The Measuring Stick: Determining the Strength of Your Workplace

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Revenue, profit, sales volume – that’s easy enough for us to measure. But what about employee morale? Company culture? A manager’s effectiveness? Overall strength of a workplace? Now that’s tough. But, the Gallup Organization believes it’s possible, and so do I.

Over the course of 25 years Gallup studied these and other questions by interviewing over a million employees and gathering their answers to hundreds of similar questions. In the end, Gallup ran an in depth and extremely complex statistical analysis that ended up giving them the 12 questions that most strongly indicated the overall strength of a workplace. Here they are:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?

2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?

5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?

9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

10. Do I have a best friend at work?

11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?

12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

Interesting, right? Now, these questions are in hierarchical order, meaning that number 2 is basically irrelevant without number 1 but once number 1 is at a solid rank (on a scale of 1-5) of 4 or 5 then you can move on to improving the following scores.

At first sight, some of these questions may seem either too simple (perhaps # 2) or a little irrelevant (perhaps # 10). But think about it. Can you imagine being a construction worker that doesn’t even feel like his nail gun works right? How excited is he going to be to get up and frame a house, knowing that half the day he’s going to be fighting with the compressor? Or what about the graphic designer who’s computer freezes all day long? And imagine the amount of commitment and low amount of turnover you’d have if each employee felt like he had a best friend at work. He would be happy to go each day.

As always though, remember that there is an order to these questions, the employee that has a best friend at work but doesn’t feel like she gets to do what she does best every day, may end up with a lack of productivity. Similarly, that employee may be bought into the vision of the organization (# 8) but may feel like she has no idea what is expected of her every day (# 1). Gallup recommends that we as managers start with the first 6 questions and then move up the ladder from there.

As always, here at GQ Law, we know what you expect of us, we have the resources and it’s what we do best. We look forward to helping you take care of all of your tax and legal questions, so don’t hesitate to call. We’re committed to quality work. Hope you’re enjoying the Summer!

For a more in depth review of this topic, see, “First, Break All the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

The Measuring Stick: Determining the Strength of Your Workplace

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