I thought this was an interesting post over at Nobscott’s bolg about someone publishing company opinion surveys on the web. After looking over this web site, I think the original concern (that actual opinion survey results were being posted) is not what is happening. It looks like instead that former employees (or interns or job candidates) are contributing “exit interviews” of their own to the site, which can then be viewed by members of the site (in most cases for a fee). This to me seems less objectionable than the former concern, that actual internal opinion survey numbers were being contributed. This is really just amazon.com book reviews about companies – and I think most readers would look at the information with a grain of salt for that reason. However, I got thinking about the possibility of a site that DID post internal survey results. I have actually had to deal with something like this before. Most of my clients recently won NLRB elections. Normally (especially after close first elections) at least one outside union organizer stays in pretty close contact with his/her internal organizers and continues to collect intelligence on the company. I have had several occasions where opinion survey results were leaked to the union from internal sympathizers. I make it a point now to warn companies about this possibility, and tailor all communication material with that in mind. So what do you do to prevent the union (or a website, etc.) from getting the data and making a fuss about what a crappy company this is? I do not make any special attempt to prevent the information from leaking. There are two reasons for this – the first is simply practical – what are you going to do to stop it? Make every employee sign nondisclosure agreements before communicating survey results? Terminate an offending employee who discloses the results? Sue the union (or website)? Assuming they are accurately reporting the results there really is not much you can say. You could try to come up with some business tort claim (defamation, tortious interference), but just about anything you can come up with will have the following four downsides: it will cost the client quite a bit of money to prosecute; it is most likely going to lose; it makes the company look small (afraid of the “truth”) and just creates an additional issue; and, most important, it diverts attention from what really matters – responding to the survey results! The second reason is more fundamental. The most important part of the survey process is communication. Anything you try to hide undermines the process and overall effectiveness of the intervention. The focus after communicating the results should be continuous, measured improvement – anything that diverts attention from that is going to cause problems down the road. If anything, broadly communicating the results should focus even more attention on how to respond to the results and improve the organization. I encourage companies to communicate results broadly within the organization to create some accountability – “yeah, we have problems, but we are not afraid to be honest about our shortcomings and we are committed to fix them.” I’m not saying that you should write up a press release about the low job satisfaction rating your employee survey came back with. But I am saying, as a practical matter, I wouldn’t be nearly as concerned about disclosure of the results as I would with what you do to respond to those results.
