In the text below, the word "group" is used to refer to the collection of respondents belonging to a specific organizational unit, group, department, team, class, or similar.
In the text below, the word "manager" is used to refer to the person responsible for the group/department/team. Typically, this is a manager with personnel responsibility. This person is usually the most directly responsible for the group's work environment and results.
Too few responses means that the threshold for respondent protection of at least 5* respondents has not been met, and the result is not presented. This is to protect the respondent and is sometimes colloquially referred to as the anonymity threshold. There are two reasons why this may occur in connection with a survey.
- The group for which the manager is responsible has too few respondents (<5). Even with 100% response rate in the group, the number of respondents is too low (<5), and therefore no result is presented.
- The group for which the manager is responsible has more than 5 respondents. However, the response rate is too low (<5), resulting in fewer than 5 respondents answering the survey.
Quicksearch recommends that the organization handle the above situations in the following two ways.
- When there are too few respondents in the group (<5), Quicksearch recommends that the manager emphasizes the importance of everyone responding to the survey since the answers contribute to a more accurate picture for the entire organization. The manager also thanks those who have responded. After the survey, the manager receives the organization's overall results and uses this as a basis for discussion with their group to discuss improvement work within the group.
- When there are too few respondents who have answered (<5) despite the number of recipients in the group being sufficient (>5), the manager's first task is to explain the importance of all employees responding to the survey. Both for the development of the work environment and for the development of the entire organization. The manager then receives the organization's overall results and uses this as a basis for discussion with their group to discuss improvement work within the group.
Quicksearch recommends this approach as we have seen that it provides the most value in relation to the time invested. It is not the survey that produces the result; it is the work you do together afterwards.
*= The anonymity threshold may be set at a different value for your organization. The number 5 mentioned in the article is based on Quicksearch's recommended value.