The Benefits of an Employee Survey

Many companies use employee surveys to guage how the employees feel about their jobs and their company. The majority of Fortune 500 companies use them as a tool to improve the effectiveness of the organization.

While working at Northlake PD I observed the morale of the organization and the majority of the workers sink to a level that was the lowest in my 13 years there. To be sure, there were always unsettling dilemmas for employees and someone was always complaining about something–mostly very trivial things.

Prior to chief Dennis Koletsos being hired in 1998, the turnover at the department was very low, mainly due to retirements. After Koletsos was hired, the morale declined and turnover became an epidemic. The place was like it had a revolving door. So many things occurred that it is too much to try to fit here right now. I eventually became Union President and heard all the gripes and thoughts of the majority of the officers–not just the “group of veteran troublemakers” that the administration was telling people. things were bad, real bad.

Things became so bad that filing grievances and consulting with the union did absolutely no good. Officers were not “allowed” to talk about internal matters to anyone and were afraid to talk to the Chief for fear of reprisals.
I even went on a limb and began speaking to one of the aldermen of the town.

Alderman Dunne told me how some of the aldermen felt about things and that they would try to help when the time was right. Well, the time never became right as the aldermen and alderwomen all were afraid to “buck the system” and get the mayor and the establishment angry at them. They were afraid to lose their prestigious $12,000/year part time aldermen positions so they stood by and watched as many people’s lives were jerked around by an incompetent and vengeful administration.

The administration kept telling village officials that there was nothing wrong at the PD and that it was just the veteran group crying. I put forward the idea of an employee survey and that idea was quickly shot down. Well, as Union President I got the union attorney’s permission to conduct our own employee survey.

The survey I used was obtained by a fortune 500 company that was tailored to the Police Department. The survey was conducted anonymously(I still have the surveys and have not shown them to anyone yet) as many officers would not have been involved for fear of retaliation. There was a big turnout and the majority of officers participated in the survey. Results were tallied by myself and the rest of the union reps with results being 100% accurate. All scores were averaged and they and the comments that officers left were typed into a final report for the administration.

As we thought, the scores were very low for the administration and the comments were pretty negative. In fact, at the meeting where we gave Chief koletsos the results of the survey, he briefly looked them over. When he got to the comments section he read a couple out loud then got up and left! Unreal! Talk about not being able to take criticism.

Well, the survey was given to Alderman Dunne as I didn’t think the Chief would show the village officials. Nothing happened and the survey was not discussed again and the results were completely ignored. Obviously this place isn’t run like a Fortune 500 company!

Funny, but a few hours after that meeting, Channel 7 reporter Chuck Gowdie showed up asking about the American Flag that was removed from the uniforms(See video at bottom of the 1st page of this blog.) Of course, the Chief went out the backdoor and didn’t talk to the reporter. What a stand up guy huh? Seems there was a petition with lots of signatures involved with that story that haven’t been shown yet.