True employee engagement is Unionization.

I put "pay us more money" in every comment box I can. It hasn't worked yet, weirdly... It's just a tool so upper management can jerk themselves off to anything good they can find, justifying their continued repression of the workers. They can point to one comment going "I love it here!" and then say any bad comment must be a bad employee.

We have surveys at my job 2-4 times a year, where we answer how we feel the company is doing in various aspects on a scale of 1-5.

Last year, they went over the results, focused on the lowest scores, and had our supervisors talk to their teams to have us make "action plans," to address the issues. In retrospect, I think it was my region's way to get us to score them higher on the surveys by giving us negative busy work if we scored them too low. But it backfired; we all said, nah, these are your issues, you action plan to fix them.

The whole thing is just ridiculous. Nothing important ever changes from this feedback.

I went HAM on my most recent one. They’re anonymous but I’m sure my direct manager can tell my writing style. But the place I work for has been in refusing to do any hiring including backfills so now I’m a team of 1 doing what 7 people used to do and I let them know I’m not pleased.

I always get super triggered at the "Do you have a best friend at work?" question that my old organization used to roll out during engagement planning. No, you motherfuckers, I already have a best friend. They don't happen to work here.

So I answer no every single time. And then in the interview afterward they go on about how "well, it's not LITERALLY if your best friend works here. The survey just asks the question like that because blah blah blah...". Trying to over examine what it means to "have a best friend at work". To interpret that question in some other way to maybe get me to answer yes next year.

I don't care what the intent behind the question is, they will never convince me to not answer "no", unless my best friend happens to join our team. I feel like they're trying to gaslight me into feeling more connected to the team or some bullshit. Drives me up the fucking wall.

Funny enough, I'm about to receive the results of our latest employee survey. I have about 15 direct employees, and at least with the one we use, it's completely anonymous. To just see results, 11 people need to have responded. To see written results, 25 ppl need to have responded (so I'm not going to get to see written results). As a manager, I honestly don't care who wrote what...I genuinely want to improve the work environment to make everyone happier. Employee surveys aren't the only input I use for making things better, and I certainly can't make magic happen, but I use the results and trends of the survey to push hard on upper management for what people are asking for. In fact, I'd say the survey results are the single metric that reflects my effectiveness as a manager. It sure sucks if these surveys are being misused or ignored - why on earth would you want respond?? Happy people are proven to be more creative and innovative, plus its way more fun. If your manager doesn't care about that...all I can say is this manager doesn't represent the mentality of all managers - find a new job :-)

This is funny because I literally just did the annual one at my office and shit all over my company. I can't wait to see them say they had a ton of positive reactions and make zero changes.

I just got invited to a staff BBQ at the manager's house. It's at 5PM. On Friday. I just spent 50 hours this week with you guys! Wasn't that enough?

I just tell them my opinions on business matters aren't free.