Why a "yes" does not equal a "yes" and a "no" does not equal a "no".
Gain better insights into the concerns of your employees!
To feel the pulse of their company culture, more and more companies are conducting regular employee surveys. They hope to gain a better understanding of the employee experience in the company. But what employees answer and what they really believe and, above all, what they do are two different things.
Traditional questionnaires do not really provide an answer to employees’ real concerns. They only register the employee’s answer but are not able to assess to what extent the employee is convinced of his or her answer. The risk to which companies are exposed by drawing wrong conclusions and thus, not being able to identify the real concerns is considerable. Measures taken may further prove to be ineffective and, in addition to the immense costs incurred, there is a considerable risk that they will have a negative rather than a positive impact, turning the measures into an expensive adventure.
Systems 1 and System 2 - Daniel Kahneman (Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences [1]; Nobel Laureate 2002 [2])
According to Kahneman, humans have two systems for making decisions: System 1 and System 2. In System 1 we decide automatically, which according to Harvard Professor G. Zaltman [3] happens in over 95% of cases. Our beliefs in the subconscious drive these actions without the rationale intervening. In very few exceptions (<5% of cases) we use System 2, which involves analytical thinking to make decisions. The rationale is the place where the cognitive process takes place in thinking.
Fortunately, today there is a better way! Science (Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman [4] and Richard Thaler [5]) agrees that the subconscious takes the lead in over 95% of our decisions. Our beliefs, habits and convictions play in this an essential role. We do not need in-depth thought processes; we take the so-called gut decisions intuitively and thus very quickly. When performing employee surveys, this fact can be crucial. If the question is answered quickly, the stronger the conviction; if the answer is given hesitantly, the greater the doubt. With Response Time Testing (RTT) based surveys we can measure the speed and thus the conviction of the answers. This gives you a deeper insight into the convictions of your employees. This insight is decisive and offers a massive competitive advantage! We thus have a way to measure the true feelings of the employees, which are driving their behaviour and actions. This allows you to gain meaningful insight into your corporate culture, as this is shaped by the behaviour and actions of your employees and not by their thinking, or the spoken or written word.
Using an example based on following employee survey question: “I have the authority to make most of the decisions that have impact on my work?”, we see that when we measure with Response Time Testing (RTT), we get two, respectively four pieces of information. On the one hand, whether he answered the question with “YES” or “NO” and on the other hand, how high the conviction of the answer is. Thanks to this extended interpretation, it becomes clear that a “yes” does not equal a “yes” and a “no” does not equal a “no”.
When analysing the responses, the measured speed of the response is crucial for the correct interpretation. And thus, also for the elaboration of the measures to improve the current situation in terms of employee experience. A valuable insight that is not possible with traditional survey techniques. An insight, however, that may be crucial for improving corporate culture and thus employee engagement and company success.
According to a Gallup study from 2022 [6], only 21% of employees are engaged globally, and in Switzerland even only 11%. The fact that employee engagement has a high influence on productivity has already been proven in many studies. As such this situation is very worrying.
If you would like to learn more about this offer and our approach, you can download the flyer “The Employee Experience Explorer” via the following link http://bit.ly/3Xz4i2Y, or contact us directly at hello@appreci8.net.
