If You Think You Need To Do An Engagement Survey, Ask Yourself Why?

If your company feels like they need to do an employee engagement survey to “get a pulse” on the organization, I’d argue you already have the answer.

I worked at a company once where we didn’t do an engagement survey the first two years we were building it. We didn’t need to. We had just consolidated four corporate offices across four different states into one. We had just hired more than 150 people from multiple departments at all levels in less than six months to run the company. We were voted one of the Top Five Best Places to Work within our first eight months. We had 0% voluntary turnover our first year. Yes, 0%. We didn’t need to do an engagement survey because we knew we were building an incredible place to work. Every leader focused on the same thing: making sure Monday morning didn’t suck.

We were in an enviable position. We were building a new corporate office that required a new team. We did one thing in every interview: discussed our Leadership Expectations and made it very clear that if you were going to be a leader in this company, these were our expectations for creating Monday mornings that don’t suck:

• Create a culture that high performers want to be a part of
• Bring energy and enthusiasm to work every day
• Build relationships at all levels of the organization
• Support the direction of the company with no hidden agendas
• Be decisive—make the tough call when it needs to be made
• Manage the performance of your team(s)
• Consistently deliver results
• Help the company grow by developing people

Companies don’t set expectations for their leaders; we did—and it worked. It was so powerful to have aligned expectations on how we were going to create a company where Monday morning didn’t suck. I’ve never seen anything like it. It works. The next time you’re in a meeting with the leaders in your organization, ask, ”What do we do as a team, every day, to make sure Monday morning doesn’t suck?” Then, have fun with the conversation and do what you need to do.