A Recommendation for Your Next Employee Survey

In this blog, we will occasionally feature our thoughts on employee survey questions, how to analyze them, and how to take action. Today, we discuss one of the most important statements you can include in your next employee survey – “I recommend my organization as a good place to work.” Willingness to recommend is a key measure, with roots in marketing research. The idea is that when a person is happy with a product or service, they will recommend it to their friends, family, or co-workers, giving the company a powerful, “word-of-mouth” marketing edge over their competition. Similarly, when a person feels good about their organization and where it seems to be headed, they are likely to recommend it as a good place to work, which can positively influence the organization’s reputation and their ability to attract talent.

On a scale of 1 through 5, thinking about your current organization, how much do you agree with this statement? Would you give it a 5-star review – or a “strongly agree?’ Or would you withhold stars for any reason? By using this question in your survey, you can gauge how you compare with other employers. The U.S. federal government, for example, has been asking this question to employees for over a decade in the annual U.S. Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), and the percentage of positive responses has been around 65 percent, on average.

Likewise, in our national poll of private and public sector workers, we found this figure to be in the 60 percent positive range, with no statistically significant difference in willingness to recommend between the sectors (68 percent of private sector workers would recommend their organizations, and 69 percent of government workers would recommend their organizations). High-performing organizations, in contrast, tend to have upwards of 75 to 80 percent (or even higher) of employees recommending their employer. And NASA, the top-ranked agency in the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, and well-known for its effective people practices, had an impressive 85 percent of its employees say they would recommend it in the most recent FEVS (May/June 2016).

If you include this question and find that your organization is like NASA (85 percent or more would recommend), congratulations on your success, but don’t stop there. Make sure you talk with employees, ask open-ended survey questions, or conduct advance analysis to understand why they would recommend your organization, and then be sure to attend to those factors. If you find your organization is about average in terms of willingness to recommend (60-70 percent), consider it a golden opportunity for improvement. Look at the percentage who were neutral (responded “neither agree or disagree”) compared with the percentage who were negative. You probably have at least 20 percent in the neutral category who could be positive with more of your focus on the specific issues that matter to them. If you find fewer than half of your employees are willing to recommend, it isn’t cause for despair, but you’ll need to work harder to understand what is affecting the rating. Your employees are your best ambassadors for your organizations, so it’s worth investing the time to understand what it would take to get their 5-star review.