Stupid Work Survey
Discussion
Just received a reminder that I haven't completed the latest questionnaire from our PR department.
To be fair, hadn't opened it until just now. Purpose is to try and develop customer relations.
First Question:
- What's the best bit about working for XYZ (my employer)?
Run-of-the-mill question I suppose. Hard to answer though, if I'm honest I'll get a P45 in return, but if I give them what they want to hear it will be just a load of ar*e-licking b*llocks.
But then;
- What is your greatest achievement?
- What is your best childhood memory?
- What do you do when you're not at work?
WTAF. Perhaps I'm just very boring, or maybe I just don't like talking about myself to even consider answering those questions generally. But there's 2 pages of tripe like this.
Has anyone ever received anything similar from their employer?
Half tempted to just put ridiculous answers in a bid to prevent further stupid questionnaires in the future.
What do I do when I'm not working? Coke and hookers. Standard PH response, no?!
To be fair, hadn't opened it until just now. Purpose is to try and develop customer relations.
First Question:
- What's the best bit about working for XYZ (my employer)?
Run-of-the-mill question I suppose. Hard to answer though, if I'm honest I'll get a P45 in return, but if I give them what they want to hear it will be just a load of ar*e-licking b*llocks.
But then;
- What is your greatest achievement?
- What is your best childhood memory?
- What do you do when you're not at work?
WTAF. Perhaps I'm just very boring, or maybe I just don't like talking about myself to even consider answering those questions generally. But there's 2 pages of tripe like this.
Has anyone ever received anything similar from their employer?
Half tempted to just put ridiculous answers in a bid to prevent further stupid questionnaires in the future.
What do I do when I'm not working? Coke and hookers. Standard PH response, no?!
t surveys like this!"
- What's the best bit about working for XYZ (my employer)?
Pay day
- What is your greatest achievement?
not murderin
- What is your best childhood memory?
not murderin
- What do you do when you're not at work?
Worship Cthulhu
Also yep had these stupid surveys, anonymous but not so beware, certain senior staff were dragged into an office to 'explain' answers.. not compulsory so I didn't answer them.
Best question - Do you have a best friend at work?
They did actually work out quite well and brought about the removal of numerous mid level managers, shop floor staff where very content with everything, senior staff just arse licked, mid level moaned about stuff that they actually had control over but in numerous cases it became apparent they were to dumb to realise...
Pay day
- What is your greatest achievement?
not murderin
- What is your best childhood memory?
not murderin
- What do you do when you're not at work?
Worship Cthulhu
Also yep had these stupid surveys, anonymous but not so beware, certain senior staff were dragged into an office to 'explain' answers.. not compulsory so I didn't answer them.
Best question - Do you have a best friend at work?
They did actually work out quite well and brought about the removal of numerous mid level managers, shop floor staff where very content with everything, senior staff just arse licked, mid level moaned about stuff that they actually had control over but in numerous cases it became apparent they were to dumb to realise...
Edited by Foliage on Thursday 4th August 16:23
We used to get stupid questionnaires like that. One day my manager asked why I hadn't filled mine out. I asked him if they were anonymous. He confirmed they were, at which point I asked him "If they're anonymous, how do you know I haven't completed one?"
He didn't have an answer for that, and I never did fill it out.
He didn't have an answer for that, and I never did fill it out.
First Question:
- What's the best bit about working for XYZ (my employer)?
No one checks the waste disposal
- What is your greatest achievement?
hiding a body in your waste disposal
- What is your best childhood memory?
Being shown how to dispose of a body
- What do you do when you're not at work?
Heroin
If anything, it will give them some interesting answers back if it's one of these annonymous surveys I get bombarded with at work
- What's the best bit about working for XYZ (my employer)?
No one checks the waste disposal
- What is your greatest achievement?
hiding a body in your waste disposal
- What is your best childhood memory?
Being shown how to dispose of a body
- What do you do when you're not at work?
Heroin
If anything, it will give them some interesting answers back if it's one of these annonymous surveys I get bombarded with at work
I remember getting quite extensive "anonymous" surveys when I was in the military, with the preamble of the booklet going to great lengths to tell you to be as honest as possible as the survey was totally anonymous. The odd thing though was every survey booklet had a unique serial number on it - many of us cynical types felt that this number was associated with you the recipient. A similar survey in my civvy job was also allegedly anonymous however you had to log in to take the online survey using your work (and therefore name related) credentials.
C.A.R. said:
The thing is, it's not anonymous at all, they want to use this in a press release as a bit of 'light-hearted' fun.
