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A. Employee satisfaction surveys are very important business tools in many organizations. Many times, they measure things like satisfaction with wages or benefits, or things at an individual employee level. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey differs from employee satisfaction surveys in that it is meant to give you a picture of your organization's effectiveness in four main areas of organizational performance: Mission, Adaptability, Consistency, and Involvement. Because both types of information are important to organizations, we recommend that you combine some elements of your current employee satisfaction survey with the Organizational Culture Survey, creating a single, dual-purpose survey with a consistent look and feel. Additional questions can be added to the Denison survey, allowing employees to fill out one assessment. Our Research services can help you either map your existing employee satisfaction survey or design questions to collect the information you are looking for. For more information, contact your Denison Client Manager.
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A. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey and Leadership Development Survey are powerful assessments when used alone or separately. Because they share a common model and business language, it is often very easy for organizations to translate the skills and behaviors from the Culture Survey to the Leadership Survey, and vice versa. Many organizations use both in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their organization, function or business unit, and then also understand the leadership behaviors and practices that support those strengths and weaknesses. Leaders can better understand where their own strengths and weaknesses match the organization and they can also quickly and easily determine what skills they need to develop to support the organization's goals.
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A. The Gallup Q12 is a tool that gives a detailed measure of employee engagement at an individual level. It does not, however, measure the organizational behaviors in Mission, Adaptability, Involvement and Consistency. While employee engagement is very important to organizations it is also important to ask "What are our employees engaged in?" Through our research and experience, we have found that in effective organizations, employees are engaged in their Mission (Mission), their Marketplace or external environment (Adaptability) and in the systems and processes that help them get work done (Consistency).
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A. Clay Lafferty, developer of the OCI, was a clinical psychologist whose research focused on psychodynamics, thinking styles and their impact on health, well being, and personal effectiveness. In contrast, the Denison research is based on organizational culture and leadership practices, and their impact on financial performance, employee satisfaction, growth, quality, customer satisfaction, and innovation. Denison's research is behaviorally based and the surveys and reports are written in business language. Lafferty's research, by comparison, is psychologically based and the surveys and reports are presented in psychological terms. The OCI is a well-respected assessment tool that is widely used by many clinical and counseling psychologists. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey, however, speaks the language of business and is widely used by executives, managers, human resource professionals and organizational development professionals.
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A. Denison compares your organization's data on the Denison Organizational
Culture Survey with a database drawn from over 5000 other organization
and provides the results in the form of a percentile score. This
percentile score indicates how well your organization scored in
comparison to the other organizations in the normative database. For
example, if your organization had a score of 94 in the area of Customer
Focus, this means that it scored higher than 94% of all the other
organizations in the database. Contact your Denison Client Manager for
more information on the current normative database.
The use of normative data is a key advantage to using the Denison Surveys. The use of normative data is much more meaningful than the use of raw numbers, frequencies, means, or percentages. The benefits include:
- Assessing the favorability of scores - Using normative data enables you to determine the favorability of your organization's scores by comparing them with an objective, external standard of performance, rather than reaching a subjective conclusion about the value of the mean compared to the survey scale. For example, when a mean score of 3.88 corresponds to the 95th percentile, the score indicates high performance. However, when a mean score of 3.88 corresponds to the 21st percentile, this indicates relatively low performance. Percentiles help you answer the question "Is that good?"
- Comparing and contrasting between items - For two different survey items, it is possible that the one with the higher mean may be less favorable than the one with the lower mean. The use of norms allows us to use the 50th percentile as the 'average' score and thus clarifies which of the two scores is most favorable. This makes it easier for users to accurately assess strengths and weaknesses.
- Correcting for skewness of data - Data on a five-point scale is often skewed toward the upper-end of the scale (i.e. more people give an answer of 4 or 5 than 1 or 2), making it difficult to interpret a mean score. By using normative data, this problem is eliminated.
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A. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey Normative Database is reviewed and updated bi-annually. The current database has been drawn from over 5000 organizations and has remained relatively stable over time. We have found little difference between industries or between geographic regions. Our Global benchmark is highly stable and accurate comparing your organizations with a wide variety of industries including manufacturing, professional services, financial services, health care, educational institutions, government and not-for-profit organizations.
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A. Denison does not have industry specific norms for several reasons. First, if the purpose is assessment and determining relative strengths and weaknesses to target for improvement, the standard benchmarks are the best to use. The reason is that an organization should compare itself to global best practices. Otherwise the organization runs the risk replicating the shortcomings of their particular industry.
Second, our research shows that there is little difference between industries with respect to the presence of the 4 traits and 12 indices that make up the Denison model. Also, our global database drawn from over 5000 organizations is more precise than a smaller database containing only companies from a specific industry. It is most important to focus on the results and patterns in the data as opposed to the makeup of the norms.
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A. Research conducted by Denison Consulting has indicated that there is little difference between regions of the world with respect to the Denison Model, which eliminates the need for country- or region-specific norms. For more information about this, please see the article Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness: Is There a Similar Pattern Around the World?
