Sample Employee Survey Comments --
Does Your Company Share These Problems?

Demonstrating the Benefits of Quantisoft's
Comprehensive Employee Survey Approach

Comprehensive Employee Surveys Tell You "What You Need to Know" to Boost Your Organization's Performance and Competitiveness

Online Employee Survey Comments Tell You if Your Company's Corporate Culture is Healthy and Supportive of Employee Engagement and Performance

Additional information about employee engagement surveys/employee satisfaction surveys/employee opinion surveys

The illustrative employee survey comments demonstrate five key points:

1. Well designed comprehensive employee surveys tell you what you need to know to achieve significant increases in company performance and competitiveness. Comprehensive employee surveys assess the magnitude of known problems and opportunities, and identify hidden problems and opportunities that are impeding competitiveness and profit, negatively impacting customers and creating risks that can be very costly and sometimes embarrassing.
2. While ratings for each survey are important in telling you about how engaged and satisfied employees are, employees' comments often are even more important than the ratings. Comments tell you why employees provided high or low ratings for each survey question and comments collectively tell you what needs to be done to address problems and take advantage of opportunities identified in the survey.
3. Whether your organization has fewer than 100 or more than 50,000 employees, it is likely complex with many problems, challenges and opportunities. A limited question employee survey such as Gallup's Q12 employee engagement survey, which includes only 12 questions, can't possibly identify all of an organization's employee related and other important problems and opportunities, and point to the necessary solutions. Quantisoft's comprehensive employee surveys assess a broad range of topics, providing detailed quantitative and qualitative information and a roadmap for achieving breakthrough increases in employee and organizational performance.

4. Most employees are willing to tell you the "good, the bad and the ugly" when they are confident that their survey responses, including ratings and comments/suggestions are anonymous and they have no fear of retribution due to their honest survey responses.

   In fact, some of our survey customers have told us that they selected Quantisoft to conduct their surveys rather than using self-service survey software or services such as Survey Monkey or Zoomerang for the credibility we bring in guaranteeing that survey responses are kept anonymous. Our customers also choose us for:

   • Our experience and expertise in knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them.
   • Our ability to provide extensive reports quickly (eliminating the need for day's of data manipulation by companies, using Excel to analyze survey data and to make graphs and summary tabular reports).
   • Our ability to objectively analyze survey data and provide crisp, high-payback Executive Summary Analysis Reports that include a summary of survey findings and recommended action plans based on survey findings.
5. The information, perceptions and insight gathered by employee engagement surveys, employee satisfaction surveys and employee attitude surveys eliminates the need for guessing about what is right and what is wrong. Comprehensive employee survey data enables organizations to avoid costly decisions, initiatives and actions taken by managers (sometimes based on recommendations from consultants) that are based on insufficient or wrong information and guesses about causes of problems.

Illustrative Questions from a Comprehensive Quantisoft Employee Engagement Survey/Employee Satisfaction Survey/Employee Opinion Survey

Employee survey comments and suggestions provide the information, perceptions and insight your organization needs to compete, survive and thrive

• "Lack of communications between departments is a big problem. It's like what one customer said to me about our different depts "your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is doing", and I completely agree, there is no communication between depts until a big problem arises, then that's when everyone starts talking"
• "There is poor communication between the sales channel and the customer service channel. Orders and contracts are often illegible and difficult to understand, wasting time and frustrating both customers and employees trying to help them."
• "Sales and Service have NO communication with each other as sales has an "air" of UNFOUNDED superiority toward Service."
• "Sometimes service, operations, billing, etc... don't communicate effectively with each other. I had to pull teeth last week just to get my customer an expected delivery date... we almost lost the deal because nobody seemed to KNOW anything... they just passed me along to another person, who would recommend talking to the previous person."
• "No - People do not return calls or emails. I don't think it is out of not caring, I think it is out of inability to locate the answers to the questions. But they should at least return the email. This is most irritating and unprofessional."
• "The communication between admin and sales is ridiculous. If an order isn't 100% correct down to the final "t", the admin team will toss it aside and move to the next order, leaving some orders on the table for over 3 weeks. Everything is always on back order. The easy part of this job is selling the equipment. The hard part is getting the order billed and then getting paid on it."

