Glint Survey

Introduction

In this blog, I discuss a survey my employer sent out to all employees. If they use the results, then they should address highlighted issues (if any), and aim to keep positive aspects unchanged. 

“We are on a journey to become an employer of choice. This survey, and your feedback, will enable us to identify what to prioritise and focus on. We want to be guided by your experiences. Help us to help you.”

 
We have done surveys like this before, but then I don’t think anything really changes based on the feedback. I also find them quite vague and open to interpretation. If I was creating a survey, I think I would add examples to clarify the questions, and would also force people to justify their answers with comments. If you simply score 1-5, then when it’s a 5, what makes it so good? If it is a 4, what change would perfect it? If it is a 3, why so mediocre? or is it simply you just don’t have an opinion on it/don’t find it relevant etc.
 
I ended up clicking 3 for most of the answers, and didn’t feel it was worth spending time writing the optional comments as I felt it wouldn’t make a difference. Some questions were ambiguous, or unclear what they meant so I didn’t feel like I could score accurately. I think they will just look at the average scores and not really drill down into the details. Although that does go against their ambition of being an “Employer of Choice“. If they really want to be this (is this some kind of award/vote thing, or self declared? What does that really mean anyway?), then they need clear guidance so should ask for justifications.

Employer of Choice Programme

”This is a business critical programme with a number of SLT-sponsored work-streams that are focused on making us an employer of choice; where we attract, recruit and retain the people we need, enabling everyone to be their best self and deliver high performance.”

The Survey

So here are the questions, and my thoughts on each. 

How happy are you working here?

Quite a tough one to answer really. I find it is very comfortable as weeks can go by without much progress and managers don’t seem to care. I like the low-pressure environment but then I just think it’s becoming a bit stale in recent times.

I would recommend here as a great place to work.

Is it really possible to be really happy but not recommend it, or be really unhappy but recommend it? Surely these 2 answers will go hand-in-hand. Maybe there’s some edge cases, as I think if you like chilling, then it is perfect to work here. So some people could be unhappy but recommend it to others in that case! The last batch of people we have hired have basically done nothing for 2-3 years so I am sure they are happy in the short term. 

If you want a job where you are learning a lot, I think maybe it’s best looking elsewhere. There is a big push to create new features “in the cloud” but then these projects sometimes seem a bit forced and end up being scrapped. 

I think over time, long-term employees have been moving on. I think that’s a general problem seen across the industry now many software developers work at home. It’s easy to switch jobs without having the hassle of moving or large commutes. I do think this is a big reason. So with an increasing number of cancelled projects and more jobs moving to India (although recruitment over there seems to be struggling as well), maybe it’s not so great for people to start working here.

I understand how my work contributes to our success.

People got quite excited when starting working on a successor to our ageing, flagship software. But it’s been 3 years, the projects have been restarted or changed direction/vision. There’s general disillusionment when developers say “none of my code has reached production in 3 years”. Even people that are working on the flagship software have seen projects being delayed from release by 3 months sometimes. So it’s quite hard to see how your work contributes to success when many features just don’t seem to get released!

I feel a sense of belonging.

A few years ago, I think most people you could ask would say the people are brilliant. Unless you were the sort of person that came in, kept quiet and did your work, I think people would cite having several close friends. This has definitely dwindled over the years, especially since switching to home-working. Then like I stated before, long-term employees have been leaving recently which has eroded the “classic” culture.

I am able to successfully balance my work and personal life.

I think we score highly here because we are never pressured. Even if you miss deadlines, managers often seem happy just to delay things. One colleague recently stated he “has never known a deadline that couldn’t be extended”.

I have a good working relationship with members of my team.

My team is actually composed of long-term employees so I think we have a good mix of knowledge of the company and determination for the software to be of good quality. I think in general, small teams do work well together.

I feel satisfied with the recognition or praise I receive for my work.

To be honest, I am always ranting about how managers just hype up everything. It seems really disingenuous. Then there have been instances where projects are a mess but you get praised for getting them over the line. It’s gonna get done if you extend the deadline long enough!

People then get praised for dealing with a tough project even though it was clearly bad decisions from the team that caused the delay/bad quality. It means when you do get praised for doing something good, it’s hard to know if it is actually sincere.

I feel comfortable being myself at work.

I’m not really sure how to interpret this. In today’s woke culture, it sounds like it’s asking if you are comfortable stating your sexuality or something. I don’t think I have to pretend to be someone else, so I guess this scores highly.

