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“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – John Maxwell
Efforts to measure employee sentiment often fall short, leaving leaders perplexed and workers disillusioned.
If the expectations of workers that their jobs will consider their overall wellness are to be met, we need to return to an old-school method of checking in on how people feel about where they work.
It wasn’t until the 1930s that the idea of worker satisfaction entered the working world’s psyche. Before then, the prevailing attitude was simple: “You work for us, we pay you.” Worker dissatisfaction was the norm, and many industries rose and thrived on taking advantage of the working poor. It wasn’t until the realization dawned that a healthy worker is a productive worker—thereby impacting the company’s bottom line—that the focus on worker satisfaction began to gain traction through industrial psychology and early management theories that recognized the importance of employee well-being for productivity.
The challenge of measuring how people felt about their jobs and how that impacted performance proved to be a moving target with both tangible and intangible elements. One well-intentioned method of gaining insight into how their employees experienced the workplace was the “suggestion box.” This simple concept allowed employees to write down their ideas, complaints, musings, etc., on a piece of paper and drop them into a locked box strategically placed in a common area.
My own experience with this method as a manager in a psychiatric hospital was that, due to the anonymous nature of the process, the suggestions often bordered on the unrealistic, i.e. pay raises for everyone; the banal, i.e. Hawaiian shirt Fridays; or the rude (you can imagine what is in this category). Ironically, that box was ripped from the wall and disappeared—perhaps the clearest suggestion yet to “think outside the box.”
Within the last few decades there has been a shift from the concept of satisfaction, the measure of how content and happy employees are with their job, to that of engagement, or the emotional and psychological connection to one’s work and the organization, leading to a desire to contribute and improve.
The theory suggests that job satisfaction doesn’t always correlate with performance. Employees may feel content yet disengaged, or conversely, unhappy but deeply committed to their work.
Typically measured by regularly scheduled surveys, engagement scores can have a profound impact on how management views its workforce and vice versa. Despite design improvements, they still represent a snapshot of a moving picture and often fail to resonate with workers and or lead to meaningful changes.
Surveys, particularly engagement surveys, suffer from several inherent limitations:
- Sampling Bias: If the survey sample isn’t representative of the population, results can be skewed.
- Nonresponse Bias: When certain groups are less likely to respond, their perspectives are underrepresented.
- Poorly Designed Questions: Ambiguous, leading, or complex questions can confuse respondents or influence their answers.
- Limited Depth: Surveys often rely on closed-ended questions, which can oversimplify complex issues.
- Misinterpretation of Questions: Respondents may misunderstand questions, especially if wording is unclear or culturally insensitive.
- Data Quality Issues: Respondents may rush through surveys, give random answers, or skip questions.
- Overgeneralization: Drawing broad conclusions from limited or context-specific data.
Given these shortcomings, it’s a wonder that worksites continue to rely on such data to make decisions regarding whether their workforce is a help or hindrance to their missions.
The impersonal nature of anonymous, often digital, surveys can lead to unintended consequences, which speaks to a need for a return to the old-school technique of leaders getting to know the people who work under them—not in an “Are you happy, are you committed?” sense but a “Do you have everything you need to be successful at your job?” inquiry that gets to the heart of the matter.
In my experience as an employee assistance professional, I’ve had countless conversations with managers who were trying to create “action plans” to address poor survey results. Their frustration was palpable as they felt at a loss to figure out a way to bring their teams together. Additionally, I’ve met with workers who’ve completed surveys and either had a sense of “What’s the point?” or were so frustrated they simply replied as “neutral” to all questions, thereby rendering the results meaningless.
The common ground for leaders and frontline workers seems to be the need to perform work that is meaningful, take care of basic needs, and separate themselves from their jobs when at home. Since meaningful work and personal connection are what drive performance, it’s time to move beyond metrics and rediscover the power of human-centered leadership (HCL). As John Quincy Adams once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
The qualities of HCL include:
- Active Listening and Open Dialogue
- Prioritizing Mental Health and Well-being
- Leading with Empathy
- Recognizing Individual Contributions
- Inclusive Decision-Making
- Coaching and Development Focus
- Modeling Vulnerability and Authenticity
While one can continue to take surveys to check the pulse of one’s workforce, human-centered leadership’s strength is the first-hand knowledge that workers are inspired by the willingness to see the people behind the data.
