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“We had a summer party where 60% of the staff turned up. After the party, we sent out a survey and realized that half of them liked the music, half of them didn’t, half of them said the food was good, and the other half said it was impossible to eat. The overall rating was not bad, but still 30% of the staff rated the party quite negatively”, shares one HR manager.  

We immediately want to ask the question – why do you organize a summer party?

If your aim is to give employees a chance to get together in an informal setting, to get to know each other because you work remotely, to create positive shared experiences and memories – that’s what your surveys should be about. We suggest asking employees: 

  • How many new people have you met?
  • How did it feel to meet your colleagues at the party?
  • What was your experience?
  • How involved did you feel?

If you ask in a survey about food, music, venue, gifts, etc., you get a wish list: ‘Why was it Vaidas Baumila instead of Justinas Jarutis? Why was the party out of town and not in town?” – and here you fall into your own trap. All these attributes of a celebration are essentially details, and very often it is brought to the fore. We think it’s not even worth asking, because: 

  1. the party has already happened and you can’t change the weather;
  2. the same supplier may or may not have different staff next year and may or may not offer you the same;
  3. as curator and participant of the event, you can judge for yourself whether the food was tasty, the sound quality was good or the presenter was professional.

The 40% of employees who did not attend the party are better off paying more attention to the details than to the party. We suggest going for a coffee or a walk with at least some of them to understand why they were absent. Don’t accept the first answer: “I had other plans”, but try to understand more deeply – how much a person identifies with the organization, how much he/she wants to spend time together and, ultimately, how willing he/she is to change his/her plans.