Why No One Likes Surveys
Most people I’ve met don’t like taking them. But why?
By Jared Lafitte
Here are a few honest answers from actual people.
“If I take a survey it won’t contribute to change anyway. It’s just an empty HR formality.”
“I don’t trust that I can be honest. I’m afraid of my company retaliating. I basically just lie.”
“My company gave us financial incentives for answering the survey questions the way they wanted.”
I’ve never enjoyed company surveys. As a coach and consultant, I’ve used them, but I’ve never really liked them.
It’s hard to measure how someone’s feeling using a scale from 1 to 5. Human emotions are too complex. Human experiences are too multifaceted.
How can I really gauge what’s going on in someone’s mind, much less predict how they’ll behave, with a handful of answers filled with numbers or terms like “moderately true” or “I choose not to respond”?
I can’t. No one can. And for most surveys, it takes days, weeks, and sometimes months to sort through what responses mean.
By then, many of the people who took the survey in the first place aren’t even in the company anymore. Virtually everyone else who’s still there has changed their feelings because people’s feelings change every day.
You’ve seen the question…
“How has your experience here been over the last six months? Please answer on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being “Excellent.”