Emojis & Standardization

Have you ever been surveyed about service you received at a restaurant or shop?  Has anyone ever filled out a survey about you?  Are you the type of person who gives a 3 if you are content with service but not overwhelmed with joy?  Those people are "3-Givers".  Or are you the type who gives a 5 if you are content?  Ah, "5-Givers".  Bless them for their score-inflating generosity... 😀

If you are being surveyed, you probably just assume you are answering the same way everyone else does.  However, if you are on the receiving end of those results, you have a vested interest in things being answered uniformly, especially if those results are taken into consideration when promotions and raises come around!

This week I asked a couple of my coworkers how they answer surveys and found out that one is a 3-Giver and one is a 5-Giver.  They are both intelligent, and I was actually a little surprised by their answers.  I would have thought the opposite about them.  Just goes to show why we should all probably be a little less paranoid about people figuring out our anonymous survey responses.  But I digress...

At my work, as in many workplaces, there are a variety of surveys administered throughout the year, and each survey leads to an action plan to improve those results.  So, shouldn't we take a little bit of precaution to make sure we standardize question answers?  Last year, my teams scored VERY low in an area of a survey about receiving promotions.  When I asked them about it, they said that the question isn't really applicable to them, so they marked it low.  WHAT?!?!  I'm glad I asked, or else I might have spent the next several months giving them pep talks about increasing their skills to move onto to new opportunities in the company.  My well-meaning survey action plan might have looked like an attempt to get disgruntled people out of my area!  What's a manager to do?

I decided to standardize my survey results in the future by making an emoji-based 1-5 scale:

Scale with N/A Option at Neutral Score

Scale Assuming N/A if Leaving it Blank

This scale seems pretty consistent with other scales.  I have a coworker who drives for Uber on the side, and he educates his passengers that if they answer 3 or lower, the Uber system "learns" that they do not want him to be their driver anymore.  Another coworker moonlights at Famous Dave's, and their customer service results only take 4's and 5's into consideration.  Anything else is negative.  Finally, Great Places IT Services calls them "Affirmative Responses", indicating that anything less is not positive (http://www.greatplaceitservices.com/files/BenchmarkReport.pdf).

A quick footnote regarding the "N/A" option.  If you can leave an answer blank as an "N/A" response, that is optimal.  If every question is required, then the "N/A" response should be whichever number is closest to your average score so as to not artificially (aka dishonestly) inflate your score but also not penalize/mislead the results by requiring a lower response.  Hopefully the survey administrator gives instruction about this specific situation.

Anyway, hopefully you can relate to this situation.  I have a diverse group with varying levels of English skills, but they can all understand an emoji.  We'll see how it goes on the next survey.  At least I'll have more trust in the responses so I know what to work on.