Internal research, external benefits

Editor’s note: Tracey Carsten Roll, currently an independent organizational development consultant, was formerly employed by Experian as a manger of organization effectiveness.

Trying to get your hands around organizational change is a challenge for most companies, but it is even more daunting when you are trying to identify the needs of employees that support multiple product lines and span across numerous geographic locations. Today, Web-based surveys continue to take on a strategic and instrumental role in the feedback lifecycle process, as they enable an organization to gain valuable feedback and hear the voice of both its employees and customers.

While traditional research methodologies have provided this voice, a new dimension in efficiency is achievable through Web survey technology. As a result, surveys have evolved into a method that truly takes into account the pulse of an organization. However - and as anyone in the field can attest - true change is not easily achieved as it takes more than technology to make the survey process successful.

At Experian, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based information firm with sales exceeding $3 billion and with more than 4,500 employees in North America , one executive set out to truly hear the voice of his constituents in order to meet his primary goal of improving customer loyalty and positively impacting his organizational operations through better employee performance. When Chris Callero joined Experian’s credit services division as president, he immediately began an ongoing effort to survey his employees to determine their attitude toward the company, to determine if they had the tools needed to be effective on the job and, more specifically, to determine if the company was communicating corporate goals and objectives from the top down. Callero wanted to demonstrate that the division was focused on reaching out and listening to employees, to communicate the corporate objective of ensuring the highest levels of customer satisfaction and convey how much the company needed employee participation in order to be successful.

Began with divisional managers

As a strong advocate of surveys and a believer in the value they bring to organizational change, Callero had realistic expectations about the scope of the initiative. Consequently, he began the educational process with divisional managers first. Callero knew that once they were comfortable with the survey process and had bought into the overall value, they could then help drive employee participation and action. Beginning with business and functional units, such as sales, finance and IT, the survey team trained managers on how to interpret survey data, how to identify actionable results, how to communicate and encourage employees to participate in surveys and how to implement actionable change as a result of survey findings. The training specifically underscored the importance management played in promoting and embracing the survey process and in encouraging those who report to them to participate.

With a history of limited or marginal success with outside vendors using paper-based surveys, Callero turned to an online survey application, choosing to work with Inquisite, an Austin , Texas provider of Web survey technology and services. Inquisite also embedded several analytical options within its survey application, including the ability to download the data into SPSS.

Because the survey technology was accessible online, the survey team disseminated daily e-mails that reported survey participation rates to management. This spawned competition among managers who then solicited employees to participate if they had not already done so.

Quarterly meetings

As a result of educational initiatives and the company’s move from paper surveys to electronic versions, Callero’s divisional survey achieved a 92 percent response rate among participating employees. In fact, armed with this intelligence, Callero instituted quarterly face-to-face meetings designed to communicate to employees exactly what issues were at hand and what specific actions would be implemented.

For example, human resource and organizational development personnel began to issue their own internal, independent “pulse” surveys (i.e., surveys which consisted of a few targeted questions fielded to a small, select audience) to determine specific challenges facing their respective business units. Because pulse surveys are designed to solicit immediate feedback, they could be developed within a few days and fielded within a couple of weeks, enabling Experian executives to institute change faster than traditional methods. Because the feedback learned internally at Experian was so valuable, other groups such as marketing services and credit services began applying the same practices external to Experian and surveyed customers in order to examine and improve customer satisfaction.

Ongoing process

It was at this point that the company-wide survey initiative became an ongoing year-round process rather than a sporadic, one-time event without follow-through. As the entire division became immersed in the survey process and success, the Experian North America CEO decided to emulate the credit services division and develop a company-wide survey initiative that would involve employees at all levels within the North America offices. With the expectation that this phase would be as effective as the first, this larger survey actually produced a slightly lower response rate than the original, which only further demonstrated the importance of achieving managerial support and participation within each stage of the survey process. In fact, Callero’s efforts to educate his managers on the strategic value of survey data paid off, as his direct reports had the highest survey completion rate of any other division throughout the company.

Next level

With the organization’s long-term interest in mind, Callero has moved beyond lessons learned and has taken surveys to the next level by applying the analysis known as trending, which looks at how data has changed from one year to the next, often because of survey-related efforts. For example, he plans to identify how customer loyalty has improved as a result of survey feedback-related efforts. By performing trending analysis, the organization will be able to effectively measure both employee and customer satisfaction year over year to realize the impact of survey-related actions and to identify areas that need improvement.

Despite the lower response rates (78 percent - which is still high, as the normal rate is in the 60 percent range), this survey supplied management with valuable feedback that was used to demonstrate to employees that management was listening to their issues and was committed to making the appropriate changes based on their responses.

Change across all divisions

Overall, the company-wide survey was successful in that it instituted change across all of Experian’s North American divisions. In fact, during the executive post-survey meeting, and to ensure corporate-wide change, business executives were required to present three changes in their business or functional unit they felt would most improve overall employee performance and ultimately customer satisfaction based on survey results. As other business units became aware of the benefits of online surveys, they quickly began to apply the same survey technology and methodology within their respective areas of responsibility.

Engaging employees

Experian knew that a successful business is built on successful relationships. As demonstrated by Callero and Experian, surveys can be a powerful management method for engaging employees in organizational change. Using the survey process as a vehicle for an ongoing dialogue with employees proved successful for the company as it enabled it to leverage accurate and continuous feedback to implement change - regardless of whether those changes involved customer satisfaction or employee performance.

Secure buy-in

Before embarking on your own survey initiative, be sure to secure managerial buy-in to understand and act upon this feedback and then to consistently communicate changes to your audiences. Doing so will help you in your quest to realize a significant increase in both employee and customer satisfaction.