The History of Organizational Surveys

Organizational Surveys began in the 1920s and 1930s.  Surveys emphasized the measurement of employee satisfaction, yet were rooted in academia, and were worker-centric.  These satisfaction surveys, however, were not seen by management to be tools for organizational improvement.  Surveys were inspired by, and were a reaction to, the efficiency emphasis of industrial engineering and time-and-motion studies that began at the turn of the century.  Socialist political thought and economic theories of the time also influenced the worker-centric orientation.

By the 1960s and 1970s many enterprises were conducting employee attitude surveys on a large scale on a regular basis.  The driving motivations were, largely, identifying employee needs, satisfying those needs, and avoiding organizing attempts by unions.  These surveys still focused on employee-defined needs and were not viewed by management as integral to the operation of the business.

During this time a consortium of large companies was created for the purpose of sharing survey data and promoting the professional use of surveys in corporate America.  This was the Mayflower Group, named after the hotel in Washington, DC, which hosted their first meeting.  The Mayflower Group standardized on a set of core questions for the purposes of consistency, tracking change over time, and the sharing of normative data.  Their principal reason for their existence is and has been the compilation and distribution of industry specific norms to their members.

The Mayflower Group was made up of some of the largest corporations in the United States.  IBM, Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Citicorp, General Electric, Mobil, AT&T, Boeing, and Merrill Lynch were among them.

Into the 1980s and 1990s, surveys began to take on a business-relevant appearance, but their relevance was only skin deep.  Organizations were augmenting their satisfaction questionnaires with items on quality initiatives, customer issues, and business performance.  However, they were still employee-centered tools. Issues were identified and bubbled up from the bottom.  Management was expected to fix the problems that employees identified.

These pseudo-strategic organizational surveys were no more effective in improving the organization than were the earlier satisfaction surveys.  This is where most organizations are today in their survey programs.  Unfortunately, most of them incorrectly believe they are at the level where the survey is helping them progress toward their strategic business objective.

In the 1990s a few progressive organizations made the jump to a new level of survey utilization: The Strategic Organizational Survey.  Management now sees the survey as an important tool in running the business and in helping them progress toward their strategic business objectives.  Strategic Organizational Surveys would provide the objective data for the PEOPLE, CUSTOMER, and ENVIRONMENTAL components of their Balanced Scorecard.  Objective survey data which reflect on the business strategy are collected and reviewed on a regular basis, as are measures of markets, finances, production, or quality.

The Strategic Organizational Survey is linked to business strategy in a continuous cycle of measurement, evaluation, feedback, and improvement.