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A. The Denison Organization Culture Survey has been translated and localized into over 37 of the world's major languages. Contact your Denison Client Manager for a current list. Languages not listed are available for an additional fee.
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A. The standard set up of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey is confidential and does not ask any information about the respondent's identity. Therefore, we have no way of associating an individual with their responses. In addition, responses are reported only in aggregate form. Denison will not release any group of survey results where there are fewer than 3 respondents in the group to make certain that specific individuals cannot be identified.
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A. In practice, we have found it is extremely rare for individuals to deliberately take the time to fill out the survey more than once. Because the standard Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) is done anonymously, there is no absolute way to prevent someone from taking the survey more than once. There are several safeguards, however, that we can use to detect and deter such behavior. The use of browser cookies, monitoring response counts by categories, and monitoring survey data are some examples. We have methods of analyzing the survey data to determine the likelihood that a set of responses came from the same person or if there was any deliberate attempt to skew the results. If there is a need to absolutely guarantee that there is only one response per person, Denison can generate unique links for each rater. This option comes with its own set of pros and cons however and you should thoroughly discuss the options available with your Denison Client Manager before deciding on the appropriate solution.
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A. We have the capability to provide each individual with unique links for their Denison Organizational Culture Survey. This option is available, but is recommended only for special situations. Before deciding to use unique identifiers, it is important to note that individuals are often concerned with confidentiality and when they see that they have received a unique link, they are less likely to trust the anonymity of the survey. Because of this, response rates are inevitably lower with this method. There is also the possibility that the data collected may reflect an inaccurate (usually inflated) picture of your organizational culture because people may feel that their answers are being tracked. Talk with your Denison Client Manager to learn about the options available and determine the most effective solution for your organization.
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A. There are many different approaches to take based on your organization's results. We have many resources available to help you start turning your diagnosis into action including: workshops, case studies and articles, eResources such as "The Culture Getting Started Guide," and all levels of Consulting support through our Global Consulting Network. Working with your Denison Client Manager and discussing your needs and goals throughout the survey process will help them get you the support you need. Your Client Manager can help put you in touch with the appropriate resources.
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A. Denison recommends completing a full survey every year to 18 months. Culture is not static in organizations and it is important to measure, track and actively take steps to create a healthy culture in your organization. A best practice in this area is to tie culture development into your annual planning cycle so that it is integrated into your annual goal and objective setting for each year. The Denison Organizational Culture Change Monitor is also available between full surveys to help organizations gauge the effectiveness of their improvement initiatives and course correct if needed at shorter intervals. The Change Monitor is typically implemented at 60-90 day intervals and measures 2-4 specific indexes of the Denison Model.
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A. For pricing information and project options, contact your Denison Client Manager.
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A. Everyone who will be expected to take action on the survey results should be given a chance provide input. Excluding certain people or groups may send a negative message about their value and could set the expectation that they will not have to be involved in the change process. Include people from all levels in the organization, if possible. The more perspectives that are captured in the data, the more accurate and useful it will be.
Inviting the entire population of the organization to take the survey has additional benefits beyond simply getting data. Some of these benefits include:
- Getting everyone involved in the project which will likely lead to increased buy-in during the change process
- Sending the message that all opinions are valued in the organization
- Avoiding concerns about the reliability and accuracy of the data that are often used as excuses to avoid accountability for change initiatives
In some cases, usually due to budget constraints, it makes sense to conduct a sample of the population as opposed to surveying the organization in its entirety. Your Denison Client Manager and our Research Department can work with you to determine the appropriate sampling strategy to meet your goals in your survey project. Contact your Denison Client Manager to learn more.
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A. The planning phase is one of the most important parts of the survey process. Be sure to b e clear about your goals and objectives for your survey project and decide what information you are seeking from the survey. For typical set-ups, allow Denison two to five business days to work with you to set up your survey website. Surveys are typically open for two weeks although this can vary depending on the number of participants and the timing of the projects. Once the survey is closed, reports can be generated within two to five business days. We recommend that you work with your Denison Client Manager to define your reports up front to speed the reporting process. Some factors that may require additional set up and planning time include: multiple languages, extensive custom questions or extensive customizations to the survey.
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A. The standard Denison Organizational Culture Survey report includes the Circumplex (circular profile), the Line Item report (individual scores on each of the 60 questions) and the High-Low chart (a summary of the 5 highest and 5 lowest scoring items on the survey. There are many additional types of reports available including Comparison Reports, Verbatim Reports, and Custom Question Summaries. Work with your Denison Client Manager to determine the segments and reports required for your project.
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A. We can customize the Denison Organizational Culture Survey with your organization's logo and welcome message on the opening page of the survey. Additional branding options are available and custom programming fees apply. Contact your Denison Client Manager to discuss customization and branding options.
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A. Changing the text of the standard 60 questions will affect how people respond to the items. Because we offer the benefit of normative data and report percentile scores, changing the question text is not recommended as it will result in inaccurate scores for the affected items. We can, however, make changes to reflect your organization's use of terms or naming conventions, such as changing the word “employee” to “team member.” Talk with your Denison Client Manager about the options for customizing the standard Denison Organizational Culture Survey questions.