How (not) to Screw up an Employee Survey

Excellent article on the perils of trying to do your own employee survey. Especially liked this part. So true!

If there's anything worse than a survey designed by an amateur, it's a survey designed by a committee of amateurs. If you really want a mish-mash of vague ideas, contradictory concepts and irrelevant babble dressed up like a survey, then a committee is your best bet. In other words, please don't do it. Better to invest a little more money and hire an experienced consultant who can at least give you a good, valid survey framework and help you avoid the most common mistakes that amateurs make. And by the way, that "Please tell us anything else you'd like to add" question is probably the single most useless survey question you could ever ask, ridiculed by professional researchers for good reason (read How to Write An Employee Survey for rules on writing a good survey).

Read the whole thing here.