(c) Can Stock PhotoA lot of my client engagements involve an employee survey, so I was alarmed when I read a post on the DecisionWise blog revealing that “26% of your employees either blatantly lie or inadvertently misidentify demographic questions on employee surveys.” At that level of misrepresentation, can you trust the other survey results?

Author Sarah Shirley says the discrepancies are revealed when the company compares demographic responses to information in the employee’s record, using a unique identifier in the survey to match the survey to the employee who completed it.

Shirley proposes designing a survey “that codes demographic data behind the scenes. By making demographic data a pre-programmed part of the survey, your results will be just as accurate as the company’s HR records,” she writes, adding that you need to be transparent with employees in taking this approach.

The solution startled me. After all, a survey represents a rare opportunity for an employee to offer anonymous feedback. Explaining to employees that you’re tracking them behind the scenes may be transparent, but it also stifles their willingness to express themselves, since they know (or suspect) their responses can be traced back to them.

Besides, according to Ryan Williams, “The accuracy of the data is secondary to the relationship and the focus it is creating.”

Williams, a partner at Tekara Organizational Effectiveness in Vancover, is my go-to partner when a client engagement includes a serious research component. (Before Ryan, I worked with his now-retired dad, Tudor Williams, who launched TWI Surveys, which Ryan took over before joining Tekara.)

“Why do we survey?” Ryan asked in response to the DecisionWise post. “To enhance and understand our relatinship with employees.” One part of most surveys does, indeed, ask employees to share democraphic identifiers, allowing us to slice and dice the data to gain insight into systemic issues that could be related to department affiliation, job level, length of employment, or age.

“Employee survey data also correlates with organizational performance,” Ryan explains. Senior managers who authorize these surveys are looking for an engagement score against which they can assess their own efforts at building engagement or satisfaction. “The challenge is that engagement is a social phenomenon and opinion surveys don’t produce hard metrics. How we ask and why we ask can shift the orientation to increase or reduce bias.”

A company in which 26% of its employees misrepresent themselves should ask themselves a few questions, Ryan suggests:

• What and how did they communicate about the upcoming survey and then again during its distribution?
• Was it clear to employees that the survey was voluntary and could be completed during work hours or from home?
• Were employees permitted to skip the demographic section of the survey if they preferred not to share that information?

Ryan shares my concern that the company ignored the fact that low survey participation or deliberate corruption of data are signs of low engagement. “Did this company suggest using that information as the basis for an organizational dialogue?” he asks. “No, they suggested that the methodology should track and control data collection for accuracy. So employees that don’t trust you or care enough to fill out a survey now have a reason to not trust you.

“What have you accomplished?” Ryan asks. “Lack of transparency and possibly the corruption of the rest of the data. That’s what I call bad advice.”

Me, too.