Conducting an Employee or Customer Survey In-House vs. Outsourcing
The ultimate goal of a successful research study is to obtain honest feedback from all participants
that can be translated into action to achieve optimal organizational growth and
development. To achieve this, participants must be confident in the process, and
the organization must trust the results.
Participants need to know that the organization has a
genuine interest in listening to their candid opinions, and they must be assured
that their input is kept confidential. In order for the participants to willingly
engage in the process, the organization must demonstrate sincere plans to
incorporate the feedback they gather into future decisions. By the same token, the
organization must be confident that the data is accurate and meaningful.
There can be significant hazards associated with
unprofessional attempts to conduct a psychological research study. Organizations
have come to rely upon NBRI for the full management of such
studies, whether employee or customer focused. In so doing, they free up their
internal staff resources to focus on the all-important action planning that
results from a successful study.
Here are some of the most common reasons why
organizations elect not to administer their research studies internally:
Normative Data
Only NBRI can provide the normative data that is necessary for clients to
understand their results and benchmark against real world scores. Without
this comparison, clients must judge
their employee survey and/or customer survey scores relative to
the survey scale, which has no relationship with
reality. That is, a score of 3.86 may appear to be relatively high compared
to a scale of 5 or 6, but in fact, it may
represent the 24th percentile of the normative database, indicating
poor performance compared to other companies, or it may represent the 84th percentile
of the normative database, representing relatively high performance
compared to other companies. Without
this information, the scores generated by any research study are virtually
meaningless. Research studies conducted
in-house may not, by definition, have normative data.
Executive Summary / Root Cause Analyses
Some clients have teams of Ph.D. psychological researchers who can take the employee and/or customer survey
data and turn it into meaningful, actionable continuous improvement
programs. Most do not. For those who do not, NBRI provides the
perfect solution. Cost-effectively, NBRI provides full documentation of the research study, the
methodology, results, and recommendations in
an Executive Summary. The
summary also includes higher-level statistical analyses, wherein
all raw data is input to SPSS so that correlations and stepwise and
linear regression analyses (proprietary, modified) can be conducted on the
data. These root cause analyses reveal the fewest number of items
that, when addressed, will have the greatest amount of positive impact on the
organization. When studies are conducted in-house, clients usually do not have access, knowledge, or
experience with these sophisticated techniques, and may spend months after the
study addressing issues that have little or no effect on the continuous
improvement effort.
Lack of Confidentiality / Lower Response Rates
Research clearly shows that customer and/or employee survey participants are less comfortable sharing their feedback
in-house. In addition to generating less candid responses, internal programs
also often result in lower response rates due to the perception that the
programs are not objective. Ideally, a trusted third-party vendor collects, processes, and
reports the feedback of employee and/or customer surveys.
Administrative Burden
Often, program oversight and administrative responsibilities are assigned to
individuals whose jobs are varied and schedules are full. A properly managed
customer and/or employee survey feedback program demands significant time and attention. Typically, available
internal staff resources are in short supply. Turning over program
administration to an outside vendor enables clients to align valuable internal
staff time on issues related to strategy and action planning. NBRI partners
with clients. We dedicate our human
capital to meet the data collection and analysis demands of the program, and we
provide our expertise in interpreting the results of client studies.
Lack of Expertise / Technical Tools
When clients do not engage psychological research specialists in the design and
development of client research studies, it is especially difficult to arrive at
an efficient dynamic solution that will have the maximum, positive impact on
the organization. Lack of education, experience, and expertise, as well as
technical constraints may prevent the organization from utilizing available
technology and innovative tools. Without the benefit of vast experience in this
demanding field, organizations are likely to fall short of their overall
program objectives.
Added Complexities
Employee and/or customer survey distribution, reminder notices, data collection, comment coding, language
translation, special processing, statistical analyses, interpretation, the
executive summary, and action plans are extremely complex pieces of the
process. There are numerous factors to address while managing the overall
program timeline. What appears to be a cost-saving measure of utilizing
internal resources typically turns out to be a more costly and less effective
option. Clients need to be able to address the complex needs of the research
study in real time, and must know those needs in advance in order to be
prepared for them, or the results can be disastrous. Far
worse than the public embarrassment of a failed research
study due to technical difficulties, is the effect on the organization of
management making faulty decisions on misinformation. With NBRI, clients
are confident that their customer and/or employee survey research instrument, research study, and the
resulting data are at a level of purity equivalent to
that of scientific research.
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