Relying on Benchmarking to Improve? There’s a Better Way
An organization, let’s call it We Rock, Inc. spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on a yearly engagement survey, selecting the instrument provider based on its ability to benchmark scores against other peer organizations in the same or comparable industries, and roughly of a similar size.
The survey questions seek to evaluate everything from employees having the tools to do their jobs, to how seriously complaints to HR are taken. The results come back, and while the ratings are decent, or a smidge above average when measured against analogous organizations, someone on the executive team exclaims: “See! We’re not that bad. So what if a few people are unhappy with our benefits or take issue with management decisions? They have no idea what our jobs are like. And let’s be clear: no one here is chained to a desk. Let them go work for We Roll, Inc. where clearly it’s worse than here.”
You will notice that’s in quotes, as it is verbatimish what one VP said to me on seeing their organization’s results. What happened next? Well, in two words, not much. More time was spent trying to figure out who penned some of the cutting (if astute) comments than acting on the feedback, even though much of it could be considered readily actionable, with some focus of time and effort. In this case, almost all employees wanted to be recognized and thanked by their managers once in a while (this was a high-stress healthcare setting with incredible demands placed on the clinical teams), which could have been addressed by upping leadership skills in recognizing not only performance and achievement, but more importantly effort, throughout the organization.
I am using engagement surveys as my primary example for benchmarking, as a prominent part of the third-party survey vendor sales pitch is the comparative benchmarking element. This aspect of surveys is designed to zone in on ‘how we are doing compared to other organizations like us,’ and ostensibly provide data towards making improvements.
The usefulness of these metrics is questionable, and perhaps illusory — and here’s why:
I’ll start with the overall context of different organizations, with my initial focus on healthcare. Several hospitals, say five in a particular community, are part of the same survey cohort and all use the same instrument. Two of them are acute care, two are tertiary/specialty and one is focused on community health. Of the five, three are teaching hospitals. Two incorporate faith into their clinical practices. Three are in the downtown core and two are in outlying areas. One has over 10,000 staff, the rest range from 2,000 to 8,000. In one of the four, the nursing staff is not unionized. Two have significant research departments, and one is recognized as a Collaborating Centre by the World Health Organization. I could list a bunch of other variables, but you get the idea.
How valuable is the comparison data between, say, a Jewish community hospital with a proportion of patients in the latter years of their lives on the edge of urban sprawl, and a pediatric academic centre whose catchment area is an entire province or state? Further, what about the other four hospitals in geographic proximity who use different survey instruments, at different frequencies? And what about aspects of culture some organizations prioritize over others that take a hit over a minor crisis? For instance, a highly-regarded and cherished organization coming out of a minor internal scandal may suffer from low scores indicating a sudden, though perhaps temporary, dip in trust between employees and management.
Moreover, all you have when you benchmark your survey results is the high-level aggregated data from other organizations, absent their priorities, internal strategies, funding mechanisms, leadership capability, where they are in their arc of maturity, or any other specific reasons for their data being ‘better’ than yours. And even if you had all that, benchmarking can’t tell you what you can do to improve on your scores. Knowing that someone is fitter, smarter or funnier than I am, to use a personal example, does not give me the tools or processes to improve myself.
Let’s look at accomplished athletes or artists at the pinnacle of their careers for a moment. Many will say the only real competitor is yourself; that yes, there are other runners in the starters’ blocks, but you can only win if you compete with your own personal best and leverage your unique strengths. There is no advantage to using others as a benchmark for your own ambitions and aspirations. This is not to deny others (people, organizations) can inspire you, and you can learn from them, but all improvement needs to be based on what is important to you, your team or within the organization — and what you are prepared to do (and not do) to get there. Companies and leaders who set their own bars for integrity, ethics, innovation, respect and any other attribute, are working to become better than who and what they were before. No benchmarking needed for any of this.
In the end, spending time, effort and focus on data about others that, although interesting, doesn’t provide reliable guidance to base decisions on is ill-advised. Far better to set internal measures for how well you are adhering to your own organization’s standards, priorities, values and strategies — all the pieces within your control that bring your vision and mission to life — and proceed from there. Not only will you improve, you will have learned valuable lessons about what works in your culture, and where to invest your limited resources.
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