Q & A
Employee Feedback Surveys

Satisfaction, Engagement, Opinion, Climate, Corporate Support, Merger and Acquisition, Alignment, Balance, 360 Degree Assessment

1.  Customization of the survey tool

• Are you able to customize and capture in your product the individual
strategic goals, values and initiatives of properties and brands?

Yes. We have been customizing employee feedback surveys since 1980   to include, but not be limited to, staff engagement, opinion, and satisfaction survey and organizational climate surveys for gaming, foodservice, retail, leisure, entertainment as well as home centers, universities, banks, and private aviation.

• Can your system integrate previous results of surveys.

Yes. Depending upon the scale used we have developed integration formulas for Likert and dichotomous scales.

• Can your system allow the units to choose when they want to conduct the survey and compile the overall company’s results at the end of the year?

Yes. Schedules have always been at the discretion of the client.

2.  Data Collection

• Which data collection support do you have to conduct a survey?

We do both on-line and paper-pen. In most cases it is the combination of the two (part online / part paper-pen).

• Describe the process of sending surveys and collecting data.

Surveys are sent on-line with participants having their own access codes. Paper surveys are printed from a PDF, printed locally, and upon completion are sent to us via International FEDEX.

3.  Scope of languages.

We have conducted surveys worldwide in 83 countries and 25 languages and partner with professional translation companies whose language capabilities cover the world.

4.  Axis of research

• Describe your approach.
• What is behind the questions?

All questions/statements are customized to the organizational culture of the client’s brand. We have core statements from which to build a questionnaire as well as inventories of statements for any types of organizational dimensions a client wants to design. Customized survey development begins with understanding of the company’s vision, mission, core values, and guiding management principles and ensuring that they are represented in the survey. A best practices format is utilized for statement design. As follow-up, survey sections, dimensions, and themes are constructed.

5.  What are some challenges and opportunities you encounter?

One major opportunity is to have reports created for each and every department featuring their results as well as benchmarked comparative results from other company/industry data bases. These reports become a tool for each manager/supervisor in working on day-to-day standards and ensuring continuous improvement

Another opportunity is to create a client data base from which a wide variety of performance metrics can be generated – all geared towards taking product, service and experience to the next performance level through fully engaged employees.

Opportune also is to be able to track performance trends in such a way that results will add to the Brand’s eligibility for major Service Quality Awards, Ecology Green Awards, and Best Company To Work For Awards.

One challenge is ensuring that the correct preparation is done for survey administration in each unit. Without setting the right expectations and mindset, full employee participation is very difficult to achieve.

Another challenge is to ensure that there is comparative alignment of metrics among brands, units, departments and that regardless of diverse worldwide locations, an accurate picture of individual property and brand performance be generated. We have a proven holistic process which encompasses these goals.

Challenging too, is to take into account any cross-cultural tendencies to rate higher or lower than a “norm”.

• How would you benchmark the results of this survey?

For internal benchmarks we would use the total population of the company developing metrics providing:

(1) Operating Unit to Overall Company
(2) Divisions to Overall Operating Unit
(3) Departments to Overall Divisions
(4) Departments to Overall Departments within Operating Unit/Company

• How big is your benchmark pool?

We have conducted over 1,000,000 employee feedback surveys in the Hospitality Industry alone, forming the basis for our service
performance norms. In other industries, we have normative pools and comparatives with Fortune 100 Companies. We can calculate cross-organizational comparatives highlighting trends and variances as well as worldwide benchmarking norms.

6.  Reporting of results

• What reports can be generated and in what format for corporate offices, units, department?

Reports are on-line and/or hardcopy:
Corporate Executive Summary Reports
Executive Summary Reports for Executive Committees
Individual Departmental Reports
Narrative Commentary Reports by Department

We leverage our proprietary software systems in order to meet the critical needs of our clients. Our track record includes the ability to create custom-formatted surveys and reports on a large scale with little additional overhead to the survey process. It is common for us to design, implement, survey, and report results for a multi-thousand respondent project in a four-week timeframe.

We use a relational database management system for our data storage, retrieval, and analysis infrastructure. This model provides us the advantages of:

1. Archiving historical data where variable/field definitions can change from one survey period to the next.
2. Integrating historical data into current reports.
3. Accommodating client needs by offering with all practicality a limitless number of variables as survey questions.
4. Collecting, coordinating, and distributing all relevant survey data and narrative commentary reports via paper, electronic, or magnetic media.
5. Viewing survey results, identifying problems, and engaging in an interactive approach to finding solutions and action planning performance challenges.