The hilarity is that whilst I've only been working here 9 months, I've had 5 hours to think about the best thing working for them is, and still can't think of it...
Be honest then, since it sounds like you need to move on already!The hilarity is that whilst I've only been working here 9 months, I've had 5 hours to think about the best thing working for them is, and still can't think of it...
Well, I've completed it. Answers below - how much trouble do you think I'll be in tomorrow?!
What's the best bit about working for XYZ?
The weekend hours
What's the most common question you get asked by customers?
“What is your best price?”
What's your favourite film?
Jurassic Park
What do you do when you're not at work?
Busy family man with two young daughters, not a lot else!
Where is your favourite holiday destination?
Cornwall
Are you a cat or a dog person?
Dog
Who do you admire the most and why?
Peter Kay, ‘cos he’s hilarious.
What's your best childhood memory?
Last day of school
What was the last boxset you watched?
Breaking Bad
Do you have a favourite sport that you watch, support or play?
Formula 1 (watch, obviously)
Have you ever met anyone famous? If so, who was it and how?
No
What track would get you onto the dance floor?
I don’t dance sober, so I’ve no idea what music works
What book did you read last?
The World According to Jeremy Clarkson
Who is your favourite celebrity and why?
I hate all celebrities
If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
Sir-Christopher. To emphasize how important I am.
What was your favourite subject at school?
English
What was your first job when you left school / college?
Design Engineer for Commercial Kitchens
What chore do you hate doing?
All chores
What word best describes you?
Sarcastic-irritant
If you could be any fictional character, who would you be?
Buzz Lightyear
Penultimate question highly accurate IMO.
What's the best bit about working for XYZ?
The weekend hours
What's the most common question you get asked by customers?
“What is your best price?”
What's your favourite film?
Jurassic Park
What do you do when you're not at work?
Busy family man with two young daughters, not a lot else!
Where is your favourite holiday destination?
Cornwall
Are you a cat or a dog person?
Dog
Who do you admire the most and why?
Peter Kay, ‘cos he’s hilarious.
What's your best childhood memory?
Last day of school
What was the last boxset you watched?
Breaking Bad
Do you have a favourite sport that you watch, support or play?
Formula 1 (watch, obviously)
Have you ever met anyone famous? If so, who was it and how?
No
What track would get you onto the dance floor?
I don’t dance sober, so I’ve no idea what music works
What book did you read last?
The World According to Jeremy Clarkson
Who is your favourite celebrity and why?
I hate all celebrities
If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
Sir-Christopher. To emphasize how important I am.
What was your favourite subject at school?
English
What was your first job when you left school / college?
Design Engineer for Commercial Kitchens
What chore do you hate doing?
All chores
What word best describes you?
Sarcastic-irritant
If you could be any fictional character, who would you be?
Buzz Lightyear
Penultimate question highly accurate IMO.
I daresay several people on here will have been bombarded with the "great place to work" survey. http://www.greatplacetowork.co.uk/ Log in using this username and password. All answers are confidential...
Seems to be beloved of all medium to large companies. You know, the ones that don't actually care about the minions. The type that email everyone of the estimated 2K people who work for this group telling them about an all expenses paid for long weekend away in a country far away. The same competition that only various management types are entered into and if you are not one of those breeds you have to be nominated by a manager instead. (One of the names on the shortlist is actually from a site that's generally failing. Obviously that doesn't matter.)
The same company who then emails everyone the uptake response from the various sites. Then states "X and Y Site are letting the side down by not filling it in. Remember we care about your responses"
I elected not to participate. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all
Seems to be beloved of all medium to large companies. You know, the ones that don't actually care about the minions. The type that email everyone of the estimated 2K people who work for this group telling them about an all expenses paid for long weekend away in a country far away. The same competition that only various management types are entered into and if you are not one of those breeds you have to be nominated by a manager instead. (One of the names on the shortlist is actually from a site that's generally failing. Obviously that doesn't matter.)
The same company who then emails everyone the uptake response from the various sites. Then states "X and Y Site are letting the side down by not filling it in. Remember we care about your responses"
I elected not to participate. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all
We have supposedly anonymous surveys at work, but the questions mean that they could easily work out who each person was - department, job grade, age, gender, ethnicity, length of service, etc.
Fortunately, each question now has a "prefer not to say" option, so I just tick that for every question.
I also use the business reply envelope, rather than internal mail, so they have to pay for the privilege of receiving my totally useless questionnaire.
