How to make HR Surveys work – Case for Semantic Web?

Every year, I get this email from the HR requesting filling-out of an annual survey for organizational effectiveness and responsiveness. Every year, I do this task very diligently, detailing specific areas of concern and the areas which warrant appreciation. However, I always tend to think - how is this annual survey going to help?

Let's assume the ideal state - everyone in the company participates and everyone fills-out diligently - let's also assume, a proper post-survey analysis is performed and action plan prepared - still I see the below gaps:

• How do you ensure that a limited size survey captures all the requirements/concerns of employees across departments?
• How can the surveys be relevant around the year? Employee concerns are variable and one annual survey cannot be useful for an entire year; at the same time, increasing the survey frequencies can be a costly affair.
• How do we ensure continues two-way dialogue between the company senior management and the employees on a continuous basis for the proposed action plan?

And all of the above concerns are assuming the ideal state of 100% participation and effective analysis!!

In other words, there needs to be a change in this process, the process has to be more collaborative and the analysis has to be at run-time with actionable points.

Essentially, we need a solution which can listen to employee conversations, analyze the data and produce dashboard level information as actionable items. In some ways, the solution needs to follow the principles of the Semantic Web where we have a web of data and computer programs can query this data to derive actionable results. The Semantic Web app can take the form of company-private discussion forums/blogs/wikis etc. Here's a sample layout:

There has already been some progress on this front with this company - BubbleIdeas. BubbleIdeas offers a SaaS offering which can be used to host company-private discussion forums and perform analysis as needed.

Effectively, believe the Semantic web principles can be used to make the entire process more effective, efficient and may be even cost-effective!