Employee Survey

Q: How should I interpret employee survey results when a large percentage of staff say they will leave the organization in a few years?
I’ve noticed that in employee surveys that ask whether "you intend to leave the company within 2/3 years," the result is an often alarmingly high number responding positively. One organization I’m familiar with had 70% of staff saying they would like to leave.
There’s always the possibility that these truly are terrible companies and the employees are desperate to leave, but I find that hard to believe.
In your experience, is there an element of interpretation that needs to be included when looking at results like these?

A: Great question! Typically, I've seen this question asked from the positive perspective: "If it is up to you, do you want to be working here 12 months from now?" (or some other time period). When this question is asked on a five-point scale ranging from "definitely yes" to "definitely no," the range I've seen for the last five companies where I asked this question was from 49% to 85% choosing one of the top two positive responses ("definitely yes" and "probably yes").

So the organization with 70% saying that they probably or definitely do NOT want to be there may be doing something wrong in its employee relations, or it is in a very high-pressure or low-security industry, or has a lot of people with jobs that have a high demand at many other companies so lots of job-changing is the smartest way to manage a career.
Other questions on the survey can identify which of these or other environmental issues could be influencing the intention to stay.

Interpreting resultsI do think there is some interpretation to apply, based primarily on how anonymous employees perceive the survey to be. If the survey starts out with a large number of demographic questions that could pinpoint individuals ("Gee, I'm the only woman manager over fifty in the Communications Department in this location"), you might actually get more people saying they intend to stay than really feel that way--just in case their boss finds out that most of the department is intending to leave.

Asking this type of question on a communication survey, by the way, is a really good idea. Retention is a bottom-line measurement. If you can prove statistical correlations of various communications to increased likelihood of retention, you can show that communication helps reduce recruitment and training costs by encouraging retention.

© Angela Sinickas 2005. Angela Sinickas is the president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international consulting firm dedicated to helping corporations achieve business results through focused diagnostics and practical solutions.