I feel empowered to make decisions regarding my work.

Not sure about this one either. I do question requirements, but ultimately it’s the Product Owner’s decision, and they are taking orders from above.

I have good opportunities to learn and grow.

I think each day is the same really, so no new challenges.

My working environment allows me to work at my best.

I did wonder how people interpret this question. If we work at home, is it a critique of our own space? Do people just consider their work equipment (computer, mouse, keyboard, monitors)? Would people interpret this to be about software? People they work with? Managers?

I have the resources I need to do my job well.

Now this sounds more like hardware and software, but is it?

I am excited about The Company’s future.

With our ageing flagship software and our upcoming software keeps changing direction/restarting/delayed – the future seems grim in my opinion. I was discussing this with a colleague recently. If a competitor releases new software before we do, then we could be screwed if ours still needs years to be suitable for release. We announced it early too which means other companies could be provoked into making a similar product in order to be competitive, especially since we hyped up key features that weren’t even being developed at the time.

The Company has a great culture.

“Culture” is a very vague term really. I think this is more of a culmination of aspects. Your peers, managers, processes/rules, unwritten rules (e.g. expected amount of overtime). It’s a bit mixed really. I generally like the people, but there’s a few people who definitely chill out, recent recruitment has been poor, and some processes are just box ticking…

We do a good job removing barriers that slow down our work.

Not sure again. I think we have been increasing focus on security and that slows you down, like losing Administrator rights to our computers. Want to install something? Have to go through IT. Sometimes we seem to add more “box-ticking” exercises for things and there doesn’t seem to be much rationale/benefit for these.

There is a good flow of communication between leadership, departments, and teams.

We like to organise “Town Hall” meetings, or Directors may make little blog posts on Yammer etc. But then we do the weird thing where managers send an email to their line reports who have to send the email on to their linereports who have to send the mail on to theirs. Then someone in the chain doesn’t then people don’t know about key information.

Teams collaborate effectively to get things done.

I think the projects are often self-isolated so I haven’t had much experience of this recently. But when I did work on our upcoming product, the teams were duplicating work or doing work that would be useless – like making an API that no other team wanted.

Regardless of background, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.

Never noticed any classism, racism, sexism. I think sometimes the promotions can be quite cliquey and women seem to be allowed extended maternity then come back into a promotion. So I think some evidence of positive sexism, if anything.

Employees are held accountable for their work.

Disagree with this one. The most delayed project I have ever been on resulted in a one-off bonus of £1500 on completion. Others cashed in on overtime. Yet, if they were held accountable, then they should have been criticised for their decisions which led to such delays.

I have confidence in the leadership team.

I don’t know who is accountable for what, but since our new software has overrun by years, and obvious mistakes have been made, I’m not sure what they are doing about it or why it took so long to respond to it.

My manager keeps our team focused on clear priorities.

Hard to answer again. Sometimes people moan that they get asked to fix a bug instead of carrying on with their projects. But obviously high priority bugs will always take priority. Managers in charge of several teams love moving team members around as if staff are purely interchangeable. This has been a problem for a while, but particularly in recent years.

My manager provides me with feedback that helps me improve my performance.

Well, we often come up with some super new appraisal framework then never really use it: we come up with objectives but then don’t review them and change the process again next year because it was deemed the current one didn’t work.

I am satisfied with the benefits offered.

We hype up generic stuff like “cycle to work scheme” which makes no sense when you work at home. Sometimes we promote voucher schemes and stuff but you often just save 2-5% here and there.

We are committed to protecting the environment, promoting social equality and diversity, and supporting our communities.

Sometimes we promote initiatives like tree-planting and some charity fundraisers, but aside from that; no idea.

I believe meaningful action will be taken as a result of this survey.

Since we have done these surveys before, I think little action will be taken. I think because the questions were a bit vague and open to interpretation, it’s probably hard to glean much information from it. If a question scores an average of 3, what does it really mean? You would have to analyse the comments. But then if people have interpreted the question differently, then the score becomes meaningless anyway.

What else is on your mind?

I generally don’t like surveys 😀

Conclusion

I probably could provide good insight to the senior management, but A) the questions werent that clear and B) comments weren’t mandatory. Even though I didn’t write comments, it still took me 20 minutes or so to complete the survey. I discussed it with a colleague and he said it was easy to fill in and took 5 minutes. Then when I asked him how he interpreted certain questions like the “work environment”, then he admitted that he never considered all that detail. So the results of a question like that isn’t going to be useful.