Don’t ever engage with culture sensing surveys honestly. The only place they weren’t a trap (ironically) was the US Army where they did it on paper, punished people for putting their names on them, and walked right past your entire immediate chain of command to their bosses with the results. And the one time things were truly bad they literally brought in a Sociology expert to study our unit and figure out how things had gone bad, it resulted in all new leadership and team building exercises, in a war zone. (These results do not extend to other branches, I had one done by the Navy and it was corpo trap bullshit, got a lot of the Army guys there by surprise.)
Lesson I learned the hard way: if any study comes around on your satisfaction, don’t answer it. If management comes asking why you haven’t answered the study, apologize, you’ve been swamped, you’ll get get right on it, and you lie your ass off.
Oh I agree but thing is it’s principles for me. I spoke to a coworker recently about this in relation to a bad worker and if they should go to HR. My argument is I can’t rely on other people to speak about the challenges so it’s beholden on me to do that for those that may not want to take that risk.
It’s only a job. I make damn good money but if I got let go because of my principles that’s a good reason.
Yeah I’m with you on this one. All of these people saying “don’t say shit” think they are being smart (and I imagine most of them haven’t even been in the situation) but the reality is you are just making things worse for everyone else and getting fired after something like that is actually extremely uncommon because it’s very easy to point to and demand severance or just for making a lot of racket if that’s not an option.
It’s very easy to get laid off in the US. They don’t need to resort to such tactics. most of the time internal culture things are either ignored or decent people higher up make some small changes in their own departments/areas specifically. I find it’s a great way to subtly point to toxic leadership, especially if other people are doing it.
The last time I went to HR on toxic leadership it was very well known. I told them I’m the ideal employee. I’ve been here (at the time 10 years) rarely make a fuss. Never been to HR before. I had a well thought out letter explaining the challenges I was seeing and how toxic it was and how it was impacting myself and my coworkers.
They asked for names. I gave none. I told them they have the names (I had good info these people were well known). I explained that people are leaving the org, good people are not coming here. They need to address it. About 1+ year later there was a huge clearout of leadership then another a couple of years later. People who were well identified as toxic.
I like to think my speaking up helped with that, and I’m still here. More people need to stand on their principles damn the consequences.
Yeah it definitely has a “writing your congressional rep“ quality to it. Your one note or comment is rarely going to move the needle unless there is something truly illegal going on like workplace harassment that is undeniable, but when a lot of people keep bringing up the same issues/departments/people (maybe not explicitly) it can make a difference. Sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the oil lol
For those jumping in on this conversation, I am not saying it is always like this. I’m just saying it often is. Most companies operate at least somewhat practically when it comes to these things. They don’t want to hire new people, they don’t want inter-departmental strife. They don’t want projects not getting done because of toxic leadership. Beyond a certain threshold they often will act. Often it takes way too long and requires way too much from employees, but still, sometimes they act.
In our corp, our managers get the answers and results without the names of employees that gave the answers. Did not see anyone regretting being honest on the survey yet.
I am wondering more and more if it is the corp I work for that is unusual, if it is because it is in the EU, not US (even though corp is US based), or if just the people with worst experiences are the most keen to share them…
There probably is a confirmation bias at work here. People with healthy workplaces are probably less likely to complain online?
Same that they anonymized the data but c’mon I know people writing style I could tell which coworker wrote what if they narrow it down enough like by department.
Yes and no. The survey is always scoring something 1-10 and then a text field on explanation/how to improve it. If you are too worried, you can just give the score. Even so, most people just fill them in normally and as I said, I did not see anyone regret being honest. But that is indeed likely partially because we are not in the US.
I have always engaged with every one of them and have been negative quite often yet never anything bad came of it. Probably because we have employee rights where I live. So the actual problem is americas lacks of rights.
Don’t ever engage with culture sensing surveys honestly. The only place they weren’t a trap (ironically) was the US Army where they did it on paper, punished people for putting their names on them, and walked right past your entire immediate chain of command to their bosses with the results. And the one time things were truly bad they literally brought in a Sociology expert to study our unit and figure out how things had gone bad, it resulted in all new leadership and team building exercises, in a war zone. (These results do not extend to other branches, I had one done by the Navy and it was corpo trap bullshit, got a lot of the Army guys there by surprise.)
