Let's Ask the Staff |
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Dear Dave
We have decided to conduct a formal review of our pay and benefit practices.
Our first step was to establish a committee comprised of a cross-section
of management and staff to study the topic and report back to our board
with recommendations. The committee has met a few times and has subsequently
asked for permission to survey all employees (about 400) for input on
likes and dislikes as a way to begin. A few of us are concerned that this
whole initiative is getting more complicated than we originally anticipated.
The committee insists that the staff survey is a vital part of the process.
Do we need it or not?
LK IL
Dear LK
Since the committee consists of a “cross-section of management and
staff”, perhaps you can make the case that the committee should
be more than capable of getting started with their own inputs and wait
until they are further along in the process to see if there is merit to
engage the entire staff. You might also wish to point out that by waiting
until some preliminary ideas have first been generated, the committee
should be in a position to better focus the survey instrument with the
end result of gaining much more valuable results from the survey effort
and expense.
Another factor to consider is whether or not surveying and
asking for input is in-character with the way the firm typically operates.
If asking for input is foreign to you, issuing a survey can cause suspicion
and anxiety among some of the rank-in-file folks who generally see any
change as disquieting.
Finally, if you do survey, you create an implicit obligation
to eventually offer feedback to those who participated. Don’t ask
if you’re not willing to react and respond to what you hear. |
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