Confidential or Anonymous?

An employee survey on compliance awareness is one of the most effective methods for understanding and improving the internal environment. To get real, honest feedback from employees and derive actionable measures from the survey results, there are some pillars to consider, such as setting the purpose of the survey and asking for cooperation within the company. This article will outline some tips for conducting an employee compliance awareness survey, especially useful to beginners and/or who are facing difficulties in doing such surveys.

What is a compliance awareness survey?

A company must meet the expectations of all stakeholders. Needless to say, employees are one of the top important of those. From the employees' view, what do they expect in terms of "compliance" in the company?
The main expectations are; no discrimination or harassment in the workplace, a safe work environment both physically and psychologically, reasonable working hours, a workplace free from any wrongdoing or intimidation while running the job, and safe channels for notifying and having consultations over problems by talking to superiors or hotlines.
The employee compliance awareness survey checks whether these are being properly arranged. If compliance awareness is firmly nurtured within the company, the organization's culture is healthy. The survey is an instrument for companies to understand the healthiness of their organization, identify risks at an early stage, and take early action to solve problems.

Process and tips for conducting a survey

The purpose of the survey varies from organization to organization: "to check the penetration of compliance awareness among employees," "to make the whistle-blowing system to be used more widely," and "to detect potential risks under the work style reform by COVID." Thus, questions in the survey should be set after clarifying the purpose. The length of the survey, answering all the questions, should be under 15 minutes at most, although we often desire to include an excessive volume of questions trying to cover broad aspects.

Employee sentiment surveys are usually conducted periodically. In Japan, it is often held in October or November, which is the "Corporate Ethics Month" designated by the Japan Business Federation, or in June, when after a while from the end of the fiscal year in March. If the survey is conducted in the fall, the results may be reported in January or February of the following year, which is good timing to formulate measures for the next fiscal year. When conducted in June, the results may be reported in October during Corporate Ethics Month. When to conduct the survey should be decided upon by when you need to carry out responding measures.

The coverage across the corporate group often gradually expands, starting from the domestic headquarters to domestic group companies, and then to global bases. From the principles of governance, the survey should cover all employees of the relevant companies within its group, regardless of whether they are full-time or not, domestic or overseas, but you should be flexible in designing the survey according to the purpose and budget.

Since the corporate governance code requires governance globally, dealing with diverse target respondents is necessary. However, the number of staff in charge of compliance may be limited, you should start from the scope that you can manage. When covering globally, involving overseas offices is key to success, and building a responsive structure on a daily basis is important.

Set questions to get the real, honest feelings of the employees.

The key to getting employees' honest voice is to make the questions easy to answer. Rather than asking “Are you behaving properly?”, questioning that person specifically and making it difficult to get a response, you should ask "Have you ever seen/heard harassment in your workplace?", in an objective manner. It is also important to be able to answer the questions intuitively with less thinking, with fewer options, and with the questions ordered in an easy way to follow.

Clarifying the purpose of the survey is important because when there are too many questions without a clear scope, it may cause many dropouts from the survey. On the other hand, if there are too few questions, identifying issues would be impossible, so we might want at least 30 questions. In addition, an open-ended question at the end of the survey will allow us to obtain valuable answers, unlike quantitative questions and answers.

Confidential, or anonymous, that is the question.

Which should we choose, confidentiality or anonymity?
Let's go through the pros and cons of each.

First of all, the advantage of confidential surveys is that you can get courteous responses. If there is a critical issue, it can be dealt with immediately, and respondents are expecting that. However, respondents are likely to hesitate for giving negative answers or expressing freely in their comments, thus, it is difficult to get honest feelings.

On the other hand, while you cannot identify who has responded to an anonymous survey, this turns out to be the greatest advantage. It lets the respondents speak up, making it easier to collect responses, and above all, it is easier to obtain real honest feelings. The disadvantage is the anonymity making it impossible to identify the specific problem, difficult to check even if a serious incident is posted, and may result in delaying the initial response.

Companies usually conduct risk management through various functions, such as main (superior reporting), sub (hotlines), internal audit, internal control system, etc. The survey is intended to elicit employees' honest opinions and identify problems in the early stages while risks are still small. To do so, it is necessary to be able to narrow down the problematic area. Narrowing down the problem areas while ensuring the anonymity of the respondents, is possible by using well-defined profile attributes.

In-house or outsourced?

Should the survey be conducted in-house or outsourced?

The advantage of conducting the survey in-house is that it may be carried out more easily and inexpensively. However, it can be difficult to get honest feelings from the respondents, since it is managed by the company. Also, the survey structure and questions may not be designed right to grasp the issues objectively.
In addition, the tabulation process and analysis are time-consuming and might not be able to do internally by the busy staff in the compliance department. Moreover, even if the company conducts periodic audits, it will only have internal data, and would be difficult to determine whether the company's level of performance is adequate compared to the external world. Likewise, it will be hard to decide upon a policy to what extent the company should establish a system.
Contrarily, an external research service provider will have no internal ties to the company, so employees feel comfortable stating their real intentions. In addition, comparison with external data may be possible depending on the vendor. One of the disadvantages of outsourcing a survey is that it can be costly. However, reporting to the management from a neutral standpoint objectively is more convincing, and reflecting countermeasures in policies may be easier. Above all, the time and effort required for analysis are reduced, and the department in charge can focus on its principal duties.

When outsourcing, it is important to choose a partner that is well-experienced and has rich knowledge. The possession of unbiased benchmark data is also preferable. Furthermore, since compliance is a sensitive issue, it is important to ensure that the data will be handled securely and precisely. If the survey is conducted globally, the quality of the translation and understanding of the local environment are also important factors to consider.

Disclosing the survey results

Today, many companies are starting to share survey results with employees to help identify problems and create a healthy organizational culture. Employees are often fed up with cooperating on various internal surveys, but when they receive feedback on the results, they get the feeling of inclusion, and they will be much more willing to make positive efforts to improve the corporate culture. It is important to try to gain a collective understanding across the company while building the guidelines for the initiatives and raising awareness in the workplace through carrying out measures.

Conclusion

To foster a healthy organizational culture, the voices of employees must be heard first. Getting the real honest feelings of employees is important, and an awareness survey should be conducted to fulfill this purpose. Furthermore, it is essential to think of the next step, deriving countermeasures based on the survey results.

When an employee survey is done by Nikkei Research, the report is delivered in an easy-to-understand format, such as pointing out priority issues and high-risk departments. This makes the issues "personalized" to each department and facilitates the planning of efforts to resolve them.
Please feel free to contact us if you are thinking of conducting an employee compliance awareness survey, or if you are facing challenges.