A Ready-Made Staff Survey

So, you have full confidence in the ability of your executive director and have a good HR policy in place. But, as a board how do you know for sure that staff is happy and being managed well?  Isn’t part of your governance responsibility to ensure your non-profit is a good workplace? And, isn’t HR one of the key area of executive director performance evaluation? The answer is yes to both questions.

What can non-profit boards do to help meet these two key responsibilities? Obviously one way is to ensure that the executive director provides key HR information to the board. More on this below. You may wince though at my second suggestion: it is a board initiated and managed staff survey.^[1]A distinction is often made between a survey and a questionnaire. The term survey refer to the whole process of soliciting, gathering and making sense of the information. A questionnaire is really … Continue reading

A staff survey, like the almost ready-made one I propose, is a useful tool in the context of an executive director (ED) evaluation. However, it is not so much an opportunity for staff to evaluate their ED as a chance for them to provide feedback on areas of workplace health that are the responsibility of ED. This may be a subtle distinction but it is an important one.

A little background

Quite a few years ago I developed a sample human resource management policy. It was, and still is, a one-page, high level aspirational policy listing the key things any board member would want to see present in a workplace they champion. It has evolved with feedback. You can find it  here under sample policies.

In a March 2019 post on the Board-Staff Relationship I wrote about how boards can demonstrate that they care about staff even if their primary relationship is with the executive director. A month earlier I wrote about Executive Evaluation, an abridged approach at least. These provide some context for the consideration of a staff survey as a governance tool.

The board’s oversight of HR management is a tricky area. ^[2]Here are some sources which deal with this topic: Carla Moore’s (2011) piece on Charity Village, The Four Pillars of HR Governance, the Canadian Professional Accountants (CPA) resource, 20 … Continue reading The main worry is micro managing the ED. A staff survey can help avoid this.

Tread carefully

Boards should expect their ED’s to report regularly on human resource matters. Likewise ED’s should take it upon themselves to do the same, especially about staff departures, new hires, promotions and staff accomplishments.^[3]Boards should expect their ED to provide an HR report, at least once a year. Heathy workplace indicators include staff turnover, staff evaluations completed and not completed, sick days taken, … Continue reading

However, when it come to staff surveys as an HR tool, don’t open the door too widely.  Lots has been written about companies employing staff engagement surveys and engaging consultants to design and administer them. Surveys can get away on a board. Stay focused, close to the modest recipe provided here.

• Keep it short (20 or questions)
• Employ a paper questionnaire not a online one
• Make it a confidential survey not an anonymous survey
• Consider consulting just a small sample of employees
• Strive for good narrative results not numerical ones.

I will explore these features in a minute. Here are some other important reminders:

Boards can do it

The model that I propose, and the questionnaire template I provide, make it possible for boards themselves to undertake the survey and compile the results. It takes no special skills, just an agreement to do it, some focused attention and some tangible work.^[4]Putting together a staff survey is a good job for a small focused board task group. Perhaps four meetings would be enough: 1-questions, 2-staff communications, 3-sample and questionnaire … Continue reading

If your non-profit has only two or three employees you may not want to survey them with a written instrument. Otherwise though, the results of a small written survey can provide some assurances to the board that things are OK, that signifies their interest in staff and provides them and the executive director some information.

When to survey and how often?

The best time to undertake an employee survey is when the executive director’s performance is under review as part of the Board’s regular exercise of their fiduciary responsibility. So, once every year or two.

When should you NOT undertake a staff survey?

• • When the organization is facing legal action about its HR practices such as a charge of improper employee dismissal or workplace harassment
  • In the middle of collective bargaining with an employee union
  • If the board’s sole motive is to gather evidence against the executive director who they feel is not competent
  • Where there is no comprehensive, board approved HR policy in place
  • When the staff know little about their board and who is on it.

Involve your executive director

It is essential to involve your executive director if your board has any thoughts about contacting staff. Most EDs would welcome some objective feedback, especially if their board is going to do the work of getting it.

You need the ED’s involvement too, certainly in reviewing the questions, but also in providing a list of staff, their positions, length of service and their contact information.

