Using Employee Survey Results to Identify Like Employee Groups for Focusing Follow-up

SPR Center conducted an employee opinion survey for a health care system client with over 500 work units. While each work unit's supervisor received a separate report of their results, the system's management wished to plan survey follow-up activities on the basis of noteworthy patterns of results that applied to groups of units.

To accomplish this goal, SPR Center first created statistical summaries of the survey item content and used this data to identify five groupings or clusters of work units. Each cluster was made up of work units that had a similar pattern of response to the survey items. In addition, the differences in response patterns between the groups were statistically meaningful. For example, one employee cluster had a pattern indicating very poor perceptions of supervision while another showed a pattern of perceived dysfunctional relationships between work unit members. As the accompanying chart illustrates, these cluster differences were reflected in differences in morale and satisfaction of employees in the respective groups. However, the groups had not yet differentiated in the area of intention to leave.

Using information like that in the chart, management engaged in follow-up activities to address problems of group dynamics and supervision to ensure the lower morale and satisfaction in the affected clusters did not turn into serious retention problems.