Ask the Experts

The Ethisphere data & analytics team shares some keen insights and best practices when it comes to measuring your cultures

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^{Ask the Experts}

by DOUG ALLEN | Vice President, Data & Strategy, Ethisphere;

CURTIS LEICHT | Data Analyst, Ethisphere;

EMELIE ANDERSON | Culture Analyst, Ethisphere;

KATIE KRUGER | Culture Analyst, Ethisphere; and

MALTHE HELT | Culture Analyst, Ethisphere

The Ethisphere Data & Services team has been helping organizations measure their culture for a long, long time. So, we asked the team to share some of their biggest takeaways from working on so many culture assessments among so many companies across so many industries. Here’s what they had to say about survey timing, data layering, survey clarity, and action planning.

Timing is Everything

When organizations aim to measure employee perceptions of ethical culture at scale, the timing of the effort is just as critical as the survey itself. Misaligned timing—whether with business priorities or competing initiatives—can significantly impact participation rates and the credibility of the data you collect.

We faced this challenge firsthand while working with a global distributor and retailer. The organization was under pressure to gather employee feedback before year-end, leaving December as the only feasible window. Unfortunately, launching an all-employee survey during the holiday rush in a retail environment proved to be a daunting task. With employees rightfully focused on customers, participation barely hit double digits.

The lesson? Timing matters. To ensure your survey doesn’t compete with the business, plan carefully. Avoid launching during common vacation periods, major holidays, or busy sales pushes, such as quarter- or year-end periods. And for organizations with substantial Asia-based employee populations, remember to account for events like the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Beyond avoiding the “bad” times, seize opportunities to survey employees during “good” times—periods when it’s easier for them to engage. For instance, many of our partner organizations append Ethisphere’s Ethical Culture Assessment to the tail end of mandatory annual Code training, ensuring high visibility and participation. Others incorporate surveys into annual Ethics Week events, leveraging the momentum of an already established focus on integrity and culture.

Key takeaway: Align your survey effort with your employees’ schedules, not against them. Thoughtful timing can dramatically improve your participation rates and, by extension, the quality of the insights you gain. -D.A.

Too Much Butter

During the planning stage of an Ethical Culture Survey, most clients consider what demographics they should include, informed by their reporting needs following the survey, but rarely do clients consider the complexity of those demographics. Complex demographics, with many unique groups within a single category, can be challenging to analyze and/or yield groups of responses that are too small to be actionable.

Imagine a hypothetical organization in the Consumer Goods industry that is planning an Ethical Culture Survey next quarter. The organization would like to deliver survey results to people leaders, showing results for the employees the report up to that people leader. Here’s the tough question: How far down the org chart should they go? The executive team? Middle managers? All people leaders?

Many organizations default to all people leaders or at the very least a management level far down the org chart. Their hearts are in the right place—they want to deliver actionable data to managers throughout the organization to empower them to make meaningful change for their local team. Additionally, they have a fear of missing out on a key insight or data segmentation if they were to simplify their demographics. More is better right?

For this example, there are 850 local leaders. The organization would like to give survey data segmented for each local leader. Now skip to the end of this hypothetical survey. Congratulations, our hypothetical Consumer Goods organization

received 10,000 responses, nearly half of their 21,000-employee population!

However, when the team begins segmenting the data for those 850 local leaders, they come across a problem. The average response count for each local leader is only 12. Additionally, many of these groups fall below the organization’s anonymity threshold. Therefore, the data cannot be analyzed because the groups are so small that it risks compromising the anonymity of the survey.

Even managers with response counts above the anonymity threshold have response counts such that a single response can significantly impact the results. The sample size for each local leader is too small and is not actionable. Furthermore, the task of providing meaningful data and guidance to several hundred local leaders will take months and hundreds if not thousands of hours.

Key takeaway: When determining which demographics to include in your upcoming Ethical Culture Survey, consider the number of unique groups or complexity of your data. Will this create groups of responses that are too small to be actionable? Does your post survey analysis put significant strain on your team’s resources? Without these considerations, your survey data and team resources might be like butter scraped over too much bread. -C.L.

Layering Data Matters

When planning to administer a survey measuring ethical culture, organizations often ask about what demographic fields they should aim to capture. It pays to evaluate what demographic data is most usable; in most cases, that requires a look into what demographic data is being collected through other inputs around the organization.