The official company line is that these surveys are voluntary, but we get pressured to complete them. Some managers even watch while colleagues fill them in. Story goes that each store is scored on the percentage of staff complying, and managers who have a low percentage get "spoken to".
On some of the business-related questions, we get coached on how to respond.
Fortunately, each question now has a "prefer not to say" option, so I just tick that for every question.
I also use the business reply envelope, rather than internal mail, so they have to pay for the privilege of receiving my totally useless questionnaire.
The official company line is that these surveys are voluntary, but we get pressured to complete them. Some managers even watch while colleagues fill them in. Story goes that each store is scored on the percentage of staff complying, and managers who have a low percentage get "spoken to".
On some of the business-related questions, we get coached on how to respond.
Gosh what a cynical lot you are.
We have similar but better questions and I see the results, they highlighted lots of things.
For example that relatively new starters (those with less than 3 years) love the company and the most dissatisfied lot are 8 to 10 years service so we have done something about it with extra benefits to those over 5 years some of which are work related and others are offers of paid learning opportunities outside work topics (learn to sail, play a piano) and are well taken up.
Lots of people like to socialise so we have posh lunches for 5 to 10 year service folk in work hours and they are free to stay longer or go home early and it's about 70:30.
There are open boxes for text which are the most revealing of who the person might be but they truly are anonymous even though you click on a link to an external website via email.
I think they are quite good really but they are worthless if you ask stupid questions or even worse don't do anything with them.
I love the most obscure answers above, just think it lightens up reading the bloody things so thanks 👍. I liked embezzlement best 😄.
We have similar but better questions and I see the results, they highlighted lots of things.
For example that relatively new starters (those with less than 3 years) love the company and the most dissatisfied lot are 8 to 10 years service so we have done something about it with extra benefits to those over 5 years some of which are work related and others are offers of paid learning opportunities outside work topics (learn to sail, play a piano) and are well taken up.
Lots of people like to socialise so we have posh lunches for 5 to 10 year service folk in work hours and they are free to stay longer or go home early and it's about 70:30.
There are open boxes for text which are the most revealing of who the person might be but they truly are anonymous even though you click on a link to an external website via email.
I think they are quite good really but they are worthless if you ask stupid questions or even worse don't do anything with them.
I love the most obscure answers above, just think it lightens up reading the bloody things so thanks 👍. I liked embezzlement best 😄.
Been working for the same company for a long time, they no longer send me these things. First 2 or 3 I just ignored and they let it fly, then they pushed me for it for the next few.
First one I wrote a different planet or star for each question.
Second one I wrote mountain ranges, which I translated to Russian using Google first.
It's always HR that send these out at my place and I get on well with them, I asked if I was the only awkward git and it turns out I'm on a small list of regular awkward gits. Every person on the list is male, make of that what you will.
I'm not a fan of this stuff and don't think it really achieves anything except giving the office junior something to do for a few days.
First one I wrote a different planet or star for each question.
Second one I wrote mountain ranges, which I translated to Russian using Google first.
It's always HR that send these out at my place and I get on well with them, I asked if I was the only awkward git and it turns out I'm on a small list of regular awkward gits. Every person on the list is male, make of that what you will.
I'm not a fan of this stuff and don't think it really achieves anything except giving the office junior something to do for a few days.
We do one every year through Towers Watson that is "anonymous" but the results are split in groupings of a minimum size of about 8 and can be grouped by age, gender, department etc. So there's enough to work out individuals in my opinion.
It's used by a lot of companies I believe so we can see where we stand against the competition and also we have historic data to see trends etc.
One year they identified that males under 30 were unhappy so we all got pulled in to have an afternoons discussion about the issues. Can't say I saw any changes that made anything better.
We also get less official internal ones that are also anonymous usually distributed by the "people" department. Recently it's all about our well being schemes (they also organise cake sales for charity which I find quite the contradiction).
We also did a team building day last year. The build up to it was entirely doom and gloom from pretty much everyone I spoke to. The actual day was okay... typical stuff I'm lead to believe... for example a long piece of rope laid on the floor and a bucket at one end and a ball at the other... a selection of guttering and pipes to get the ball from one end to the other as quickly as possible without dropping it or touching the ball (save for placing it in the tubes at the beginning). I don't think it taught me anything that wasn't already blatantly obvious (a bit of planning and communication goes a long way).
There were some issues though. For a start the group I was in for the beginning of the day was made up of people within my department (loosely Engineering). This included the Engineering manager - who decided to switch teams when we got there and from what I could see spent the day telling other people how to do things and not getting involved whatsoever. This seemed to be common among senior management.
