One of the most important lessons that Enron, WorldCom and the recent financial/Wall Street meltdown has taught us is just how damaging unethical behavior can be to a company, and how important it is for businesses today to establish ethical standards in the workplace as well as support those who do come forward to report unethical behavior.

For instance, the Ethics Resource Center’s (ERC) 2007 National Business Ethics Survey found that over the past year, more than half (56 percent) of employees surveyed had personally observed violations of company ethics standards, policy or the law. Many saw multiple violations. And, unfortunately, more than two of five employees (42 percent) who witnessed misconduct did not report it through any company channels.”

Part of the reason for this is that many employees are not comfortable reporting bad behavior for fear of potentially losing their jobs, being considered a “snitch”, and/or fear of retaliation from the guilty party.

However, the good news is that more and more companies are beginning to recognize this, as one of the positive things we’ve seen recently is a growing desire among businesses to show their responsibility and adopt best practices, as well as ensure stricter ethical standards and practices in their workplace. In doing so, these businesses are not only looking for programs to help them establish and promote ethical standards (or are re-evaluating their existing programs), but are also looking for different ways to better assist and support employees in coming forward to report unethical behavior. And hopefully, this will help prevent a lot of unethical behavior from happening in the future.

Many people think that surveys are just a bunch of questions, but they’re not. Every survey is a culmination of a challenging seven-step process. And each step of that process poses unique challenges to researchers. After all, sound business decisions much come from high quality information.

And here is a seven-step process that you can use to ensure you create a high-quality survey that will produce more accurate and informative insights:

1. Establish your goals and objectives - A good survey research project must start with clearly defined goals and objectives. Create project goals and answer the questions: what is unknown?; what has already been done; what decisions will be made based on the result?; what do you think the results will look like?’ and what if you’re wrong? What if the results are inconclusive?
2. Determine your audience - Contacting the right mix of respondents is critical to an accurate outcome – just as important as asking the right questions.
3. Design your questions - Use question design best practices to minimize bias and optimize the quality of response.
4. Do a pilot test of your survey - Always conduct a pilot test with a small group prior to launching the survey. Look for misunderstandings, extremely unexpected results, technology problems, and also evaluate the time it takes a typical person to complete the survey. Update and improve your survey. This process will help you catch problems before they become costly mistakes.
5. Launch the survey - Many modern survey projects are launched via email and completed online. Above all, make sure your email invitations are accurate, genuine and compelling. Even the best survey will fall flat if people don’t bother to take it. 
6. Analyze the results - Prepare to analyze the data when you are developing the questions. Use techniques such as cross-tabbing and weighting to understand and contextualize data.
7. Communicate the results to others - Action may never be taken unless others know about your survey discoveries. Communicating results clearly and efficiently is the key to a compelling argument for taking action. 

Here at Allegiance, we spend a lot of time talking to customers and potential sales prospects about engagement. But if you’re new to the engagement arena, you may ask: What is engagement? And why should my business care about it?

Since we’re going to be blogging about engagement and other related topics moving forward, I thought I would take a moment to explain what engagement is and why it’s so important for businesses today.

Allegiance defines engagement as: The “emotional bond” or “attachment” that customers and employees develop with your business during repeated, ongoing positive interactions with your company. This bond goes beyond a single moment in time and is instead, defined by the enduring behaviors, attitudes and heart of your employees and customers.

Or, put another way, when customers are engaged with your business, they are emotionally connected to your organization, passionate about your products and services, as well as aligned with your organization’s purpose and direction.

Although the underlying idea of engagement itself isn’t necessarily new (i.e. for many years, companies have been focused on building customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty) the concept of managing customer and employee engagement like a tangible business asset—as real and as vital as inventory, case, intellectual property, etc.—is. In addition, researchers have found that businesses that do manage their customer and employee engagement like an asset enjoy 1) higher levels of employee and customer loyalty; 2) positive word of mouth; 3) reduced turnover and training costs; 4) receive higher price premiums for their services and products; and 5) greater share of wallet and cross selling, all of which lead to higher company profits and faster growth than those that don’t.

Engagement is also important because successful companies are realizing that the traditional axes of competition—product, price, place and promotion—will no longer propel growth, but will simply allow parity with the competition. Thus, to effectively compete in today’s market, companies must have employees and customers that are not only satisfied, not only loyal, but also engaged.

To learn more about engagement, read the Allegiance white paper titled: “Discover Engagement” (see http://www.allegiance.com/library.php)