• "My manager is very quick to take sides with others. She has a very strong personality. She is very quick to tell you to "SHUT UP" as if you are a mere child, she is very unprofessional. I would never go to her with a problem unless I absolutely had to."
• "My manager has absolutely no people skills and I can never go to him in order to obtain help with my work. I feel he has a problem with me personally and continues to push me into a state of hating the job I once loved. He does not assist or lead us in any manner, he only piles on more work each day to the point that my job cannot be completed."
• "I would rather go to the dentist without pain killers then go to my manager for anything"
• "My manager is not approachable. He is a very sarcastic and angry man."
• "My manager makes me feel like he is always busy and I feel like I am interrupting him"
• "When management refuses a vacation request for twelve months until you lose the time and the pay. what does that tell you as an employee? You are dedicated enough to be here to take care of customers but management isn't when it comes to YOU as their CUSTOMER. I would never treat my co-workers that way."
• "He seems to use intimidation and threats to communicate issues to us. I have ZERO trust that what I may discuss with him, will be taken seriously. Or that I will be labeled something like "Troublemaker" or "Whiner" because I am asking questions about some of his decisions and changes or just other questions in general"

• "I resent being called at my home and bullied into to coming in when I have called in sick with a bad case of flu. I also resent being called at my home late in the evening and having a message on my answering machine requesting that I come back to the office."
• "No I do not feel good working with a manager that talks down at me."
• "I do not like being micro-managed, talked down to, and constantly being reminded of how bad it is outside of our company. We are being threatened with job loss constantly. All I want to do is to do my job and get the recognition for doing a good job. I do not need to be micro-managed."
• "When management refuses a vacation request for twelve months until you lose the time and the pay. what does that tell you as an employee? You are dedicated enough to be here to take care of customers but management isn't when it comes to YOU as their CUSTOMER. I would never treat my co-workers that way."
• "My manager does nothing to address really important issues. We do not have enough time to properly complete our work. Processes are too complicated and cumbersome. Answering the phone is a big factor in not being able to complete our paperwork, emails, voicemails, etc. We are constantly taking on new customers problems and not having the time to take care of the old problems. This leads to frustration."
• "He has only been at this branch for a year and I am counting the minutes till he hopefully leaves. The way he manages, he is only making everyone feel like they are walking on egg shells, and that is not a positive environment to be in. That is why I do my best to stay away from the office unless necessary."
• "He needs to go, he is far too inexperienced to be a manager, and has no concept of what he is doing. In addition he never comes to work."

• "Management is very rude and disrespectful when communicating with employees on a day to day basis."
• "Sales commission structure at multiple levels appears to be foggy. This has been going on for years. Someone needs provide detailed information as to what gets paid and what doesn't get paid along with examples. Policy should be set prior to the start of the year and remain in effect for the remainder of the year. Also, it makes no sense that pay plans get announced months after the fiscal year has started."
• "We should have a procedure manual on line that covers everything to do with account assignments, territory changes, promotions and how it effects compensation. It should cover how we process orders and deal with leasing companies etc. Management seems to think that countless emails that are quickly deleted or forgotten are procedure manuals. How would a new sales person know what was sent out before they started their job?"
• "I have a manager who never communicates anything."
• "Management does a good job communicating with us now that is done by e-mail, in fact too good. We are overwhelmed with e-mails. Within our office communication does not happen"

• "I hate my job- I feel like I am part of a very badly built & broken down assembly line & nothing works"
• "I used to take pride in what I did, now I feel like I let the customer down as the work load is too heavy for everyone. We are losing customers everyday over the way we are handling our business"
• "I would feel real good about my job if I had more knowledge about my job, and more training. Also having a manager that I can go to for assistance would make the job a whole lot easier. I cannot ask my manager anything related to my job. She knows nothing and refers me to others for assistance."
• "It's still the good-old-boys club. They are so busy protecting and advancing each other, that when something goes wrong, they blame us because they weren't there to do their job....and you ask if I feel good about my job???"
• "I have lost quite a few deals over the last 12 months due to our "Oracle" issues related to billing, and the length of time it takes us to fix problems within the system, whether we are trying to get a customer covered under maintenance, to trying to correct addresses of where equipment is located. I spend 70% of my time on administrative issues trying to keep customers, rather than selling."
• "The worst thing we could do to ourselves is actually sell something. Once sold, our back end is totally disfunctional and DOES NOT WORK regardless of what you executives may think. Our customers are hating that they are doing business with us and I am losing accounts because of it."
• "This job has more issues than ever - our billing and invoice issues take up most of my time and my pay is 20% lower than last year due to the new commission plan, even though my sales volume is up over 10%"