Secondly there were guest speakers to tell us about being part of a team (international rugby players) which basically amounted to having a bust up and then a pint to make up afterwards... suits me but not the message I think we were meant to take from it.
Thirdly following the team building day nothing fecking changed. Predictable I know. Simple things like the MD acknowledging your existence as you pass him in the corridor would be a good start.
Anyways I've digressed. We have another team building day a week tomorrow now, same place and same people running it. So there was a survey to find out what we would change from the last one/what we thought was good etc. Even though we already filled out a survey that amounted to the same thing after the last team building day. They claimed that that previous survey indicated something like 96% approval (must have calculated it the same way they work out our First Time Yield KPI!).
In fairness they did listen to one thing I put in the survey. We won't be working with other departments on the team building day. I pointed out that when working within the Engineering department the tasks/problems were completed/solved using logic and sound reasoning, whereas when working inter-departmentally people were unable to identify left and right. Seriously. We were doing one of those challenges where half a dozen of you are stood on two planks, one under each foot. Then you all have to walk in unison to navigate a simple obstacle course and pop balloons/go under a limbo bar. I was unfortunate enough to land in two groups that both did this task. First time round I "lead" the group ie. shouted left or right and "steered" the group around the course. We were highly successful. Second time round I took my place within the group and one of the women managed to get confused and stayed stood on the plank we were all trying to lift and then managed to fall off it and get her foot stuck underneath while the rest of us stamped down on it. Great stuff.
It's used by a lot of companies I believe so we can see where we stand against the competition and also we have historic data to see trends etc.
One year they identified that males under 30 were unhappy so we all got pulled in to have an afternoons discussion about the issues. Can't say I saw any changes that made anything better.
We also get less official internal ones that are also anonymous usually distributed by the "people" department. Recently it's all about our well being schemes (they also organise cake sales for charity which I find quite the contradiction).
We also did a team building day last year. The build up to it was entirely doom and gloom from pretty much everyone I spoke to. The actual day was okay... typical stuff I'm lead to believe... for example a long piece of rope laid on the floor and a bucket at one end and a ball at the other... a selection of guttering and pipes to get the ball from one end to the other as quickly as possible without dropping it or touching the ball (save for placing it in the tubes at the beginning). I don't think it taught me anything that wasn't already blatantly obvious (a bit of planning and communication goes a long way).
There were some issues though. For a start the group I was in for the beginning of the day was made up of people within my department (loosely Engineering). This included the Engineering manager - who decided to switch teams when we got there and from what I could see spent the day telling other people how to do things and not getting involved whatsoever. This seemed to be common among senior management.
Secondly there were guest speakers to tell us about being part of a team (international rugby players) which basically amounted to having a bust up and then a pint to make up afterwards... suits me but not the message I think we were meant to take from it.
Thirdly following the team building day nothing fecking changed. Predictable I know. Simple things like the MD acknowledging your existence as you pass him in the corridor would be a good start.
Anyways I've digressed. We have another team building day a week tomorrow now, same place and same people running it. So there was a survey to find out what we would change from the last one/what we thought was good etc. Even though we already filled out a survey that amounted to the same thing after the last team building day. They claimed that that previous survey indicated something like 96% approval (must have calculated it the same way they work out our First Time Yield KPI!).
In fairness they did listen to one thing I put in the survey. We won't be working with other departments on the team building day. I pointed out that when working within the Engineering department the tasks/problems were completed/solved using logic and sound reasoning, whereas when working inter-departmentally people were unable to identify left and right. Seriously. We were doing one of those challenges where half a dozen of you are stood on two planks, one under each foot. Then you all have to walk in unison to navigate a simple obstacle course and pop balloons/go under a limbo bar. I was unfortunate enough to land in two groups that both did this task. First time round I "lead" the group ie. shouted left or right and "steered" the group around the course. We were highly successful. Second time round I took my place within the group and one of the women managed to get confused and stayed stood on the plank we were all trying to lift and then managed to fall off it and get her foot stuck underneath while the rest of us stamped down on it. Great stuff.
The NHS sends out a staff survey every year, and the hospital I work in also runs its own similar version as well. I tend to just send back a blank one so they don't keep badgering me about it.
I don't have a problem with where I work, I just don't want to be answering questions to generate some statistics they will use in job adverts.
I don't have a problem with where I work, I just don't want to be answering questions to generate some statistics they will use in job adverts.
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