Identified Employee Surveys: Lessons Learned

Abstract

The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) has a proud history of using surveys to assess the attitudes and opinions of our employees for nearly 80 years. The P&G Survey, as it exists today, consists of approximately 80 core items that tap into employee attitudes, satisfaction, and engagement. It is delivered to over 100,000 employees, in 80+ countries, in 20+ languages, and is designed to replace all other employee surveys at P&G. Our Employer of Choice model serves as a foundation for the P&G Survey. This model is based on research conducted with external job applicants on what constitutes an ideal work setting, a review of historical internal employee surveys, and a review of external surveys on what it takes to be a great place to work. Over the years, we have used both anonymous and identified surveys. Currently, the P&G Survey is an identified survey, and we conduct linkage research with a variety of data sources including attrition data, business unit financial data, and other data sources. P&G's longstanding survey tradition puts us in a unique position to share lessons learned and offer guidelines for those thinking about using identified surveys. Below, we expand on the recommendations Saari and Scherbaum (2011) posit, and propose six additional

Identified Employee Surveys: Where Do We Go From Here?

“…We also believe that the calls by several commentators (e.g., Chau & Dwight, 2011; Morris & Ashworth, 2011; Weiner, Jolton, Dorio, Klein, & Herman, 2011) for the greater use of identified surveys need to be qualified. The commentaries come from highly experienced and regarded industrial–organizational (I–O) professionals with descriptions of how they carry out identified surveys and in what contexts (i.e., organizations with a positive history of professionally conducted employee surveys, high trust environments, full disclosure and choice for employees, and highly qualified I–O experts close by to ensure everything is done very professionally; e.g., Biga, McCance, & Massman, 2011; Black, Hyland, & Rutigliano, 2011; Church & Rotolo, 2011; Jako, 2011). In these situations, we agree that identified surveys could be very appropriate.…”