Employee Appreciation Day is March 6th here in the United States, and with it often come social events, catered lunches, swag bags, and gift cards.
It’s kind of annoying, if you ask me.
Not because you shouldn’t appreciate your people, but because leaders are fairly willing to put a budget towards these nice but not-useful-to-productivity items while denying your request for some budget to address poor behavior or workplace culture problems.
Leaders can see smiles when they put on a lunch for the staff, so it may feel like immediate results for them. But your suggestion for a culture overhaul is met with a hard “no” because it’s hard to prove a solid return on that investment, it’s a big undertaking, and, “we’re so busy we don’t have the bandwidth to address culture right now.”
Yet if your employees are in a toxic work environment, they’d much rather skip lunch and put that budget towards addressing the root causes of their Sunday Scaries.
How can you convince your leadership team to see that?
We suggest a new open-ended question to ask on your workforce surveys: Does the way you’re treated at work help or hinder your productivity?
We think that, if your workforce is honest, they’ll help you prove that inclusion and psychological safety actually improve productivity. (If you’re worried they won’t be honest, you need a new survey vendor to help you build trust that answers will remain anonymous. Call us for that.)
Why this workforce survey question works
This question is different because it’s experiential.
To answer it, people have to think about their real, everyday interactions — meetings, emails, feedback, tone, decision-making – and how they feel about them. You gain real information about your company culture.
Responses might sound something like this:
- “Our meetings would be more productive if our manager were better at soliciting feedback. He gets focused on his own ideas and so we aren’t really able to contribute. We’re missing out on some great ideas.”
- “There’s a general feeling among the underrepresented groups that we’ll get passed over for promotions because that is the pattern we see. Review who’s in the higher ranks and you can see they don’t include many of us. Several of us have literally had conversations about just giving our minimum effort because what’s the point of working hard? It won’t make a difference.”
- “You already know our VP is a complete you-know-what. Of course it hinders our productivity. We spend most of our time trying to avoid her, finding ways to go around her, and venting to each other about her. She’s a complete time-suck and creates a lot of unnecessary stress.”
- “The managers need to manage more consistently. You can get in trouble from one manager for something another manager doesn’t care about. It’s hard to know what a ‘good employee’ means because the definition changes with each manager.”
And this is a good thing. Now you’ve got proof people are not as productive as they could be.
Don’t forget to ask for positive feedback, too. Consider, for example, “What or who helps you do your best work here? ” An open-ended question like that will help you understand organizational strengths and organizational champions you can lean on to effect positive change.
What to do with the answers to your survey question
For starters, don’t get defensive.
Know the information you receive from these questions provides a lot of action items. Put them in a plan and start making positive changes.
Employee Appreciation Day can be a meaningful moment, but appreciation loses its power when it’s limited to a single day on the calendar. What truly drives performance is consistent, everyday treatment that shows respect, fairness, and care in how work actually gets done.
A feeling that leadership cares about them is what moves the workforce to move mountains. Team get-togethers are a little helpful but won’t get you very far.
Prove that to your leadership team with our suggested one question. Get your workforce to help you make the point that your culture could be hurting productivity and ultimately business success.
Of course, if you want a broader, more accurate view of your workplace experience, a customized workforce survey can uncover what’s truly happening and, more importantly, help turn those insights into actionable plans for improvement.
