SMART Survey > What is it?

Managing Corporate Performance through Climate

No self-respecting organisation would be managed without top class financial reports. Why are so many managed without top class reports on their organisational health, human attributes & performance?

To deliver consistently good results, organisations need a positive culture. Actively managing corporate climate and levels of staff engagement is the best way to achieve this.

AHRI, with associated partners, have developed an online survey tool that supports confidential data collection and enables the active management of corporate climate and staff engagement levels to improve business performance.

Features and Benefits of our SMART survey solution

This online survey is browser-accessed and is hosted by iedex online to ensure complete confidentiality of individual results. The data are analysed by strategy experts and HR professionals to provide you with clear findings and recommendations that will improve the strategic performance of your business.

Our SMART survey provides you with the following CLEAR attributes:

C = character (of your business) The basics - analysis of teamwork, innovation, adherence to your values and behaviours, learning and development, essential work requirements, communications.
L = leadership The leaders - transactional versus transformational leadership profile, staff versus manager's perceptions of leadership capabilities, the leader-manager profile in your business and its implications.
E = engagement The commitment - employee engagement levels, key drivers of employee engagement (by factor analysis), engagement and employee alignment with business goals, financial cost of disengaged employees.
A = accountability The performance focus - effectiveness of business planning, performance management and change management, innovation and improvement.
R = recognition Acknowledgment - feedback, incentives, selection and promotion practices.

The benefit of our SMARTSurvey© methodology

Using our SMART survey you can get analyses from a single survey that would normally require multiple surveys. This is enabled through our SMARTSurvey© design which also gives you significant cost benefits.

We have invented a way of including a multitude of sub-surveys in a single survey. Our SMARTSurvey© methodology demonstrates how you can benefit from our Value of "innovation".

For example, in addition to all the standard staff survey analyses, you will get:
  • Employee engagement analysis
  • Culture profile
  • Sustainability profile
  • Employer of choice profile
  • Gen Y profile
  • Accountability profile

Standard data analysis

In addition to our strategic analyses, our SMART survey also provides you with the more traditional data such as current suitability of work and workplace requirements, quality of immediate supervisor, quality of immediate work team, quality of communications, quality of learning and development, etc.

Strategic analyses enabled by our SMART survey

Strategy is our defining differentiator.

Our clients are businesses that use contemporary tools to generate sustainable strategic performance improvement and who recognise human capital as a major contributor to this outcome.

They want metrics that are as reliable and informative as core business process or financial data. The metrics must be "Executive ready".

Employee engagement levels

Employee engagement is measured by four factors:
  • "Say" - employees talking positively about their employer
  • "Stay" - employees having a strong desire to work for their employer, not wanting to work elsewhere
  • "Strive" - employees willingly putting in beyond the call of duty
  • "Strategic fit" - employees knowing exactly how their work aligns with business goals.
Employee engagement is strongly correlated with financial performance and customer satisfaction.

Our strategic analysis of your results identifies the cost of disengagement, the primary drivers of improved employee engagement and recommends ways to apply this to improve financial performance and customer satisfaction.

Transformational versus transactional leadership profile

This strategic analysis assesses whether the leaders in your business are suited to the strategic challenges you face.

If you have a significant level of strategic change planned, you will need a net balance of transformational leadership skills.

If you are not extracting full value from your current business model it may be because you have deficiencies in your transactional leadership profile.

Employer of choice profile (EOC)

Being an employer of choice (EOC) means that potential employees will choose your business over other employment options and then dedicate themselves to your success in proportion to how well you deliver on their expectations.

This strategic analysis looks at ten criteria that determine your EOC standing and recommends how you can improve it.

Employer of choice profile (EOC)

Being an employer of choice (EOC) means that potential employees will choose your business over other employment options and then dedicate themselves to your success in proportion to how well you deliver on their expectations.

This strategic analysis looks at ten criteria that determine your EOC standing and recommends how you can improve it.

Values and behaviours analysis

This strategic analysis measures the extent to which staff really live the values of your business and managers role model them. It allows you to reinvigorate your values and behaviours support programs by targeting those that need most attention.

Sustainability profile

This strategic analysis constructs a sustainability profile of your business based on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. This incorporates economic, environmental and social criteria.

Accountability profile

This strategic analysis assesses the perceived effectiveness of business planning, performance management and change management in your business. These matters lie at the heart of good businesses performance.

Generation Y profile

This strategic analysis assesses the extent to which your business is addressing the known preferences of Gen Y employees - they are the future of your business.
For an overview of our staff survey solution, please read our Staff Survey product profile.


