Employee Satisfaction Surveys

I work in IT and after we resolve an issue the person that originally opened the ticket is sent a survey where than can rate us 1-5 on a few different criteria. The problem is that the scale is effectively a 4-5 scale as anything below that is considered a horrific affront to humanity. Is there a term for this phenomenon? It happens everywhere these type of surveys are in use, and inevitably leads to people essentially gaming the system in order to reach that goal. We've all heard it a hundred times from the waiter, car salesman, or CSR, "You may get a survey asking about my performance. I would appreciate (5 stars, 10 Blue Diamonds, 11 purple horseshoes, etc.), if you found my service to be satisfactory."

Well there really isn't a nice term out there. I work in a similar environment and its the same bullsh*t scale. You want something with substance you make them write something out. But who has time to write let alone read when you do "process improvement". Its just meaningless metrics that in the end frustrate the person trying to help.

It's all stupid and annoying. I have to self-evaluate myself at work each year. I generally give myself between 2 and 4 out of 5. (You know: slightly below average to slightly above average, depending on whether I think I did well or poorly.) Then my boss reminds me that someone who gets a 2 is on the road to being fired, and would I please increase my self-ratings. And I go "bwuh? Average is 3? Hello? Anyone home?"

Then I go home and have a crying jag and a nice scotch while I mourn the future of humanity.

Please rate our performance on the following scale:

1: Eats babies
2: Probably eats babies
3: Might eat babies if missed lunch
4: Acceptable
5: Superb

Somewhat agree.

If you want honest feedback, don't use a number scale. People will either give you all 5s because they don't want to hurt your feelings/make you mad, all 4s because they don't really care, or an honest feedback... with no explanation as to why.

The supervisor might get a warm fuzzy out of seeing an average approval of "4" but if you're really looking for feedback? Might as well just hand them a sheet with a happy face and a frowny face, with the words "circle this" under the happy face.

Jonman has the right of it. That's more or less all I see on those scales: 4 options that are FAIL and one option that is GOOD.

Anyone know if this is a pecularity to American business? I suspect it's our desire for choice, even when presented with a binary question, causing these silly surveys.

There is no perfect solution, although I will give credit to Walgreens for at least trying. While I'm sure there was some consequences for coming out on the short end of the stick, the bulk of their program was to reward the highest scores with bonuses, time off, prizes. It did alter the way management treated the scores to some degree.

The problem was, busy stores were basically screwed. If you want your average cashier to provide excellent customer service, it helps when there is no one else in the store. Stores that had the highest sales and largest revenue also generate the most complaints. It's part of doing business. In the end, I don't think it ever did anything but empower a certain segment of customers to be total jackwagons.

Personally, unless the someone was an absolute ass to me, I always score people perfect. I'd rather be a part of making an average person's day better, than give some middle management jerk reason to make their day worse. I don't think I, or any other customer has the ability to really assess performance fairly.

Seth wrote:

Jonman has the right of it.

I'd prefer it if you could rate me on a scale of 13 to 19.

I love the self evaluations and reviews. I give myself incredibly high rankings and then write out a very detailed report of how awesome I am, everything that I do on a daily basis, and how the company would likely suffer horribly if I was gone. Up until very recently this has resulted in a raise every year.

Jonman wrote:
Seth wrote:

Jonman has the right of it.

I'd prefer it if you could rate me on a scale of 13 to 19.

15 - Meets expectations but still occasionally eats babies.

The main reason why most of these surveys dont work is because the people who are surveyed are the ones who either averted crisis or are limping along until catastrophe hits next. No one calls to technical support to say that my computer is working fine and thank you. If you dont give them what they want you will be poorly rated and reported.

muttonchop wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Seth wrote:

Jonman has the right of it.

I'd prefer it if you could rate me on a scale of 13 to 19.

15 - Meets expectations but still occasionally eats babies.

It's the baby's fault for being so delicious!

Jonman wrote:

It's the baby's fault for being so delicious!

They certainly are more tender than they have a right to be.

The issue in the OP is the same kind of Rating Inflation that afflicts game review sites. If you dare slight the fanboys by rating their game a 9.4 instead of a 9.8 then your forums will never hear the end of it.

It's like grade inflation in schools. I thought it was absurd when I was in school in the 80's and early 90's; a GPA less than 3 meant you wouldn't get into a good college. Nowadays, with the addition of AP credits and the like, a kid needs a GPA greater than 4 (on a 4-point scale, btw) to even consider going to a somewhat decent school. SAT scores are higher now too, because they changed the points distribution. The whole thing is so stupid and arbitrary.

And seriously, why not just give a question like "did this person do well in helping you?" with a smiley and a frowny, and a comments section?

--edit--
Back to the OP's question, I'm convinced it's the result of management weasels trying to quantify EVERYTHING because that's what their MBA program told them to do. Everything has to end up as a ratio, acting as a ranking system so that they can act like they're rewarding the "top performers" and addressing the "under-performers." They can then take these "statistics" to their boss and justify their existence in easy-to-mumble data points on a chart. Problem is, when you try to quantify something which is unquantifiable, only an unfair and arbitrary system can be used.

Jayhawker wrote:

Personally, unless the someone was an absolute ass to me, I always score people perfect. I'd rather be a part of making an average person's day better, than give some middle management jerk reason to make their day worse. I don't think I, or any other customer has the ability to really assess performance fairly.

