Frequently asked questions
1 The Survey set-up:
(a) How important is it to have well designed survey statements?
(b) Why are survey statements randomised in the survey?
(c) What are the benefits of benchmarking?
(d) How might non-benchmarked results be misinterpreted?
(e) Why shouldn’t we use our own internally administered survey?
2 The Survey process:
(a) What are the main steps in your survey process?
(b) How much time of each director is taken?
(c) How much administration or management time is required during the survey process?
(d) How long does the survey process normally take?
3 The Reports:
(a) What is the “Importance” and “Performance” rating system?
(b) How does the “Gap” rating system work?
(c) Will the main areas for improvement be clear from the reports?
(d) Does the database contain a sufficient number of comparable organisations?
4 The Report feedback/debrief process:
(a) Will there be a clear action plan following completion of the survey?
(b) What feedback or debrief do the board or committee receive?
(c) What feedback do individual directors receive following the Director 360 Survey?
5 Other, including costs:
(a) Can a survey be done without director interviews, review of documentation, etc?
(b) What “Optional Extras” apply to your board survey services?
(c) What does your standard board survey service typically cost?
(d) What are the other ways of conducting a board assessment?
(e) Who carries out the feedback and debrief process?
(f) To what extent are your risk surveys integrated?
(g) Can we use your surveys with our existing consultants?
1(a) How important is it to have well designed and tested survey statements?
The objectives of a survey need to be established and well articulated.
Surveys used by Insync Surveys have been designed to measure and improve the effectiveness of the board, committees and individual directors.
A well designed framework will cover the main areas that impact effectiveness. The survey statements within each framework area should be penetrating and encompass good practice for the matters relevant to each framework area.
The framework and survey statements used by Insync Surveys have been designed with input both by survey statement specialists and global subject matter experts, including in the case of each survey, considerable input from a big 4 accounting firm.
1(b) Why are survey statements randomised in the survey?
Many surveys are designed with survey statements grouped under relevant headings. When respondents read such headings, they have often already formed a view as to how they will respond to the forthcoming survey statement and accordingly, their survey statement response is likely to be biased accordingly. Further, it is much harder for respondents to “beat” the system when the survey statements are randomised.
1(c) What are the benefits of benchmarking?
Without benchmarking, most people would regard an average response of, say, 5 or a 7 point survey response scale as good.
Based on our research of survey statements with an average response of 5, those survey statements can have a benchmark ranking as high as 89 (i.e., a very high ranking compared to other boards or committees), or as low as 15, (i.e., a very low ranking compared with other boards or committees).
Put another way, a board or committee that considered a survey matter with an average response of 5 to be good, would be making an inappropriate conclusion if the majority of other boards responded to the same survey statement with an average of, say, 6.25.
Most boards understand the benefits and are used to benchmarking their employee engagement, their customer service, the effectiveness of their accounting department, or their call centre, etc., but very few boards benchmark their own effectiveness against comparable organisations.
1(d) How might non-benchmarked results be misinterpreted?
A board may consider that they are effective in a certain area based on a non-benchmarked average survey response of, say, 5 or a 7 point scale when compared with similar organisations that average response is low. Without appropriate benchmarking, a board may consider themselves to be effective in certain areas when the opposite may be true. This can be very dangerous.
Also refer to the response to Question 1(c).
1(e) Why shouldn’t we use our own internally administered survey?
As stated in other areas of our website, internally administered surveys have many of the following limitations:
• they are rarely comprehensive in the issues they address
• the survey statements are often inappropriately worded and untested
• the survey process can be prone to bias and often lacks statistical rigour
• they don’t promote candour as respondents’ anonymity is not protected
• without benchmarking or an appropriate gap analysis, the results are often incorrectly interpreted.
1(f) Is it important to get management’s views as to the effectiveness of the board or its committees?
Insync Surveys encourages organisations to gain views from a range of stakeholder perspectives. Some of Insync Surveys’ surveys have been designed to be carried out by both the board or committee together with management, or simply the board or committee. Where the surveys have been designed to be carried out only by the board or committee, a separate survey can be carried out to obtain management’s perspectives as to the effectiveness of the board or committee.
Where management input is requested in relation to a board’s or committee’s effectiveness, Insync Surveys recommends that appropriate feedback be provided to the relevant respondents once the survey results are known.
Also refer to the response to question 5(f).
2(a) What are the main steps in your survey process?
There are five steps in the survey process which are detailed on our website. These steps are included on the overview of our board survey services and include:- understand requirements; customise; measure; analyse; report and debrief.
2(b) How much time of each director is taken?
All surveys have been designed to be completed by each director or senior management within 30 minutes. Time taken by all employees and senior management to complete the Employee Risk Culture Survey is 7 and 15 minutes respectively.
Additional director time will be taken if the survey services include interviews of directors. Board time is also taken as part of the debrief of the final report.
Additional time is taken by the chair, or other survey sponsor, to ensure the survey is appropriately customised and that the survey process chosen suits the requirements of the relevant organisation.
2(c) How much administrative or management time is required during the survey process?
The survey process for each board survey has been designed to be extremely unobtrusive. Survey respondents simply receive a web link to the survey and complete the survey online within 30 minutes.
Additional management and administration time is taken to customise the survey and to ensure that the scope of the survey services meet the requirements of the relevant organisation.
2(d) How long does the survey process normally take?
The whole process can take as little as three weeks and as long as two or three months, depending upon what extra services are included and the availability of respondents. Interviews of directors, reviews of board charter, agendas and minutes and the observation of the board in session, all add to the duration of the process.
