Free Burritos!
At this week's exec staff meeting our HR department shared the results of a recent employee satisfaction survey. I like these things because they put numbers behind what you suspect is happening under the surface in terms of morale, or they reveal something enlightening that you hadn't even realized was going on. Where they fail is almost always in management's lack of will to prioritize fixing the problems highly enough relative to other objectives.
Anyway, of the 14 items on the survey, 3 came back with consistently poor ratings by our employees. But one of them in particular I found kind of amusing. The survey item was:
Well duh. Since we don't actually have a formal mentor program how could we have scored anything other than poorly, unless we just happened to have hired a lot of people who've sought and obtained personal mentors?! And of course the remedial action to this "problem" was to create a mentor program.* It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Next year, I'm going to insert myself on the survey team. I'm going to make sure we have a question like, "I'm satisfied with our 'Burrito Friday' program." Because I really like burritos.
* Don't get me wrong. I think mentor programs are a good idea in general and I certainly don't mind participating as a mentor or a mentee. My objection is that we didn't actually establish that not having mentors was a problem or that our employees really wanted them.
Anyway, of the 14 items on the survey, 3 came back with consistently poor ratings by our employees. But one of them in particular I found kind of amusing. The survey item was:
I have a mentor at work.Across all departments, we were gutted on that one.
Well duh. Since we don't actually have a formal mentor program how could we have scored anything other than poorly, unless we just happened to have hired a lot of people who've sought and obtained personal mentors?! And of course the remedial action to this "problem" was to create a mentor program.* It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Next year, I'm going to insert myself on the survey team. I'm going to make sure we have a question like, "I'm satisfied with our 'Burrito Friday' program." Because I really like burritos.
* Don't get me wrong. I think mentor programs are a good idea in general and I certainly don't mind participating as a mentor or a mentee. My objection is that we didn't actually establish that not having mentors was a problem or that our employees really wanted them.
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