Employee Surveys That Work

chapter eight

REACHING CONCLUSIONS

BENCHMARKING AND STATISTICAL VERSUS MEANINGFUL DIFFERENCES

Leaders love to benchmark because doing so can be critically important for strategy. Benchmarking tells us how our prices, quality, customer service, customer loyalty, margins, market share, and profitability measure up to our competitors. So of course benchmarking on employee attitudes is always a good thing, right? Unfortunately, not necessarily. Benchmarking employee survey responses to external data is at best mildly informative; at worst it can lead to misdirection and wasted effort, which can undermine employee engagement—the opposite of the outcome we want to occur. Benchmarking internally often leads to deeper and more actionable insights.