Workforce Surveys: Introduction

Time to reflect on my experience with CEB Workforce Surveys & Analytics to this point. Sharing this knowledge is certainly past due, but I hope you find my insights valuable none-the-less! To start, I work with two distinct types of surveys:

Employee Opinion Surveys (EOS)- Sample or census survey in which content is used to collect employee opinions about key business strategies, decisions, processes, etc. and determine the effectiveness and alignment of these initiatives via the performance of the business and the engagement of its employees.

360 Degree Feedback Surveys (360) - Sample survey in which leaders gain 360 degree feedback from multiple levels of the organization (upward, downward, peer). Content is specific to assessing an individual in relation to the key professional development and leadership metrics of the organization.

Consultants work to develop survey content/response scales/metrics that align with an individual business's needs. In almost all cases, individual questions are categorized into mega themes, and open-ended questions are coded into mega topics for reporting purposes.

Survey data is often compared to historical data, internal benchmark data, and/or external normative data in order to gauge positive and/or negative progress on company initiatives and compare results to industry best practices.

Learning Design: Working with SMEs

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are critical to analyzing audience needs, determining desired learning outcomes, determining the curriculum and sequence of learning activities, and writing content for scenarios, stories, or informational learning designs.



A few tips from my own experience working with SMEs include:

1) Identify your SMEs right away. It may be a good idea to not only have a content SME, but also a past trainee SME who can speak to the learner's experience, and/or a client SME, who can speak to desired learning outcomes.

2) Determine your SMEs availability; schedule meetings early and often. Since SMEs usually have full-time jobs, it is not uncommon for SMEs to be extremely busy individuals. Schedule meetings throughout your entire analysis and design process from the beginning.

3) Use your time with SMEs wisely. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Do your own research. Come up with your own content questions and send to the SME in advance. You also need to be sure SME sees value in the training effort, otherwise, they may also see little value in your meetings.

Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactions recommends the following questions as a great start for your first SME interaction:
- What do you expect learners to to do after completing the course that they can’t do now?
- What are the consequences if the learner fails to master the intended outcomes?
- Can you show me an active demonstration, a detailed simulation, or provide an opportunity to directly observe the desired performance?
- What specific performance mistakes do new learners make?
- What tools, resources, or help do successful performers use to do these tasks?

Lastly, for a humorous, though accurate, representation of how to handle the many SME personalities in a post titled, "How Important is the SME?" by Archana Nayaran, click here.

Resources:
Edwards, E. (2011) Analyze This: 5 Questions You Need to Ask. Allen Interactions E-Learning Leadership Blog. Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/hD88Mf

Image Credit: http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/viewFile/495/226/1417