Same here, and most of the time even if you are an ass I just don't care enough to do a survey. Maybe you were having a bad day.

As our company continues to grow into an enormous entity we get more an more of these types of assessments. We do the self reviews, have management reviews twice a year, these surveys, track closure time, and have weekly meetings where we discuss all this BS. Some people seem to thrive on delving into all this and comparing this number with that number, year to date performance, how other regions compare, and what we can do to improve (even if you are 4.5, you still need to strive for that elusive golden 5). It's really quite sickening to me.

Thanks for all the feedback. Glad to see there are others of a like mind about this stuff.

I give this thread 3 out of 5 stars.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I give this thread 3 out of 5 stars.

Your survey result makes me dead on the inside.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I give this thread 3 out of 5 stars.

Heads will roll for this.

"Exceeds my unreasonably low expectations."

We only get 4s and 5s because my company insists on only employing above-average workers. Also, we fire 51% of our employees every year.

When I started at my last company they wouldn't give anyone 5/5 because "no one's perfect." They also wouldn't give 1/5 because if they were that bad they would have been fired already. So the 3 points that were left became abhorrent, average, fantastic. By the time I left, everyone was getting 3s.

Also, any employee satisfaction survey given to you by your boss should be responded to with the appropriate Admiral Ackbar quote.

wordsmythe wrote:

We only get 4s and 5s because my company insists on only employing above-average workers. Also, we fire 51% of our employees every year.

Please, won't someone think of the rounding errors!

Jonman wrote:

Please rate our performance on the following scale:

1: Eats babies
2: Probably eats babies
3: Might eat babies if missed lunch
4: Acceptable
5: Superb

I also get rated on my helpdesk portion of my job with the 1-5 scale. I don't fit this scale as I'm both 1 and 5! Maybe I just need to hide my brown bag lunch of babies rather than keeping it in the fridge...

I can't remember the exact wording, but on my employee self-evaluation thingy the top 3 options of a 5-point scale were something like:
3 - consistently meets expectations
4 - sometimes exceeds expectations
5 - consistently exceeds expectations.
We were supposed to aim for 4 or higher, which creates an infinite feedback loop where you are expected to exceed expectations.

muttonchop wrote:

I can't remember the exact wording, but on my employee self-evaluation thingy the top 3 options of a 5-point scale were something like:
3 - consistently meets expectations
4 - sometimes exceeds expectations
5 - consistently exceeds expectations.
We were supposed to aim for 4 or higher, which creates an infinite feedback loop where you are expected to exceed expectations.

YES. This. Makes no sense.

Oh man. Performance reviews are still going on here. So far they owe us a month of retroactive pay increases while they sort out their new system.

The problem is, in the past year so many people have been fired and tasks redistributed that the work each person is doing is nothing like the job descriptions; none of which have seen an update in 5+ years. This means everyone is going above and beyond the call of duty everyday by the standards of the performance review system. And we're being told that not everyone can be that good so we need to establish some kind of a curve. I expect so they can justify merit-based pay increases. I'd at least like a cost-of-living increase because it's been two years since we've seen that.

If it's free-form answers, and I work for your company, you will get most of the first verse of Still Alive in your review.

This whole rating inflation thing is actually a problem for people in the business of reviewing stuff. There's only two popular rating systems i'm aware of: the number system (I give this thing 2 out of 13 banana turds), and the grading scale (A+ through F). And both of these grading scales have suffered from bad inflation, as people have noted.

If you rate something (in my case, beer or a brewery) a "C," or a "5 out of 10," or a "3 out of 5," you're trying to say it's an average thing. It's something you would buy again, there are better options out there, but you could do a lot worse.

However, when you see those ratings, instictively people think "ugh, a C? That thing you are rating must suck."

I've seen a few other reviewers use a 1-10 scale and then announce, frankly, that the lowest score they will give anything is a "7." this means that "7" is an absolute failure of a product -- which is pretty in line with modern thinking on a scale to 10.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

If it's free-form answers, and I work for your company, you will get most of the first verse of Still Alive in your review.

"We do what we must because we can, for the good of everyone, except the ones who are dead"?

Gravey wrote:
Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

If it's free-form answers, and I work for your company, you will get most of the first verse of Still Alive in your review.

"We do what we must because we can, for the good of everyone, except the ones who are dead"?

I was thinking more of the first three lines, but that'll work in a pinch.

Seth wrote:

Anyone know if this is a pecularity to American business? I suspect it's our desire for choice, even when presented with a binary question, causing these silly surveys.

We get it in the universities in NZ and Australia, but I imagine that they suffer from similar problems.

Had an eyeroll-worthy one come round last month in which they were asking us to rate different aspects of our job in terms of how satisfied we were with them (superannuation, training opportunities etc.) to try and work out why they were losing so many mid-career researchers... all of which missed the point that they're losing those people because they're not getting any funding for salaries and thus no longer have jobs.

The amount of nonsense bullsh*t that I have had to do in the last couple weeks astounded me.

Some favorite categories of mine are "Be a change agent." and "Delivers wow service."

Rate your performance for the last year.

Where is the option for got railroaded by an under-qualified supervisor inexplicably finding themselves as a department head?

But then again, when I interviewed over 2 years ago I had to fill out a completely useless 20 minute wonderlic test.