Unlocking Qualitative Insights from Employee Stories

“I don’t feel like I can speak up or ask questions in our directorate meetings. Often, leadership comes down, speaks to us and leaves. No one ever asks us for our thoughts or questions. It makes me feel like I am not important and that our team isn’t valuable.”

This story was shared in a pulse survey. It was written at the end of the survey, in the open-ended question section: “Is there anything else you would like us to know?” The short story they shared provided deeper insight than a simple 1-to-5 agree-or-disagree scale.

Everything else in the survey looked normal. The questions did exactly what they were designed to do. The rating system delivered solid 3s and 4s; my manager is open to conversations. The problem was that the rating system wasn’t capturing the employee’s true experience. As soon as they had a place to share those feelings, they did. This person took the time to fill in the last question, and many others did the same. This is where real insights happened.

There were enough stories to form a qualitative data set. For many people, understanding how to synthesise insights from stories is tricky.

What do we do with stories once we have them? We turn them into qualitative data, which feels tricky. How do you add up stories? Quantitative is the first preference for a reason. Numbers feel trustworthy because the method is visible to everyone. Two plus two is four; anyone can check the work. Stories have no single formula, so they feel loose and impressionistic. It is easy to dismiss them as unquantifiable anecdotes.

As someone who has worked in qualitative data for almost a decade, I know stories have their own type of rigour. Look at the stories, ask what keeps recurring, and then group them by major theme. Here is what that looks like when you work with qualitative insights.

How to Create Qualitative Insights:

1. Read each story. Before any synthesising, you must take time to read what comes through. What is this person saying? One person wanted more face-to-face time with leadership. One was never invited to ask a question. One described leadership leaving the room before anyone could respond. One wanted to offer their own view in an all-staff meeting but never got the chance. One was tired of emails; they felt they couldn’t respond to. On their own, each reads like its own small, separate complaint. 
2. What phrases, words, or feelings repeat? These are different stories, not different problems. Line them up, and the same problem comes through. There was no open channel for communication with leadership.
3. Cluster the repeats, then listen for the words that keep surfacing. As you group the accounts, a vocabulary starts to emerge; repeated words come through. The stories from the surveys were full of words like connection, interpersonal, and the desire to speak. The subtext was that leadership was the only voice in the room. People wanted a conversation rather than being spoken to. That recurring language is your signal. It points towards the place to look for deeper insights.
4. Name the big overarching theme. The first words that surface are rarely the biggest insight. The big insights come from the pattern that the words and phrases create. What is the bigger picture? What is the larger theme or idea that holds them all together? The overarching theme connecting the stories was a lack of communication. It is important to play with the smaller themes until the connective tissue becomes clear. Getting this right takes time, but when you do, everything else falls into place.

Lack of communication is something you can act on. You can build time into meetings for questions rather than hoping they arise. You can stay in the room longer to chat. You can design the all-staff meetings so that others have a chance to share their work and thoughts.

The only reason any of this surfaced was a fill-in-the-blank box at the end of a pulse survey.

When is the last time you felt your surveys missed something, that there was more left unsaid?

Qualitative insights require a qualitative approach to gathering the stories. This is why the Storytelling Challenge was born. Curious? Reach out to learn more.