HR department develops online survey to assess effectiveness of online surveys

CALGARY, Alberta – The Human Resources department of an intermediate oil and gas producer headquartered in downtown Calgary recently developed and conducted an internal online survey to assess the effectiveness of internal online surveys. Gladys Giggletwig, VP of Human Resources at the Calgary-based company goes on to say,

Well, I have to tell you that this project was quite the undertaking. After I formed an Online Survey Special Committee comprising 7 HR specialists, 5 HR generalists, 4 HR coordinators, 3 HR analysts, and 1 HR representative (and not to forget a sole HR assistant), we met for at least 6 hours per week for over 5 months to get things down.  We tasked ourselves with compiling the survey questions and assumed that the best way to roll it out was through an online survey. But it turns out that we were wrong.

And very wrong they were, indeed. Despite the repeated email reminders to the roughly 400 staff at the company’s headoffice, only 3 staff members responded to the online survey about online surveys. And of those 3 respondents, it was very clear that one of them had not taken the survey seriously considering the nature of his or her answers. For example, when asked,

“How would you rate the effectiveness of the online surveys that the HR department conducts from time to time?“, with the following answers from which to choose:

• 5 – very effective
• 4 – not very effective
• 3 – neutral
• 2 – counter productive
• 1 – very counter productive

The anonymous respondent entered into the Other field, “0 – this is effin’ stupid, are you guys actually on the payroll?”  It turns out that the company cannot take any recourse against this individual in order to honour its privacy and confidentiality policies.