Are you open?
Open your data. Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the Internet and very enthusiastic about open data. He made a plea on TED one year ago for open data and returned this year to show the results in just one year of making data more open.
Employee Engagement Data. It seems to me we are not very open about our data in employee engagement. Consulting companies often own the data for the companies they provide surveys for. Raw data is hard to come by. Employees sometimes never even see the results, let alone the data. It often seems to take forever for survey results to be communicated.
Data fear and improvement required. It seems to me that we fear being open about our data and sharing our data with the very people who create it. We can do better – we must do better – if we have an authentic desire to have our data move from a hoarded collection to a vehicle of authentic engagement.
3 Questions. Before you view the video ask yourself:
- Are we making our engagement data open?
- Are results shared with employees and the wider community?
- If we are not making data open, what is holding us back?
View the video and begin to see the changes and benefits that occur from open data:
Now, open your data.
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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2180 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.
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Email: dzinger@shaw.ca Phone 204 254 2130 Website: www.davidzinger.com
David, I blogged about the same issue on March 5th: http://stephenjgill.typepad.com/performance_improvement_b/2010/03/employee-surveys-how-is-as-important-as-what.html
My point in that post is that when we collect survey data from employees, it’s their data. That is, it belongs to them. We have a responsibility to make it available to them, help them interpret the data, and do something with the data to bring about change in the organization. I think what holds managers back from sharing employee survey data with employees is, in part, a need for control. Information gives people a sense of control. Giving away information makes them feel like they are losing control.
Great points Stephen:
And we should want people to be in control of their own work by having the data that gives them feedback about how engaged they are.
David
David I agree about more transparency of data but I dont think it will happen in the broader area! It already happens in most surveys,.i.e. most opinion survey assignments which consultants have end up with employees seeing results, for the overall organization and for their area. At least they did when I worked for them, and that was my impression with other reputable consultants. I insisted on it or would not do the survey for the client.
But in the area of sharing data with other consultants, whoaaaa, they wont do that! Two reasons:
1. Having a comparative “norm” or benchmark database is a competitive advantage for a consulting firm, something they can use to sell to prospective clients (“we can compare you to other utilities, tech companies, other successful, top perfomance companies, etc”). The guard them closely for this advantage.
2. I think perhaps they are scared that their database would turn out to be different to others’; they have reason to fear this. As somone who has done a study of normative employee opinion databases in one industry (utilities), I found a shocking result: they differed significantly on the same question, obviously for the same industry, for the same time period. I have never seen another study like this because there is almost never a chance to make this comparison as a result of what you are talking about in this post.
Because of this secrecy, we have something interesting happening: a lack of standards. Imagine if a Wi-Fi protocol like 802.11g were different in every Starbucks you went to? You could never connect and get that cruical e-mail. Well we have that with engagement, no one defines it or measures it exactly the same way, and then they usually hide their data except for these giants coming out occasionally and giving us trends. That’s why we have such big differences in trends being reported now between Gallup and WatsonWyatt (now TowersWatson). See the post I shared with the EE community recently (http://employeeengagement.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-troubling-issue-in)
Thank you for bringing this up, its a great topic; but I dont see consultants giving up what might have taken them years to build, in spite of the problems which I point out here.
all the best, David