Get the Most Out of Assessing Your Work Environment

By Michal Fineman

Don't let the "jobless economic recovery" fool you into thinking that employers have the upper hand in the job market: Exceptional candidates are in short supply and will only become more precious. As such, it's more important than ever to create a working environment that will attract and retain the employees who can make the business succeed. At the same time, no company can afford to add programs and benefits or embark on comprehensive culture change initiatives without first pinpointing what they expect to gain and how.

To know what will influence employees and prospective employees, what works in the current work environment and what needs to be fixed, employers need to measure their current state. There are several ways to assess the work environment but, before deciding on a methodology, it is key to thoroughly consider how the data will be used.

Why Assess the Work Environment?

The First Rule of Assessment: Don't collect data for data's sake. It's easy to get lost in data. It can be collected for years. A survey can be written to include 173 questions that carefully dissect every aspect of the work environment, but the responses to 151 of those questions will likely never be used. Knowing what's going to be done with the data before gathering actual data will help design the best assessment process. Is the information going to be used for:

Diagnosis. Identifying problems and barriers, as well as strengths in the organization.
Documentation. Getting the data to back up what you already know (or think you know).
Establishing a baseline for future measurement.
Testing whether there really is a business case for a contemplated initiative.
Strategy and prioritization (e.g., homing in on the most important issues that need to be addressed and those that provide opportunities for "quick wins" and building momentum)
Starting the conversation about potential solutions
Unearthing good internal practices (e.g., finding out which business units, departments or managers seem to do things well and may have lessons to share with the rest of the organization)

Any assessment is likely to turn up information that is useful for each purpose, but knowing upfront which are paramount will help at the next step.

How to Get the Data

Assessing the work environment usually involves some combination of objective and subjective analysis. On the objective side of the ledger are policy and practice reviews and analysis of statistics (e.g., employee demographics, market data, turnover, promotions, etc.) Subjective analysis depends on measurement of employee and management perceptions.

Policy and practice review helps define context and leads to understanding about how the current state came to be. Often, a company's policies and practices have emerged over time to meet specific issues as they arise. Their total impact on corporate culture may be considerable, but usually is invisible until they are examined as a total package. The review also will reveal inconsistencies, communication failures, conflicting policies, etc.

Statistics are a treasure trove of information on the workforce and how it responds to the work environment. Statistics can help total rewards professionals to understand who is advantaged or disadvantaged by the current state of affairs (e.g., who is leaving the organization, who is getting promoted) and what issues are likely to arise in the future (e.g., what will the workforce look like five or 10 years from now? Which issues will concern those employees?).

Measurement of perceptions provides a picture of reality as experienced by employees. The rest of this article focuses on how to learn what employees and management experience and think about the work environment. These are perhaps the most difficult types of assessment to do well and can yield results that will have the most organizational impact.

Strategy for Assessing Employee and Managerial Perceptions

There are three tried and true ways to gather information on the way people view organizational life: surveys, individual interviews or group discussions. Which ones to use and how to structure them depends on several factors.

First, as discussed, is the reason the data is being gathered. Some methods are better than others for surfacing different types of information. Sometimes a combination of methods is optimal (although budget or other considerations may dictate a more modest approach). Recognizing that the same approach may not be best in all cases, Figure 1 offers a basic guide to which methodologies usually serve different purposes. Several other factors also will affect the final decision on methodology:

Assessment Methodologies
Purpose for the Data	Best Methodology	Reason
Diagnosis	Statistical review Limited interviews Survey Focus groups	Statistical review and interviews with certain identified populations point to focus for survey Focus groups can be used to refine or dig deeper into survey data
Establish a baseline for future measurement	Survey Statistical data	Quantifiable Replicable
Find out management's view and/or business case	Interviews	Limited sample In-depth discussion possible
Generate ideas for solutions	Focus groups	Involve many people In-depth discussion possible Structured exercises can elicit ideas
Documenting known problems	Statistical review Survey	Quantifiable, therefore credible
Unearthing good existing practices	Policy and practice review Focus groups	Often a policy review alone will not turn up local practices
Strategy and prioritization	Survey	Can identify and quantify the concerns that have the most impact

Budget

None of the methods for collecting perceptual information are cheap. But if the goal is to get input from as many people as possible, then a survey is going to be the most cost-effective method. If an employer wants in-depth, qualitative input from as many people as possible, then focus groups will be less expense than interviews. To understand the views of a small but important constituency (e.g., senior management), interviews might be the way to go.

