Voice of the Employee: A Whole New World for the HR Professional

Voice of the Employee (VoE) offers a whole new world for the HR Professional because only VoE can identify what really matters to your employees.

VoE replaces meaningless statistical significance tests with tests of real world or practical significance. Rather than produce an endless list of statistically significant issues, VoE identifies a clear and concrete set of priorities that can be used to drive sustainable change aligned with business priorities.

There is no statistical gobbledygook. Only hard science applied to the problem of identifying issues of real and practical importance to your employees.

That’s the new world of VoE. Developing sustainable, practical improvement solutions for business. Your business.

The Old World of Employee Research

Typical employee research conducted using standard survey research techniques can determine how many people hold certain attitudes or if the differences in attitudes between departments is statistically significant, but standard survey research can’t determine whether any of this actually matters or is of any practical importance. This is because typical survey research techniques are enumerative.

Enumerative research is a formal term within the statistical sciences. Polling is a form of enumerative research with which most of us are familiar. Enumerative research is only capable of describing conditions. Specifically, enumerative research:

• Determines, within a level of statistical confidence, the number of objects (people) in a population,
• Determines, again within a level of statistical confidence, the number or proportion of objects that have one or more characteristics (such as stated opinions or attitudes).

That’s it. In many applications, this may be enough. In advertising research, when seeking to identify how many people saw a particular advertisement, enumerative research is the right method. In an employee survey, you may want to know how many people are aware of the new benefits plan as well as how many people favour it over the old plan. Here again, enumerative research works well. But enumerative research can do no more. It can’t determine the effectiveness of an ad, or why or to what degree employees favour the new benefits plan, because there is nothing in enumerative research that can separate the wheat from the chaff, that can identify and focus on what is actually important to people.

The New World of Analytic Research

Of course, identifying what is really important to people is what most organizations are interested in. Determining counts with a certain statistical precision is usually less of an interest than determining why an ad was effective or not and to what degree in terms of generating sales. They want to know how important the change in the benefit plan is to people and how this may affect employee turnover.

Answering these sorts of questions is the purpose of analytic research. Voice of the Employee (VoE) and Voice of the Customer (VoC) are examples of analytic research as are most of the research techniques used in performance improvement methodologies such as Lean and Lean Six Sigma. Analytic research is the formal term for research designed, not to describe, but to explain and predict. Enumerative research describes conditions, analytic research explains why these conditions came about and what will likely happen if changes are not made. You are probably thinking that it is analytic research that answers the questions that business typically need answered.

VoE Difference #1: Providing Answers

You’re right. This is the first big difference between enumerative and analytic research – analytic research provides answers that businesses need answered. It makes a world of difference.

Demonstrating a statistically significant difference in an employee engagement score between two departments (outcome of an enumerative study) doesn’t in any way answer the question of whether the observed difference between the two departments is actually important (outcome of an analytic study).

This is why so much traditional employee survey research leaves executives the empty feeling that their questions haven’t really been answered. They wanted know why things are the way are, but received only a detailed statistical description of conditions. Senior management are apt to respond to an enumerative study with “So what?“.

With an analytic study, the typical response from executives  is “I see!“. That’s because VoE provides answers to the questions executives want answered. Why is staff turnover high? Why is engagement low? What issues are of greatest concern to employees? What changes would make the greatest difference to employee satisfaction and engagement? All questions that only analytic research such as VoE can answer.

VoE Difference #2: Providing Focus

Here is another world of difference between traditional employee survey research and VoE – VoE provides focus.

Traditional employee enumerative research is characterized by multitudes of statistically significant results. Issues and problems are apparently everywhere. This is because statistically significant differences are so easy to generate. Statistical significance is a function of the research design and most employee research is designed to yield plenty of results (albeit meaningless). This is great for appearances sake, as it implies those purchasing the research received value for the money expended (plenty of results for the dollar). Unfortunately, as almost all of these statistically significant results are meaningless, and the business ends up wasting time and money chasing ghosts. After a few years of wasted efforts, executives are bound to notice and over time, the annual employee survey begins to suffer from declining credibility.

In analytic research such as VoE, the number of findings or significant results are fewer in number. That’s because VoE identifies what is really important people – statistical significance is replaced with real world, practical or economic significance. Obviously those things that are really important to people are fewer in number than all the possibilities. With VoE the number of findings is reduced, but those findings represent what the business really needs to pay attention to if it is to improve performance.

As a result, improvement efforts focus on the important stuff. People begin to notice a difference. Things get better – attitudes toward work and levels of employee engagement rise. When you think about it, what other way could employee engagement improve other than by addressing the issues and concerns of importance to staff?

VoE Difference #3: Driving Business Improvement

Analytic research differs from enumerative research in another way. As Dr. Deming, who first formally defined the distinction between the two research approaches pointed out, enumerative research is useful only when taking action on a population whereas analytic research is useful when taking action on the cause and effect system that produced the population. As confusing as this sounds, in employee research it means:

• traditional enumerative employee research is most useful when you want to sell an existing business program, policy or process to employees,
• analytic research is useful when you want to change existing business programs, polices or processes that affect employees.

Both approaches seek improvement but the strategies are polar opposites. Traditional employee research supports push strategies that attempt to change employee attitudes by spinning positive messages. By definition, push strategies only address symptoms. While effective, such strategies yield only short term improvements, because, no amount of promotion or spinning of messages can sustain positive attitudes in a bad system. Sooner or later, reality catches up with the messaging and a crisis ensues.

This, by the way, is why enumerative research, such as polling, is used so frequently in political contests. The research is used to craft political messages that sell a candidate and only long enough to carry through until election day.

VoE is different world altogether. VoE research supports pull strategies that attempt to change employee attitudes by changing the system in which people work. By identifying what is really important to people, VoE identifies the root causes affecting employee performance, attitude and engagement. Thus VoE drives change in the business by identifying the needs and requirements of the people who work in it. The result is long term sustainable change that makes a difference to the business and its employees.

The New World of Voice of the Employee

VoE represents a whole new world for the HR professional. One that for the first time, allows HR to  fill the promise of effective Organizational Development (OD). OD, after all, was about changing organizations, not changing people. VoE  is the only research methodology designed to gather employee information specifically for this purpose. It drives long-term sustainable change by identifying what factors are impacting employees and making clear focused recommendations for change.

The new world of VoE, therefore, is the real world of business. Research that identifies what is really important to people as opposed to statistically significant. Research that drives change to support meaningful and sustainable improvement. Research that contributes to a more effective, efficient and flexible organization. Isn’t that what employee research is supposed to do?