Or engage with them but expect the repercussions.
I’m very candid when this shit comes around my corp and am extremely nuanced in explaining the culture challenges.
The trick is to not explicitly call anyone out and highlight it’s a systemic problem.
Lesson I learned the hard way: if any study comes around on your satisfaction, don’t answer it. If management comes asking why you haven’t answered the study, apologize, you’ve been swamped, you’ll get get right on it, and you lie your ass off.
That’s a very fine line though. and you’re hoping they don’t fire you just for being the bent nail.
Oh I agree but thing is it’s principles for me. I spoke to a coworker recently about this in relation to a bad worker and if they should go to HR. My argument is I can’t rely on other people to speak about the challenges so it’s beholden on me to do that for those that may not want to take that risk.
It’s only a job. I make damn good money but if I got let go because of my principles that’s a good reason.
Yeah I’m with you on this one. All of these people saying “don’t say shit” think they are being smart (and I imagine most of them haven’t even been in the situation) but the reality is you are just making things worse for everyone else and getting fired after something like that is actually extremely uncommon because it’s very easy to point to and demand severance or just for making a lot of racket if that’s not an option.
It’s very easy to get laid off in the US. They don’t need to resort to such tactics. most of the time internal culture things are either ignored or decent people higher up make some small changes in their own departments/areas specifically. I find it’s a great way to subtly point to toxic leadership, especially if other people are doing it.
The last time I went to HR on toxic leadership it was very well known. I told them I’m the ideal employee. I’ve been here (at the time 10 years) rarely make a fuss. Never been to HR before. I had a well thought out letter explaining the challenges I was seeing and how toxic it was and how it was impacting myself and my coworkers.
They asked for names. I gave none. I told them they have the names (I had good info these people were well known). I explained that people are leaving the org, good people are not coming here. They need to address it. About 1+ year later there was a huge clearout of leadership then another a couple of years later. People who were well identified as toxic.
I like to think my speaking up helped with that, and I’m still here. More people need to stand on their principles damn the consequences.
Yeah it definitely has a “writing your congressional rep“ quality to it. Your one note or comment is rarely going to move the needle unless there is something truly illegal going on like workplace harassment that is undeniable, but when a lot of people keep bringing up the same issues/departments/people (maybe not explicitly) it can make a difference. Sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the oil lol
For those jumping in on this conversation, I am not saying it is always like this. I’m just saying it often is. Most companies operate at least somewhat practically when it comes to these things. They don’t want to hire new people, they don’t want inter-departmental strife. They don’t want projects not getting done because of toxic leadership. Beyond a certain threshold they often will act. Often it takes way too long and requires way too much from employees, but still, sometimes they act.
YMMV especially depending on the industry.
In our corp, our managers get the answers and results without the names of employees that gave the answers. Did not see anyone regretting being honest on the survey yet.
I am wondering more and more if it is the corp I work for that is unusual, if it is because it is in the EU, not US (even though corp is US based), or if just the people with worst experiences are the most keen to share them…
There probably is a confirmation bias at work here. People with healthy workplaces are probably less likely to complain online?
Same that they anonymized the data but c’mon I know people writing style I could tell which coworker wrote what if they narrow it down enough like by department.
Yes and no. The survey is always scoring something 1-10 and then a text field on explanation/how to improve it. If you are too worried, you can just give the score. Even so, most people just fill them in normally and as I said, I did not see anyone regret being honest. But that is indeed likely partially because we are not in the US.
I worked for a youuuuuuge international corporation that did a survey in the late 1990s.
They took them extremely seriously and trained and replaced the poor performing leadership.
It led to a big jump in profits.
I’m glad someone is using it correctly then.
I have always engaged with every one of them and have been negative quite often yet never anything bad came of it. Probably because we have employee rights where I live. So the actual problem is americas lacks of rights.