Geography

Are people concentrated in large locations from which focus groups and interview subjects could be pulled? Or are employees spread out in sales offices, retail outlets or other locations that would be time consuming and cost prohibitive to visit? Where are the company's locations? Oil rigs in the North Pacific or downtown areas close to airports?

Demography

What is known about a company's employees—on average—that might provide clues to how they would react to one form of assessment or another? Are they highly educated and computer literate? Are they mostly English-speaking? How are they expected to react to certain types of questions? For example, surveys about sensitive or complex issues might not work as well as structured focus groups in which more background information could be given and facilitators could help participants productively work through difficult questions.

Culture

Focus groups work extremely well in open cultures where conflicts are dealt with explicitly and different opinions are welcomed. If confidentiality is assured and groups are properly structured, focus groups may still be useful in more buttoned-down organizations where people are reluctant to express dissent. But confidential one-on-one interviews may be more comfortable.

Consider the organization's past history: Have there been so many surveys in the past few years that employees are sick of them? Did any action ever come as a result of past assessment, or are employee cynical about whether their input will make a difference? Has there been so much turnover that data from a relatively recent survey may no longer be reflective of the population?

Even if the corporate culture isn't ideal for one assessment method or another, you may still choose to conduct it. But be aware of the assumptions among the sample that will need to be overcome. Communication will be a major part of any assessment process-from the time the assessment is announced and possibly for years after the assessment is complete-as management addresses issues and explains the company's action plan and subsequent progress.

Who Should Conduct the Assessment?

Aside from the obvious question of whether the expertise exists in-house to conduct the assessment, the answer to this question depends on three factors:

Budget. If it's affordable, it's often more comfortable for people to talk about sensitive issues to a third party not directly employed by the company. This is even more of an issue when lack of trust in the company is an historical pattern.
Internal trust and credibility. If the assessment is conducted internally, take steps to ensure anonymity. For example, use people outside of the division or business unit to conduct focus groups or interviews. Ensure that focus groups do not include people at different levels in the same chain of command.
Time. If the survey can't be turned around and feedback returned to participants in a reasonable timeframe, you will lose credibility.

Designing the Assessment Instrument

After deciding with methodology to use, an instrument is needed—a survey, a focus group discussion guide or a set of interview questions. When developing the instrument, it will be helpful to think of the environment as consisting of four dimensions:

Individual. How individuals think and behave.
Interpersonal. How employees perceive the behavior of others toward them.
Management. How employees regard management's actions.
Systemic. How employees react to the organization's systems (i.e., are systems seen as fair? Effective? Flexible?)

The assessment instrument should include items that will touch all four dimensions:

Ask questions about specific observable behaviors. This allows respondents to comment on their own experiences and avoids asking them to speculate on other people's motivations or intentions.
Do not ask two questions at once. It will be difficult for the respondent to decide on an answer and the responses could be unclear and, ultimately, useless.
Use clear language that avoids metaphors, colloquialisms or "HR speak." Some terms conjure associations or stereotypes, creating inherent biases in the tool. Also, the terms of art frequently used by management or HR professionals may not be common knowledge. Asking non-HR types whether a manager "demonstrates diversity competencies" may mean nothing. Consider how to specify the behaviors you want to know about.
Include questions designed to get a negative answer. People often get on a roll "agreeing" with all the statements or questions and stop paying attention to the questions presented.

Final Thoughts

Determining an assessment strategy and designing the instrument is by no means the end of the planning process. There are many other elements to think through:

How will the data be cut (e.g., by organization, demographic segments)?
Who will see the data and which data will they see? Will business unit heads see their own data or that of all the other groups, as well?
How will survey responses be organized?
Who will coordinate the action plan and who will be on the teams to determine appropriate follow-up plans?

Perhaps most important is determining the communication strategy, starting with announcements of the assessment through communication of results, actions taken in response to results and the ultimate impact of those actions. Certainly, over time your plans may change, but each of these elements should be given careful attention before launching an assessment program.

About the Author

Michal Fineman is a consultant with ORC Worldwide. She can be reached at michal.fineman@orcww.com or 212-719-3400.

Reprinted from Workspan magazine (May 2004), with permission from WorldatWork, 14040 N. Northsight Boulevard, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260; phone 877-951-9191; fax 480-483-8352; www.worldatwork.org ©2004 WorldatWork. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is strictly prohibited.