Despite advances in social and digital technologies that allow for instant feedback at work, the traditional employee survey remains the default approach to generating employee feedback. While they provide data on standard HR metrics, employee surveys are not always taken seriously by employees and offer limited insights into what they really think.
HR magazine has teamed up with Silverman Research to conduct a collaborative open-access study on employee engagement research and how it might evolve.
More than 200 people contributed to the study and the top authors and comments, as rated by the community, can be seen in a leaderboard. Supported by general consensus, these comments are the most highly rated in terms of their insightfulness and agreeableness, providing insight on views that are popular.
Here's a preview of some of the main points made by the top authors in response to the discussion question: "How do you think employee research will change over the next 15 years?"
"The difference will be amazing. Today, we create hypotheses and then go collect data. Tomorrow, we'll be doing the inverse. The constant, steady state accumulation of data will enable us to look at the data before we form our questions…"
"As the demographic of our workforce changes, and access to social media increases employee research will move away from the traditional annual employee survey to more frequent and interactive research. As people become more confident in using social media their confidence will grow in being open and honest around the way they feedback and comment on their employer…"
"Employees' behaviour will be increasingly traceable and measurable as more information about their activity is electronically captured. Organisations will be better at studying these patterns of behaviour…"
The project will remain open for people to explore and the full results will be published in HR magazine's November issue. A free report will also be available to download.
