How will my answers be used?

Survey information is used in a variety of ways. The organisations we work with at AskYourTeam all have a genuine desire to make positive changes. Talking to people is the quickest and most direct method - that is, someone could just ask you for your opinion.

However, surveys have a few advantages over talking to people face to face. Firstly, surveys allow for the confidential collection of feedback. This helps people feel comfortable being honest with their feedback. Most people are uncomfortable giving honest feedback face to face, particularly if it could be perceived as negative, or critical of the person or organisation receiving it. It is a natural human response to protect people from negative feedback.

Then there may be trust issues, where the person being asked for feedback doesn't feel comfortable imparting their true feelings directly, so will water-down what they truly think.

In either situation, this helps nobody. People are withholding potentially important information that may help resolve on-going issues and decision-makers are blissfully ignorant of factors that may be holding back an organisation and the people working with or within it.

Finally, in a large and/or geographically disperse organisation, talking to everyone or even a reasonable sample of people would take too long and be impractical.

Surveys allow for an analytical view of the data and let organisations see trends over time. A simple conversation is very powerful, but it's very difficult to turn that into a reasonably objective, organisation-wide picture. This is where surveys become essential.

I've done plenty of surveys before. Isn't this just a waste of my time?

At AskYourTeam, we don't see a lot of 'wasted time'. The organisations we work with all have a genuine desire to make positive changes. It's possible that there may not be any change from your survey. Or there may be, but you're not getting to see or hear about it. Sometimes it just takes time. 

If you feel that you are not seeing any changes from the AskYourTeam process we encourage you to discuss it with your manager or AskYourTeam administrators. If you're not comfortable doing this, see if you can let them know via a confidential survey.

The survey is your opportunity to have a voice, be heard and contribute to the 'collective genius' of all participants. Our mission at AskYourTeam is to help create the most productive and enjoyable places to work in the world. AskYourTeam work with our customers to understand the feedback they are receiving and support them in actively making change happen. So your continual, honest input into this process is one of the best ways to influence real change.

AskYourTeam love feedback too

Finally, we spend a fair bit of time trying to make our surveys as quick and easy to complete as possible. While completing any AskYourTeam survey you get to give us feedback. If there is a way we can make the experience better, please let us know. We love feedback too and we're listening.