A Lot Can Change In 365 Days

The importance of surveying regularly

By Best Christian Workplaces Institute

Chad Carter is the Senior Director of Human Resources at The Gideons International. For the past 8 years, Carter and the executive team at The Gideons International have surveyed and assessed their organizational culture using the Employee Engagement Survey every year. Through consistent surveying and implementation practices, Carter and The Gideons International team have seen their organizational culture transition from toxic to solidly healthy!

Why Survey Regularly with Best Christian Workplace?

Before coming to The Gideons International, Carter had been exposed to several other employee engagement surveys and was encouraged when he arrived to find previous leaders had begun the process of surveying with the Best Christian Workplace Institute. As he began to interpret the data, Carter was pleasantly surprised at the efficiency and accuracy of the BCWI Employee Engagement Survey. Because of the long-term impact surveying has had on his organization, Carter continues to survey regularly with BCWI year after year.

Longevity and Accuracy.

When looking for a tool to assess an organization’s culture or employee engagement, leaders and survey administrators must be able to trust the efficiency, accuracy, and long-term improvements the tool will bring to the organization. Is it cost effective? Will the tool give accurate results? After utilizing several other tools in the past, Carter was thoroughly impressed with the scientifically-proven results of BCWI.

“There are other tools out there, but they are what I would call a “juvenile” tool. These assessments are one or two years old; they’ve just started up. BCWI, on the other hand, has been around for nearly two full decades and actually have all of the data to support what they’re saying.”

A Christian Perspective.

For Christian leaders, many mainstream employee engagement surveys miss assessing a vital part of organizational culture – the impact of spirituality. For Carter and The Gideons International, finding a survey that accurately assessed the spiritual vitality of their organization, as well as having consultants who understood how important a spiritual element is to their culture, was essential.

“One of the things I really like about BCWI, compared to other employee engagement assessments, is the spiritual vitality component. This is missing in the other tools. Coming from a Christian perspective, for our organization, the spiritual component is vital to us in order to be able to use the tool.”

A Voice for the People.

For many organizations, including The Gideons International, employees feel as if they don’t have a safe place to share their thoughts and experiences with leadership. It’s not uncommon for there to be many different experiences within the same organization – an employee may have a vastly different experience and opinion of organizational culture than leadership, but both viewpoints are equally valid. When Carter first began surveying, it was very apparent that communication was lacking on both a managerial and organizational level. The Employee Engagement Survey became a medium for employees to regularly share their experiences.

“The survey is the voice box of our people. If somebody comes back later and says, “Oh, the survey’s invalid,” really what they’re saying is, “I really don’t care what my people think.” Because all you’re doing is invalidating what your people think. I want to reverse that and say, “This is the voice box of our people and this is the channel in which we’re giving them the opportunity, in mass aggregate data, to be able to come together and tell us these things by the department.”

Focused Results. 

As organizations take the survey each year, they begin to uncover new areas of growth and improvement. The more you survey, the more you learn and are able to keep a pulse on how your organization feels and operates. Carter and the executive team appreciate that, as part of the BCWI approach, leaders are encouraged to focus on and make sustainable one or two items that are revealed in the survey each year, rather than try and solve all the problems all at once. The survey helps leaders prioritize which areas of improvement should be focused on each year.

“Every year I am able to notice there is something new to work on.”

Your Organizational Health is Important.

Just as it’s important to regularly go to the doctor to assess physical health, it’s important for organizations to regularly assess their organizational health and company culture. When you survey annually with the BCWI Employee Engagement Survey, you’re essentially going to the doctor and, through your employee’s own words, understanding what is going on inside the organizational body. If leaders choose to not survey every year, and instead survey sporadically or only once, they risk missing something significant leaders wouldn’t be aware of until it is possibly too late.

“The Best Christian Workplace Employee Engagement Survey allows me the opportunity to actually know what’s going on within the same snapshot every single year. And then I can actually address it.”

Just like a medical doctor, the BCWI team will work with you to create an action plan toward health. As part of the assessment process, BCWI works with executive teams to understand and interpret the data that is discovered during the assessment process.

“Working with BCWI results in the best debriefing; It’s comprehensive and you walk away knowing what to do next. I would say that overall there is a high confidence level that you can be assured of because of the integrity of the data.”

A Lot Can Change in 365 Days.

Assessing regularly with the Employee Engagement Survey helps you keep a pulse on your organization. And, not only does it help you uncover areas of improvement, but it also allows you to celebrate how your hard work has paid off year over year! To learn more about surveying annually, contact the BCWI team. We’re happy to help you get started on a plan toward a flourishing future!

Originally presented in this blog:

http://blog.bcwinstitute.org/a-lot-changes-in-365-days/