• "Lots of information but not presented in a productive way- too many depts all over - Centralization is not working. We get loads of calls from angry customers telling us - I am the 4th or 5th person they have talked to & I have to give them a number & contact & pray its correct"
• "Clear concise up-to-date online departmental directories need to be available for all employees. Greater access to customer information also needs to be provided to customer facing employees. The contact information provided on the intra site is mainly incomplete and in many cases obsolete. Documented procedures are non-existent."
• "Sales people do not have access to any of our customer information. The Customer Service Center took our file cabinets and now they have lost thousands of our customer files. Furthermore, we don't access to Oracle info (even read-only rights) that would allow us to pull meter readings, etc."
• "I am unable to obtain accurate historical information regarding account activity. There is no known way that I am aware of for seeing historical billing information, service information, volumes and any data that we need to adequately handle the customer base. And when I ask, no one knows where to obtain the information. It's like looking for gems in a cave, you know the information is there, but it is pitch black and you have no idea where to start looking."
• "Getting critical information (current equipment info, information regarding last sale, etc) often requires exhaustive file searching because up-to-date information is not in the database. This wastes what would have been valuable selling time."
• "Not having access to billing makes it very difficult to problem solve issues for clients, especially when nearly every single client has an issue. This causes my time dealing with non-sales generating tasks to triple from what it used to be, and the issues do not get resolved as quickly as they did before."

• "with all of the procedural changes I'm finding I have to request manager approval for things I used to be able to do on my own. Things like cancelling a machine and telling the cash dept how to apply a customer's payment. It's ridiculous."
• "You know what needs to be done to correct a customer issue, but you have to go through to many channels to get the job done. So the customer has your name & number, yet you are at the mercy of someone else to do their part to correct the customer issue. Simple things that we all should be able to do so the customer gets faster support."
• "No, I always have to seek approval from my manager and they go to their manager."
• "I need to get approval to do anything out of the standard. If I was not competing so heavily with other manufacturers and dealers, this would not be an issue. When a prospect asks me to match or beat a competitor, it takes days and weeks to respond."
• "THERE NEEDS TO BE A DECENTRALIZTION OF DECISION MAKING IN THE LOCAL SALES OFFICES. I HAVE TO GET APPROVALS FOR ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT PERTAINS TO AN ORDER AND THAT HAS TO GO THROUGH 3-4 PEOPLE ON EACH END JUST TO GET DONE. WE NEED TO HAVE THE ATHORITY FROM A MANAGEMENT LEVEL TO MAKE SIMPLE DECISIONS SUCH AS A 10% SERVICE CONTRACT PRICE DISCOUNT ON THE SPOT RATHER THAN HAVING TO GO THROUGH THE BRANCH MANAGER WHO THEN GOES TO THE REGION OFFICE WHO THEN GOES TO HQ"
• "I feel like every little thing I do is being watched very closely and any wrong decision is treated like I just killed a man. I do not feel like I can properly assist customers with that mind set, for the fact that I have to tell them to hold on TRY and get a hold of someone and once I finally do go back to the customer tell them what upper management said, if they have any questions or disagree I have to put them back on hold and do this game of back and forth back and forth."
• "Employees have no authority and management has made that very clear. I am only empowered to make suggestions, and I have observed that those who make suggestions put their jobs at risk."

• "I inspire myself because my work ethic doesn't allow me to do anything less. My manager and supervisor certainly don't inspire me. The Supervisor I had before did encourage me and would constantly tell me to "hang in there"."
• "I will do my best regardless of what I am doing. It often feels as if there is no difference in result no matter how much effort I put in. I am too reliant on multiple depts and sales rep and things don't get resolved. Over time, that gets to you."
• "Overwhelming workload prohibits "inspiration" on a daily basis."
• "Work for the past 2 years is so stressful that I pay for and see a "Life Coach" each month to assist me in remaining grounded at work."
• "YES!!!!!, because my name is attached and I take pride in my work. There is nothing about this company or what our management is doing that inspires me or many of my co-workers"
• "I am motivated by making money and that is the only reason I am still here. Reducing the sales commission plan is a real de-motivator"
• "I have a family to consider, and this is greater motivation than any quota or managerial pressure to drive revenue."