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SMART Survey > What does it cost?

SMART Survey return on investment (ROI)

  • Our strategic consulting arm has identified that businesses in transition can devote as much as 20% of their total resources to accomplish this. Without knowing their transformational leadership profile and their change management capacity, the full amount of these resources could be at risk.
  • The increasing focus on sustainability across the globe is leading to businesses measuring their "sustainability" profile. Our tool uses the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as the basis for providing you with a means of measuring your sustainability by combining financial, environmental and social criteria.

    "Sustainability leaders achieve long-term shareholder value by gearing their strategies and management to harness the market's potential for sustainability products and services while at the same time successfully reducing and avoiding sustainability costs and risks. The quality of a company's strategy and management and its performance in dealing with opportunities and risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments can be quantified and used to identify and select leading companies for investment purposes."
    Source: Dow Jones Sustainability Index

  • We measured the cost of disengaged staff at over $34 million p.a. for one of our large clients. This led to several high-profile, executive-led initiatives to strengthen engagement levels.
  • Most businesses know their cost to recruit. This cost can double for businesses with a poor employer of choice profile.

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SMART Survey > Is it for my business?

Business challenges this service addresses:

  • Do you ever wonder what value was achieved from your last staff survey? Was all the cost and effort worth it? Did it leave you with more questions than answers and a trail of focus groups?
  • Does your Executive latch onto the results of the staff survey with as much commitment as they do the latest financials? Does your survey provide executives with convincing strategic insights that can be acted on confidently?
  • Do you see a proliferation of surveys offering a variety of potentially useful analyses, but you can't afford all of them? And when you use different surveys can you integrate and cross-interpret the results?
These are the issues the business community told us frustrated them the most about staff surveys, so we developed a product specifically to address them.


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SMART Survey > How do I do it?

Standard Services

  • Survey design, including custom questions based on your current issues / priorities
  • Administration of the survey
  • Report generation
  • Analysis of findings and provision of recommendations

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SMART Survey > Can I learn more?

 Do you know the transformational versus transactional leadership capabilities of your managers
 - and why does it matter?

One of the attributes of successful managers is that they possess a finely balanced combination of transformational leadership skills and transactional leadership skills. This enables them to drive difficult change effectively (transform businesses or teams), and to conduct "business as usual" efficiently (transact with their staff and others).

Recently a large Australian organisation of nearly 6000 employees ran a climate survey on all staff and a 360 feedback process on 300 its managers. The results revealed an interesting phenomenon - a supervisor profile strong in transformational leadership but weaker transactional capabilities.

"So what" you say?

The problem is, transformational leadership skills can only be effective in the presence of transactional leadership skills - the latter is a prerequisite for the former. Where transactional leadership skills are not present, transformational leadership skills are a latent quality.

So the results of this survey indicate a management profile that is personable, but not necessarily effective. (Note: "Effective" does not mean "harsh" or bullying. It means possessing the foundation skills expected of managers at any level).
In general terms, transformational capabilities make managers purposeful and inspirational. Transactional capabilities make them organised and compelling (see model).

The diagnostics that measure transformational leadership capabilities vary in content, but typically we would define a transformational leader as someone who:
  1. Excels at complex, difficult change.
  2. unwavering resolve to produce great long term results.
  3. Takes responsibility for poor results and admits mistakes
  4. Supports people, especially when things don't go to plan
  5. Takes the time to understand a person's individual needs and aspirations
  6. Has a genuine interest in helping people to develop themselves
  7. Demonstrates humility
On the whole, transformational leaders are viewed more positively and are more successful in their careers. They have also better relationships with their own managers and make more of a contribution to the organisation than do those who are only transactional.

Managers rated high in transformational leadership behaviours are associated with higher perceived levels of purpose, adaptability, involvement and consistency compared to their transactional counterparts.

But none of these positives can be fully realised without transactional leadership skills in the form of:
  • An ability to get the management basics right - planning, organising, resourcing, communicating and so on;
  • An ability to interact effectively with people - listening, giving constructive feedback, taking criticism and acting on it positively.
You might want to ask:
  1. Does your business's leadership framework adequately assess and support both transformational and transactional leadership?
  2. How do you rate as a manager on the transformational and transactional leadership scale?
  3. How do the managers in your business rate? Are the transformational attributes of some managers losing impact because of a lack of transactional capabilities?


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SMART Survey > Start Now

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