Strategic Use of Employee Opinion Surveys: Using a Quasi-Linkage Approach to Model the Drivers of Organisational Effectiveness

Traditionally, organisations use benchmarking to evaluate their employee opinion survey data. This approach is useful for identifying strengths and weaknesses in organisational performance, but it does not tell us how to bring about improvements on those indicators. Although linkage research (whereby survey data are linked with other organisational measures of performance) can provide this information, this approach is often not feasible. The ‘quasi-linkage’ approach described in this paper represents a practical compromise. We illustrate this approach using survey data collected from 1246 employees, demonstrating how it can be used to derive strategic information from employee opinion data.