Other suggestions or comments on the workplace mental health survey

Weaken the "problem-oriented" survey assumptions, establish a short closed loop of "survey-intervention", set up differentiated survey dimensions for different groups, and avoid making the survey a formal "employee self-certification emotional questionnaire" from the root.

Two years ago, I helped a leading e-commerce company in Hangzhou do the project docking for spring employee psychological census. The first page of the first version of the questionnaire produced by HR at that time listed questions such as "Have you recently been prone to depression?" Only 32% of the final valid questionnaires were collected, and many employees quit after filling in the third question. Some even complained on the intranet, "Is this an optimization to screen out people with bad moods?" ”

Don't tell me, the HR person in charge of the project was quite aggrieved at the time, saying that he had modified it according to the SCL-90 professional scale, and only by asking directly could he get the real data. But the front-line EAP consultants who followed us for interviews did not see it that way - the first identity of a working person is always an employee. First, there are interest concerns of "will it affect my work, assessment, and contract renewal?" and then the choice of "should I tell the truth?" You tie the problem to "psychological abnormality" from the very beginning, and you have to be more careful with whoever you choose.

In fact, instead of worrying about how to set the questionnaire questions to be "professional", what is more important is what everyone expects after filling out the questionnaire.

Last year I came across an auto parts factory in the Pearl River Delta. The administration department has conducted mental health surveys twice a year for three consecutive years. Every time the questionnaires are distributed with great fanfare, 5-yuan shopping coupons are given to those who fill out the questionnaires, and the workshop director urges them one by one. As a result, when it was distributed again this year, many workers directly wrote in the open question area, "I filled it out and it didn't solve it, so why ask so many questions?" ”It turns out that they collected questionnaires a few years ago and accumulated a thick pile of data. They have never announced the results to the outside world, nor have they issued any supporting improvement measures.

The reason from the administration side is also very practical: "We have to save enough data for a quarter, make cross-quarter comparisons, and submit it to the headquarters for approval before we can come up with a plan. It is impossible to get feedback just after collecting it." However, the union officer stationed at the factory said that he later made a small change. After filling out the questionnaire, a pop-up window popped up immediately, saying, "We have included the issues you reported back. Within this week, we will first come up with solutions to the most frequently raised issues of extra meals in the night shift canteen and maintenance of air conditioning in dormitories." With this addition, the response rate to the questionnaire directly increased by 47%. Do you think this is mysterious? In fact, it's not at all. It's just like when you go to the hospital and draw three tubes of blood, the doctor takes the test sheet and turns away from you. If he comes to draw your blood next time, you wouldn't be happy if it were you.

Another pitfall that many companies have encountered is that everyone in the company uses the same questionnaire.

Last year, an intelligent hardware company in Shenzhen sent outsourced employees a questionnaire that was the same as that used by regular employees. It even included questions such as "Are you satisfied with the company's equity incentive policy?" and "Whether you are willing to grow with the company in the long term." Outsourced employees do not have equity incentives to begin with, and they are not even sure whether their contracts can be renewed next year. They filled in this question and directly criticized the company in the comment area. The effectiveness of that questionnaire was less than 20%.

The HRBP responsible for making the questionnaire felt that "unifying the questionnaire facilitates data statistics and saves the cost of redesign." However, an expert who has worked in employee relations for ten years said that thousands of dollars in questionnaire design costs were saved, but the trust of hundreds of outsourced employees in the company was wasted. No matter how you calculate it, it will be a loss. Fresh graduates who have just graduated are concerned about whether they will be PUAd and whether they can integrate into the team. Veteran employees who have worked for ten years are worried about the mid-life crisis and the balance between seniority and juniority. Female employees during pregnancy are concerned about whether they will be transferred to other positions and whether maternity leave benefits can be implemented. If you give everyone the same questionnaire, you are essentially lazy and have no intention of truly understanding everyone's needs.

I have been working on workplace psychology-related projects for almost six years, and I have seen too many companies that turn mental health surveys into "face projects." Either to add a line in the annual report that "the company values ​​the well-being of employees," or because they are afraid that they will be held responsible if extreme incidents occur to employees, so they conduct a survey in advance to "leave traces" and shift the blame. To be honest, people in the workplace are very smart. Whether you really want to solve the problem or just go through the motions when doing the survey, people can tell by just glancing at the questionnaire.

To put it bluntly, these suggestions are not too profound. They are nothing more than changing the idea of ​​​​"asking employees to cooperate with me to complete the survey task" to "helping employees say things they usually don't have the opportunity to say." After all, the ultimate goal of doing surveys is never to get a data analysis report with beautiful charts and graphs, but to really make everyone less worried when they go to work, right?