A board survey can normally be set up and ready for launch within a week or two. The survey then normally stays open for up to two weeks, but can be done quicker, or may take longer, depending on the availability of the respondents. The preparation of the report, debrief of the chair and then debrief of the board or committee can take as little as a week, but will depend upon the board or committee meeting schedule.
3(a) What is the “Importance” and “Performance” rating system?
Some of our surveys use both an importance and performance rating system, which is also known as a bivariate survey system. This rating system involves the survey participants assessing both the importance to the organisation and the performance of the organisation in relation to each survey statement matter.
The majority of survey systems only request participants to assess the performance of the organisation in relation to each survey statement matter.
3(b) How does the “Gap” reporting system work?
The Gap reporting system is used when the importance and performance rating system has been used. The gap measures the difference between the importance of an issue to an organisation and the performance of an organisation in relation thereto.
If the performance of an organisation in relation to an issue is rated significantly lower than the importance of that issue to the organisation, that matter normally constitutes an area for improvement.
3(c) Will the main areas for improvement be clear from the reports?
Where the reports use benchmarking or the gap rating system, the top, say, 10 areas for improvement will be very clear and often those issues will fit into 2, 3 or 4 main themes that may need to be focused on by the relevant board or committee.
The main themes or areas for improvement are identified and highlighted during the feedback and debrief process. Depending upon the scope of the board survey services, an action plan may also be developed to improve effectiveness in the relevant areas. Also refer to the response to Question 4(a).
3(d) Does the database contain a sufficient number of comparable organisations?
The database for the Board Effectiveness Survey contains around 100 organisations, including very large listed companies, private companies, not-for-profit entities and government organisations. There are a sufficient number of comparable organisations to ensure that an organisation is only benchmarked against the most comparable organisations.
4(a) Will there be a clear action plan following completion of the survey?
As set out in Question 3(c), the main areas for improvement will be clearly set out in the report and priorities are normally set during the report feedback process and where requested, a subsequent report reflecting the agreed action plan, including the agreed priorities, will be provided.
4(b) What feedback or debrief does the board or committee receive?
The extent of the debrief will normally be agreed prior to the survey commencing and will normally include a debrief of the Chair or main survey sponsor and a subsequent debrief of the board or committee.
4(c) What feedback do individual directors receive following the Director 360 Survey?
This will depend upon the process agreed with the organisation prior to the survey commencing and can be as simple as directors being provided with their personal Director Effectiveness Report, without any other board member or organisation employee receiving such. Director Effectiveness Reports are often provided to the chair for the chair to discuss with the relevant director. In other circumstances, boards will agree that Insync Surveys or an alternative third party provide an appropriate debrief to the relevant directors.
5(a) Can a survey be done without director interviews, reviews of documentation, etc?
Yes. Boards will often simply request that one of Insync Surveys’ world class board surveys be carried out and that a detailed report and debrief be provided to the board or committee.
These reviews can be supplemented by interviews or other enquiries or interventions depending upon the results of the survey. Rather than every year, detailed reviews are often done by organisations every few years.
5(b) What “Optional Extras” apply to your board survey services?
Insync Surveys’ board survey services can include interviews with each director, review of relevant charters, review of board or committee papers, agendas and minutes, viewing of the board in session, board workshops, special reports and other reviews.
5(c) What does your standard survey service typically cost?
Our standard survey service (excluding director interviews, etc.) normally ranges from as low as $12,500 to over $30,000 depending upon the type of survey, the extent of customisation, the extent of benchmarking, the extent of debriefing and the like.
Discounts are provided to clients that acquire more than one survey during the same period.
5(d) What are the other ways of conducting a board assessment?
Many boards have a discussion around their board table as to their effectiveness, but such discussions rarely consider the many issues that are covered by most well designed surveys. Discussions around a board table can be useful, but member views are not equally weighted and such views are often biased or impacted by the views and emotions of other members. Insync Surveys believes that the survey process is the most unobtrusive, cost effective, time efficient, comprehensive and rigorous way of carrying out an appropriate board assessment. It is more time effective to focus energy on the main areas for improvement identified by a well designed survey.
5(e) Who carries out the feedback and debrief process?
The debrief and feedback processes are carried out by a specialist board consultant and may be done in conjunction with a 360 degree feedback or risk specialist where appropriate. Where appropriate, subject matter experts from third party organisations are involved in the feedback and debrief process.
Insync Surveys has carried out board, audit committee and risk surveys for a large range of organisations, from large listed companies to private companies, professional firms, large not-for-profit and government entities.
5(f) To what extent are your risk surveys integrated?
The Board Risk Survey, the Risk Committee Effectiveness Survey (for both boards and management risk committees) and the Employee Risk Culture Survey (for just senior employees or for all employees) were designed from the ground up to be fully integrated.
One of the most significant challenges for organisations is achieving alignment of views or important risk management issues between the board, management and front line employees.
It is very useful to understand the views of the board or the management on the importance, the performance and the related gap in relation to key risk management matters, but it is much more insightful to understand both and any major differences in such views.
5(g) Can we use your surveys with our existing consultants?
Boards Insync plans to establish a large network of parties that will be authorised to distribute one or more of its surveys, including big 4 accounting firms and others. Boards Insync also plans to allow appropriate third parties to distribute some of its board surveys under their own brand. This is often referred to as ‘white labelling’.
New distribution partners will be announced on Boards Insync’s website from time to time.
Clients that would like to use one or more of Boards Insync’s surveys with their existing consultant should contact Boards Insync.