Report Generation
We believe the survey process and reporting formats should energize an organization by engaging the:

1. Executive committee’s role in ensuring accountability for the results.
2. Middle management’s role in ensuring the day-to-day standards of interpersonal relationships, quality product and guest service.
3. Supervisor’s role in ensuring effective on-the-job communications.
4. Line associate’s role clearly understanding what and how everything has to be done in order to achieve and exceed employee and guest expectations.

We also believe that corporate summary reports need to be aligned with property/unit survey results and provide the opportunity to plan strategically for future performance and organizational growth.

• Are there additional costs for reporting?

Core reports as outlined in a proposal are included in the base costs. Additional hardcopy reports are priced as per client requirements. Advanced statistical analysis, development of special “cuts” of the data, and specialty reports (i.e. power point presentations) are invoiced at additional costs as is time required for special project reporting.

• Do you have supports for the interpretation of the results?

Yes. In addition to statistical, normative and gap analysis, we also use our FLS Performance System: Alignment X Balance X Style = Results

7.  Training and Support Services

• Are you able to handle service inquiries from different time zones?

We conduct surveys worldwide and accommodate all time zones.

• How is service and support provided to hotels in different countries?

Telephone, e-mail, international courier, global visits by the staff of Ference Leadership and Strategy and/or through close associations with other allied agencies.

• What are your typical response times for domestic/international issues?

Response for questions and issues is immediate to within 24 hours.

• What will be your approach to ensure the successful adoption of your tool by our users?

Our report formats are very user friendly with graphics highlighting all results. Executive summary results are provided as well as a full array of individual reports compiled for each department. At this level, this report is viewed as the tool for ensuring day-to-day standards within each department. Periodically, management in each property receives special newsletter up-dates via e-mail to keep their results top-of-mind for daily operations.

8.  Data Security

• Where is data stored?

On-line surveys and results are held on dedicated servers housed by professional data storage companies located in Texas.

• What safeguards are in place to keep the data secure?

          Physical Security
          • Data center access limited to data center technicians
          • Biometric scanning for controlled data center access
          • Security camera monitoring at all data center locations
          • 24x7 onsite staff provides protection against unauthorized entry
          • Unmarked facilities to help maintain low profile
          • Physical security audited by an independent firm

Paper surveys are processed in our Weston, Connecticut office. Once the surveys are in electronic form, they are destroyed. All backup data is maintained in encrypted form and stored in an offsite secure facility.

• What’s your knowledge of global data privacy/security legislation?

In order to comply with global data privacy laws we maintain an absolute disconnect between an individual and his/her opinions. Independent of local laws, it is this level of anonymity that is needed to be able to provide reliable results. As an added level of security, all our survey data is transmitted via secure internet protocols.

9. Technical Requirements

• What types of systems/infrastructure does your tool require from each brand to run effectively?

Our electronic survey system is 100% web based and has been certified with the major web browsers from Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla.

10. Implementation Timing

• How long does it take for your team to develop and implement the tool, to collect and process the data, and return the results and recommendations.

While we have designed surveys in as short a time as one week, normally they take four to six weeks, depending mostly on the client’s decisioning process regarding approvals for survey statements and demographics.

Turn-around time once we have all of the data is normally within three weeks depending upon the amount of narratives and their translations.

11. Costs

• What is your pricing model?

Base Costs:
Design of survey -
On-line survey availability –
Data downloads and analysis -
On-line report formatting –
Hard copy formatting (optional) -
Hard copy printing (optional) -
24/7 server availability -

Optional and Variable Costs:
Specialty analysis and reports-
On-site debriefing meetings -

• What are the maintenance costs after implementation is complete?

Maintenance costs average 8% per year of the price of the project.

Proposal Requirements

• An overview of deliverables will include, but not be limited to:

1. A custom paper survey formatted in English with required languages to follow.
2. A custom web-based survey formatted in your required languages.
3. Individual department, property, division, company, and brand reports. (For hardcopy reports, 3-4 weeks after receipt of data; for on-line 1-2 weeks for report formatting.)
4. Narrative comments translated and transcribed for each property by department. This depends on the volume of translations; generally we are able to accomplish qualitative narrative transcriptions and translations with the time frames of quantitative report formulations.
5. 24/7 support during survey administration.
6. Use of state-of-the-art web servers with hot backups for on-line survey administration, worldwide report distribution, and 24/7 survey results availability. (360 days/year)