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Survey feedback is frequently used as a diagnostic tool to identify team, department, and organizational problems. Because of its value in organizational diagnosis, it is often utilized as part of large-scale, long-term change programs in combination with other approaches and techniques. Survey feedback consists of
(a) collecting information (usually by questionnaire) from members of an organization, department, or team,
(b) organizing that information into an understandable and useful form, and
(c) feeding that information back to the employees who provided it. Some or all of the employees then use this information as a basis for planning actions to deal with specific issues and problems.
The primary objective of survey feedback is to improve the relationships among team members or between departments through the discussion of common problems, rather than to introduce a specific change, such as a new computer system. Survey feedback thus typically follows the action research process, and may help in the unfreezing step of organizational change by helping organization members to recognize issues and problems that need to be addressed. Students should be able to identify an example of a circumstance in which survey feedback could be helpful.
One of the most obvious would be the classroom setting, wherein both the students' and the professor's responses to questions about the learning experience could be fed back to the group to facilitate identification of issues of concern to either or both parties, and thus used as a basis for collaborative problem solving. Numerous other examples from either the school or work setting could be equally appropriate.