Frame the survey

If a questionnaire is about to arrive in staff mail boxes, it should not come as a surprise. All staff should get a note indicating:

• Who is undertaking the survey
• Its purpose
• Who the questionnaires are to be returned to and by what means
• That it is being conducted with the ED’s knowledge
• Not everyone will get one, if that is the case, and why
• When it is that board would like them completed and returned
• That they can be done during work time
• That the questionnaire responses will be kept confidential
• That the questionnaires will be shredded once the results are compiled

I have provided a draft letter to staff that covers most of these points. It might be helpful in crafting your own. You can find it here.

• Southwest Harbour Staff Survey Memo (PDF)
• Southwest Harbour Staff Survey Memo (MS Word))

The survey itself

The model I propose is not about generating numerical HR performance data. It is about providing staff with an opportunity to reflect on their workplace. That is why using a small number of questions and space for written responses, not “check boxes” and scaled responses, is important.

Survey everyone or just a sample?

If your non-profit has fewer than 20 employees, you can certainly survey everyone. The more employees you include, especially when it comes time to summarize the results, the bigger the project is. If you have more than 25 staff members, I would suggest a sample survey, in other words, a select few. Ten to fifteen written responses is plenty to get a read on the health of your workplace environment.

Does it have to be a representative sample? Yes, of course it does, but there is no need to be perfect here. Pay attention to:

• Supervisory staff
• Front line
• New employees
• Long standing employees
• Gender
• Race
• Age

Obviously some employees will fall into more than one category. If you have 10 women on staff and 5 men, then of 15 surveys, 10, or maybe 9, should be completed by women staff.

A paper questionnaire

There is a great advantage in using a paper questionnaire. Hand-written responses are better at encouraging reflection. I would urge boards to stay away from conducting an online survey, that is, one where the responses are received and compiled electronically.  Of course, employees should be have the option of using their computer to write on and return the questionnaire via e-mail.

Many boards and EDs will balk at a paper survey as old fashioned or not environmentally responsible. There will surely be someone who knows how to turn a paper survey into a electronic one and will want to do it. Resist. I believe that every added complication will result in a board abandoned the project.

If a board or a board committee is going to spend time of the survey, spend it on identifying the sample and fine-tuning the questions.

Confidentiality, anonymity and trust

I would make the case that a board initiated HR survey be confidential not anonymous. Staff members need to own their responses and the board needs to know who has and has not responded.

It is up to the board and ED together to figure out how to present and collect the survey responses in a manner that has the confidence of staff members. Certainly the completed questionnaires should not be returned to the ED or left on ones desk top for others to see. Some comments received may need to be altered to protect the person responding.

Asking good questions

The project discussed here is not about survey research. Questionnaire design is both an art and a science. I would urge boards not to wade into this territory just to conduct a simple workplace survey.

My sample questionnaire, a template, is here.  The questions are straightforward and hopefully unambiguous. It does not offer many answer choices. The comment spaces are designed to make up for that limitation. For me they are key.

• Southwest Harbour Staff Questionnaire (PDF)
• Southwest Harbour Staff Questionnaire (MS Word)

Most boards will want to vary the questions somewhat. The template makes it easy to do so. But again be careful. Do not stray from what you have explicitly asked of your ED or what HR or workplace environment goals he/she has explicitly committed to.

In constructing a questionnaire it is always recommended that one start with listing what one wants to know and then move to what the questions might be. There is much written about writing clear questions and about what answer choices to offer (e.g. nominal or ordinal scales). Despite my worry that this simple survey could spiral into a much larger undertaking, there are some useful guides. ^[5]A 20-year old resource Questionnaire Design: Asking Questions with a Purpose, by Ellen Taylor-Powell of the Extension Department of the University of Wisconsin is better than most.  I could not … Continue reading

This being said, depending on the organization and its circumstances, there may be other HR questions than the ones I have suggested in my example.  I have included two questions on workplace harassment which deserve board attention. If your non-profit is a clinic or a nursing home for example, access to occupational health and safety information or awareness of the health and safety risks could be important to ask.

Boards can do it

I will say it again: your board can do this! The model I propose, and the questionnaire template I provide, makes it possible for boards to get a sense of their non-profit as a workplace, to demonstrate that they are interested in the welfare of staff, and generate some useful feedback. It takes no special skills and not a lot of time.  Do not make it more complicated than it needs to be. Take pride in the outcome achieved.

Note on the image

The image is of the words “Are You Happy” spelled out in alphabet soup. I was not able to find the original source the photo. So, I guess it is borrowed for this post. Thanks. There are lots of different versions of this image such as ones that say “help”, “save me”, “great job” and “great dad”.