Opened my computer in the morning today, and I had received 2 mails asking me to fill some survey. As usual, since the mail was from an unknown source, i deleted them. If a working professional counts, s/he would be getting/filling/preparing close to 1 survey request every week (this data is from a survey again !!).
We fill and ask others to fill so many surveys. Everyday in newspapers, online, from friends, Boss gives examples of some crap survey, news channels ask us to participate in them.. we have surveys all around us. Search "Survey" in Google and you get 21,70,00,000 results... that's humongous...
I ask myself few questions when I see/read/fill/prepare any survey.
Why are surveys done?
What new information we get/gather from them?
Do we actually get something that we don't know?
How correct they are?
Are they correct?
What can be a better way of gathering data?
Can we design a survey that can answer all questions?
Why 2 or more surveys done on the same topic yield different results?
Can we do away with manipulating the survey data?
Can an ideal survey questionnaire be made?
The fact is we do not have answers to these questions. We all have so much information that we need not do any survey (lots of them give us what we call as "Common Sense").
Companies carry out compensation & engagement surveys which yield such complex results that nobody understands them and interprets them in their own way...
They remove any part which they are unable to understand and thus reach an outcome that is Employer Friendly !!
Then comes the analysis part. All of us are brilliant in analysis of data. and when the data is so huge like compensation survey data then it's a work of 15-20 days of long wait before any conclusion comes...
then it goes to the top management who interprets it in their own way (since they never saw the actual report which is 150 pages long)... they reach some conclusion on their own and ask the middle management to make some arrangements that they (Top management) had already planned/ discussed in the earlier Management meetings.
Finally the survey consultancy is paid huge sums of money. The companies declare in the employee meetings about their research. every one is gung-ho about their work.
Result of the survey is: The Performance Bonus of the company is higher than what the competitors pay and the average salary lies between 25th percentile and median. The changes in the salary made are: The salaries are revised by 8% on an average (which is almost the same for last year). The Basic Salaries are increased by only 4%so that Performance Bonus which is derived from Basic is also increased by only 4% while the total CTC increased by 8%.
What I feel is we/companies need to design a process by which we understand or read the pulse of the general trend in the market and do changes/modifications accordingly. Surveys should only exist to assist us in checking our decisions and if they speak differently to our understanding then measures should be taken.
I need not do a survey to check how many people commented on my posts... it's quite obvious and trend says the comments are not going to increase much in the near future!!!
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