• "There is a lot of talking behind people's back and degrading of other employees and management has not done anything to fix that."
• "There have been times where I have spoken my mind to internal customers and other employees when the news is not good. I am scolded for this, saying that it makes our department look bad (even though its true). I have been encouraged to lie about the effectiveness of our department, in order to make us look good. This does not inspire openness and trust."
• "My direct manager appears secretive and gives no reason for his coworkers to trust him."
• "My manager frequently threatens us with write ups and employment termination."
• "We have been encouraged to lie so our KPIs will look better for corporate."
• "I don't trust him and am seldom open with him. One of the senior reps is his best friend, it has resulted in sales being credited to him despite territory and other favors too numerous to even mention here."
• "I avoid the office just so I don't have to see or talk to him. The few times I did go and talk to him, it felt like he was starring at me, judging me as I stood there."
• "My manager creates an environment of hostility and un-trust. I cannot trust my manager to make the right or ethical decision at times. There is obvious favoritism which cannot be tolerated. There needs to be equitable standards for all of us."
• "most anything that you tell my manager in confidence is told to others within hours"
• "my manager talks about each employees faults to each of the other reps"

• "My manager is very ineffective with communication and frequently degrades employees in staff meetings in front of the entire department. If we disagree with her or question the validity of instructions she responds negatively or not all."
• "I feel that because I'm a white male over 50 in a predominantly female office where the majority is women -- 50% black & 50% white female, I don't have a chance."
• "She doesn't have any time to listen. I think she would if she had the time to give to us."
• "My manager's concerns seem to be bill the customer, not make sure the customer is billed right."
• "While multi-tasking is desirable many times, it is frustrating to try to communicate with someone who is using the IM or reading their emails when trying to address a concern with them to get help. It makes me feel that I am not being heard and that the manager is not interested in what I am saying. If the shoe was on the other foot, the manager, I am sure, would want undivided attention when they are speaking."
• "I love my job, but when it comes to my manager I wish I had another. She talks down to us and has said things to me that made me lose my respect towards her. I try not to talk with or even be near to her. She treats our department like we are six graders. Always talking down to us. does not let me communicate the way I want because she will always interrupt."

• "Compensate me more/pay me what I'm worth."
• "Listen to these surveys, and engage the workers in more open honest feedback. Address our concerns."
• "SOLVE OUR ORACLE PROBLEMS...especially billing errors and problems, we are losing too many customers and it is hurting our reputation in the marketplace. Sales is spending too much time tracking down and fixing Oracle related problems and not enough time selling"
• "Stop the favoritism!!!!!!!!!!!!"
• "Provide company paid for Blackberrys to field sales with access to our company's customer information and with the ability to e-mail customers while we are out selling. We are not responsive enough to customers. Our competitors are"
• "Oracle needs to be streamlined more. What used to take one form to get something done, now takes anywhere from 2-6 forms to accomplish the same thing - which is ridiculous and very time consuming."
• "INCREASE MY WAGES"
• "monitor all employees and make sure we have people here that want to work instead of lazy people bringing down the team"
• "Fix organization between Oracle and others systems used for customers address/billing. I believe a new system would do wonders for keeping customers happy and minimize returns and address issues."
• "Field service needs major improvement. Customers are complaining about how long they have to wait for service and our service vans often do not have the needed parts when service finally shows up. It is a mess driving many customers to our competitors."
• "Stop changing and lowering the sales compensation plan. Stop taking away accounts we worked hard to build."

• "I have been in the job for 8 months and have requested several times that my goals are setup and explained to me. My supervisor and manager have not provided this to me and don't know how to explain them."
• " job performance has nothing to do with reviews or raises here"
• "Cannot tell you the last time I had a performance evaluation."
• "I only had 1 review in over 2 years & never spoke a word to anyone about it - I was evaluated on paperwork being done on time & with little mistakes - I thought I would be evaluated in other areas & not just that- It was very disappointing that no one called me to review it verbally ; it was all done on line- I even asked about 1 part & never heard back from anyone on it"
• "First of all how can someone evaluate you that really doesn't interact with you or what you do."
• "There are no metrics of any kind in regards to any duties or responsibilities that I perform. How does management know who is performing where they should and who is not? How does anyone know if they are performing where they should be? I have never heard the term "performance evaluation" ever used since I have been working here."
• "Performance reviews and compensation don't reflect reality. Management doesn't understand that as a salesperson I am doing MANY jobs. They only rate me on selling & not the endless hours of FIXING PROBLEMS that hurt my sales. I spend more time fixing problems than selling. Someone should take responsibility for all the issues that have been presented with Oracle (billing and accounts receivable problems) and other problems hurting sales and customer satisfaction. This month a few sales I put through neither could be delivered or billed due to back order issues and Oracle problems. I also lost one of my biggest customers due to billing problems and very bas field service. Management is truly not understanding what is going on."

