a way that
management was able to take the appropriate actions. This way the employee survey at
these organizations supported strengthening of the HPO factors and through this became
the strategic instrument that helped to transform an organization into an HPO. Thus,
problems three and four – the scope of the employee survey being too limited – has not only
been solved by broadening the scope of research using the HPO Diagnosis, it has also
ensured that the employee survey has become relevant again and, therefore, is worth an
organization’s while to undertake.

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About the author

André de Waal, MBA, is Associate Professor at the Maastricht School of Management and
academic director of the HPO Center (www.hpocenter.com). He is the author of What
Makes A High Performance Organization, Five Validated Factors Of Competitive Advantage
That Apply Worldwide (Global Professional Publishing, 2012). André de Waal can be
contacted at: andredewaal@planet.nl

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