Greg Barnett

Energage

Many companies use employee engagement surveys to measure the state of their employee experience and take action on improvements. Since surveys and follow-up actions require significant time and financial investment, companies sometimes consider incentives to improve survey scores.

While this thinking is understandable and often well-intentioned, incentivizing engagement surveys can lead to negative outcomes. It can damage the quality of employee feedback, hurt perceptions about the value of employee surveying, or lead to less-than-ideal behaviors around survey results. Some key risks: Misalignment with purpose: Turning employee listening into a performance KPI changes how employees feel about the survey and the types of responses they will give. This may lead to skewed results that don’t reflect genuine feelings and perceptions.

Motivation to inflate scores: Suppose employees know that higher engagement scores lead to monetary rewards. In that case, they are incentivized to artificially inflate their responses, making the data unreliable. When employees know that there may be a reward or punishment related to their ratings, they often inflate their ratings to avoid negative consequences.

Potential for manipulation: When managers or other leaders know employee survey ratings will impact their financial success, they might directly or indirectly pressure team members to respond positively.

Gaming survey timing: Most companies conduct an annual survey to establish their engagement levels for the year. However, a survey is just a point-in-time measurement. Companies that want to inflate their scores can schedule their survey to avoid negative news that might impact the score or to align with positive news that might inflate the scores.

Incentivizing the uncontrollable: Daily interactions with peers and managers may influence engagement. Still, some of the largest drivers of employee engagement involve confidence in senior leaders and belief in the company’s vision. By incentivizing engagement at a managerial level, it is possible to create an unwinnable situation for managers where, even at their best, they cannot move the needle to overcome factors outside of their influence.

Inequality concerns: Different departments or teams often have very different challenges. Tying financial incentives to engagement scores can unfairly benefit some departments while penalizing others. Increasing the score on one team may be a relatively easy feat compared to the other.

Engaging the wrong people: It is great to have a highly engaged workforce when those who are highly engaged are also performing at a high-level. It is bad for a company to have highly engaged employees who are performing poorly. If a team has low performers and a manager is managing them out, their engagement scores may go down for the right reasons. Not rewarding them for doing the right thing would be a mistake.

Ultimately, most companies want to see their cultures flourish and their employees rave about their experiences. The most effective way to build a strong culture isn’t by using incentives. It’s about using employee feedback to learn from employees, understand them, and build more trust.

When employees see that their voices matter — and that the company prioritizes their perspective — workplace culture improves.

Dr. Greg Barnett is chief people scientist at Energage, a Philadelphia-based employee survey firm. Energage is The Denver Post’s survey partner for Top Workplaces. To nominate your company as a Top Workplace, go to denverpost.com/nominate.