Recently, we worked with a U.S.-based organization with employees based in multiple countries. Their survey was designed to sync up with multiple culture inputs, including Human Resources data, Engagement Survey results, and their year-over-year data from previous survey efforts with Ethisphere. On the eve of the survey's launch, the organization realized that the demographic data they had chosen to collect did not align with their other survey inputs.

While misaligned demographic data will not render survey results unusable, it may limit the organization’s insights into the nuance of survey responses. Culture surveys offer us a look into organization culture at one moment in time. And while that look gives us a helpful picture into the employee experience, it is useful to have other sets of data to fill in some of the gaps.

For instance, if you have a business unit that reports distrust in your organization’s Non-Retaliation Policy, you could compare the same business unit’s responses to non-retaliation questions in previous years’ surveys to evaluate if these sentiments have changed over time, giving you one additional layer of data. For more dimension, though, you may also consider assessing this business unit’s engagement survey results to learn how their perceptions of retaliation at the organization might impact employee retention or evaluating focus groups that included the business unit to learn more details about their specific employee experience. Data layering allows you to see the “moment-in-time” survey results against a handful of other dimensions, offering a more colorful picture to what may have been sepia-toned data.

Before the organization launched their survey, we were able to realign their demographic needs to make sure they were getting the most use out of the data collected in their culture survey.

Key takeaway: It pays huge dividends to think beyond the project at hand. The data you’re gathering now is not the only piece of the larger culture picture. -E.A.

Lessons in Survey Clarity

As a Culture Analyst at Ethisphere, my work focuses on surveying employees and helping our clients interpret their data to drive meaningful change. While they may not be able to tell you the ins and outs of my job description, my friends know I do “survey work.” Because of this, I was approached by a group of my friends who had received a survey from their mutual employer. When they reached out to me, they were hesitant about completing the survey. The concerns they raised were common concerns I see from survey respondents: their concerns centered on anonymity, the intent behind the survey, and how their feedback would be used.

The confusion peaked with a single question about leadership. Since the question didn’t specify which level of leadership the question referred to (executive, mid-level, or direct managers), respondents weren’t sure how to answer. Worried their feedback might be unfairly interpreted to target the wrong group, many told me they stopped the survey altogether. One poorly designed question resulted in a whole survey abandoned by many respondents, impacting response rates and the overall usefulness of the data.

Although I wasn’t involved in this survey’s design process, it taught me some important lessons about question selection and survey

communication. Craft specific, actionable, and easy-to-interpret questions to give respondents confidence in their answers. Avoid ambiguity that might lead to confusion or misinterpretation. Think like a respondent; try to anticipate potential misunderstandings by reviewing questions from the perspective of your audience. Clearly explain the survey’s purpose, the steps taken to protect anonymity, and how the data will be used. Build trust by being transparent.

Key takeaway: In an era of survey fatigue, thoughtful design and clear communication are essential to collecting meaningful data. By prioritizing these steps, organizations can create assessments that drive actionable insights and foster trust with their employees. -K.K.

On Action Planning

One may think that the final step of the culture assessment projects is receiving the survey data. However, what comes after is far more important for the long-term success of our clients. Countless times, we have seen organizations without clear action and communication plans in place after they receive their survey results. This step in the process is fundamental for future employee engagement, response retention, and trust.

From an employee perspective, organizational accountability is key. After being asked to take a survey and providing honest feedback, employees want to know that their responses are taken seriously and will create long term change. By communicating clear actions in response to results, employees feel heard and the organization proves a commitment to improvement. Without this, organizations sacrifice future employee engagement in similar surveys. The bottom line is that survey results are just data, and data without action is useless. Action plans take employee feedback and transform it into tangible steps for the betterment of the organization.

Whether these action plans detail policy updates, new communications efforts, or new targeted training, they should be clearly linked to the to show employees their voices were heard. An increase in transparency around such projects connects participation in the survey to meaningful change and can lead to increased employee confidence in future measurements.

As work culture takes on more importance in today’s society, employee satisfaction, motivation, and loyalty becomes even more important. Transparency around survey findings and a well-documented action plan leads to employees feeling heard and valued for their input and is the first step toward organizational change and growth. Change is constant and maintaining employee response retention is key.

Key takeaway: Having action and communication plans in place builds trust between the organization and employees, drives meaningful change, and promotes a healthy and safe work culture. -M.H. ■

Thoughtful design and clear communication are essential to collecting meaningful data.

Katie Kruger