One of the innovations engendered by the Internet is crowd-sourced, opinion surveys: real-time, website-based questionnaires whose data can be analyzed and reported continually. These surveys have led to headlines like, “Smart companies now survey employee satisfaction daily, not annually.” But many of the new “pulse” survey providers are positioning themselves as “disruptive innovators,” trying to force an either/or choice between “outdated” annual employee engagement surveys and “modern,” real-time pulse surveys.
That’s unfortunate.
It’s not an either/or situation.
Based on decades of experience helping organizations across the globe, Denison recognizes that success in transforming an organizational culture is dependent on understanding the “voice of the people,” always having your “finger on the pulse.” But a comprehensive culture assessment designed to provide a holistic picture is critical to setting an enterprise level baseline and focusing attention on the longer-term strategic priorities. From there, real-time feedback is a valuable way to feed an action-planning process grounded in those priorities. Continuous feedback in an open-forum creates connection and collaboration, and when pointed at the key priorities, this creates alignment across the organization.
Consider an analogy. CFOs don’t just report financials once a year, important as those annual reports are. Things would quickly spin out of control if all they had was that annual snapshot. On the other hand, you can’t manage the business with only real-time data. Both are essential—one for assessing and setting goals, the other for implementing and steering toward those goals. And they must be integrated with one another for true value.
In the same way, the true value of perspectives obtained from employee surveys will come from combining the complementary approaches of infrequent, broad-scale data gathering and more narrowly focused real-time surveys. You need to harness the power of both to manage the process of real change.
Denison and Waggl’s new strategic partnership
That’s why Denison is excited to announce our new strategic partnership with Waggl, the premier provider of crowdsourced organizational surveys. Waggl’s platform offers an extremely easy way to listen to many voices at once within an organization, surfacing and distilling real-time, actionable feedback. It provides authentic, two-way dialogue that gives people a voice, distills insights, and unites organizations for the purposes of making the organization better.
Denison and Waggl will drive culture transformation by combining Waggl’s real-time listening platform with Denison’s statistically validated methodology. Denison founder Dan Denison puts it this way: “By strategically linking Waggl’s innovative approach, which provides continual input from employee voices in a highly organized and easily communicated manner, with the proven metrics and transformation model of Denison, we can offer superior solutions that will accelerate the pace of change in companies today.”
Waggl’s CEO, Michael Papay concurrs. “The real value comes from harnessing the power of real-time and more frequent data within an action-oriented methodology that is grounded in what is going to matter most for your organization. By working in partnership with Denison, we will both be able to truly transform culture from the ground up.”
Creating adaptive change requires a proven transformation process, not just the application of assessment technologies. The partnership between Denison process and existing assessment tools and Waggl’s sophisticated, real-time data collection makes cultural transformation more achievable than ever.
For more on Denison’s strategic partnership with Waggl, see our latest press release.