• "Our department has a very high turn around. The stress, inconsistent communications and extreme workload have caused over 8 people to leave in the 10 months I have been here. Migraines, ulcers and regular headaches are common complaints from people in my department because of the pressure and inconsistent management approaches."
• "I look for new jobs daily. Hopefully I will be out of here soon"
• "I would not think twice or have any hesitation on leaving"
• "Due to the merger I can see that pay was not equal depending on where you were working before. I have some employees reporting to me that are make nearly as much as I am and I don't see that ever being resolved. This is making me think about starting to look for another job."
• "I'm ready to leave now. Several of us are ready. Management should care about this issue."
• "Gutsy question! Good for you. I hope you listen to all of the answers on this. Discontinuing the 401K matching, along with other reductions in bonuses, coupled with increased quotas during an economic downturn definitely cause people to think about other opportunities."
• "I feel there is a ' who you know' environment in this company. I was told over 80% of incoming sales people leave in less than 12 months. How is this process improvement? I am here over 2 years and I am sorry I took the job. I am thinking about updating my resume."

• "I have not been given the opportunity to attend any classes, even though I asked. I was told I can take only online classes because of budget restrictions, but I feel in person classes are necessary for me and the entire department; specifically in Customer Service skills"
• "The classes we're sent to are pretty much worthless, but training one-on-one with others in the same department is quite helpful."
• "Much more time was needed to learn Oracle. Training was crammed in one week, when this should have been a two week training class so that all aspect of the job could be covered. Oracle problems are causing our company a huge amount of problems, costs solving problems and lost business. Some of this could be resolved by better Oracle training!"
• "The on-line courses I am forced to take are interrupted while doing them? Some of these courses have limited value. Whoever is designing the training should talk with employees first. I went to Corp for a class and felt as if I was treated like a leper- I wore a tag that said I was a visitor- I AM AN EMPLOYEE!!! TREAT ME WITH RESPECT!! Give me a name tag, write my name, office location & dept - Photo ID for everyone would be nice too"
• "Sometimes feel that they are a waste of time b/c there is no follow through once you get back to the home base"
• "Initial sales training was excellent, but we are not able to get the direction or development we need because our manager will not spend the money, or give us the time away from selling because it directly affects his pocket book, and that is the #1 thing he worries about is his money!"

• "This is something that is told to us constantly, with compliments and comments. However, none of the employees at my level feel they are valued with pay and respect which would be more honest indicators."
• "My manager values her direct reports, I do not get the same feeling from the managers above her. We are constantly being threatened about losing our jobs. Everything that we do is being monitored."
• "Our manager is too disrespectful to all of us, he doesn't value anyone."
• "Never felt more betrayed by management than with this company."
• "There is no department morale, encouragement or acknowledgement for our hard work. A thank you is like pulling teeth."
• "Values only sales, at any cost, no real consideration I feel for the employee and what they are encountering."
• "There is very little interaction, it is more like a dictatorship"

• "My manager's inability to communicate without offending. He is constantly telling everyone how thin my co-worker is and saying she is a size 2 and then offering me Hoodia to lose weight because I'm a 12. That is SO INAPPROPRIATE AND INCREDIBLY RUDE."
• "Office atmosphere, too much conflict and tension because of our manager"
• "The Salary is on the low side for the employees that have been here for a long time. Some make less or almost the same as the new employees just starting from outside the company. No loyalty to the employees who have been here doing a good job."
• "People not responding to my voicemail or email messages in a timely manner to help me with issues that need to be resolved for customers. It often takes days or weeks for a response when I get a response at all."
• "I worry about losing my job."
• "Working very hard without getting salary Merit increases. When the job market gets better I am out of here and I am not alone!!!"
• "Not having time to be a coach to my team."
• "I feel there is no teamwork. A lot of "I" syndrome. Not everyone is looking out for what is best for the company. They are doing what is best for them."
• "the way management communicates with hourly employees"
• "The conversion to Oracle has been the worst conversion I have ever been through. Two years later and we have more problems than when we first went up. The customers are so fed up with our billing issues and just keep reaming us out. Hey I just work here! I didn't agree to this lousy Oracle System"
• "I do not feel that it is necessary to work mandatory long hours and on Saturdays in order for us to accomplish our jobs. Most times we do not have anything to do when we are working these hours. If there is actual work to do then I will do whatever it takes, but to just sit here for no reason at all is de-motivating."
• "Not knowing who to go to for help and feeling that Senior management is blind to the concerns and needs of our department and customers."
• "My manager keeps turning down my requests for training. She says we don't have time for training and that I and my coworkers need to do our job. We always seem to have time to fix errors due to lack of training and to get lectured by the manager for making errors."