Why Professional Employee Compliance Surveys Outperform Internal Surveys

The least costly way to gain independent evidence of compliance program effectiveness

Employee compliance surveys are essential for understanding how well a healthcare organization’s compliance program is functioning in practice. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) recommends in their compliance guidance that organizations use employee compliance surveys as a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of their compliance programs. Professionally designed surveys are also the least expensive way to engage independent third parties to evaluate program effectiveness. While internal surveys are convenient, professionally developed and administered surveys offer clear advantages:

1. Objectivity and Credibility. Professionally developed and administered surveys are independent, ensuring employee anonymity in responses. They provide an unbiased perspective that internal staff may struggle to achieve with survey tools they develop. Internal surveys can unintentionally reflect leadership assumptions or organizational politics, which may skew results. Professional surveys are designed to collect candid, honest feedback, minimize bias in question design, and ensure confidentiality and anonymity for respondents. Employees feel safer providing honest feedback when surveys are administered by an independent party and are more likely to provide truthful responses, increasing the reliability of the resulting report data. Results carry a higher level of credibility with management, boards, and outside regulatory authorities.
2. Validated Design. Unlike internally designed surveys, which may ask leading or ambiguous questions, professional surveys undergo validation to ensure responses accurately reflect employee understanding and engagement in the compliance program rather than assumptions or guesswork. Expertly crafted surveys that have been tested and used widely can measure knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes more accurately, avoiding questionable, biased, or leading questions common in internal surveys.
3. Benchmarking and Insights. A key advantage of using professional surveys is benchmarking. Organizations can compare and benchmark results against others using the same survey in identifying strengths, weaknesses, trends, and opportunities for improvement. Benchmarking also flags areas of relative strength and weakness and identities where additional education and interventions are warranted. Internally created surveys lack these benchmarking capabilities, leaving organizations without context for interpreting results.
4. Higher Participation. Professional surveys are designed to maximize participation with ease and ensure confidentiality in responses. As a result, these surveys generally achieve higher response rates. Employees have a higher level of trust in professionally developed and independently administered surveys. High participation increases confidence that the data the entire workforce.
5. Actionable Analysis. Professional surveys often come with detailed reporting and expert analysis, frequently spanning twenty to thirty pages. These reports transform raw data into actionable insights by benchmarking overall and individual results against the universe of users. Reports should include identifying weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, along with specific recommendations for corrective actions. Internally developed surveys often stop at raw results, requiring staff to interpret and translate findings without guidance, a process prone to misinterpretation and missed opportunities. Detailed reports and expert interpretation of overall responses, as well as individual questions, lead to clear, actionable recommendations such as updates to training, policies, and risk mitigation strategies.
6. Stronger Compliance Culture. Using a professional survey administered by an independent third-party signals that compliance is a priority, reinforcing trust, accountability, and ethical behavior throughout the organization. It demonstrates to employees that the organization is serious about compliance and committed to transparency. This helps embed compliance as a core organizational value rather than a checkbox exercise.
7. Cost Effectiveness. Conducting independent employee compliance program surveys is the least costly method of gaining independent third-party evidence of compliance program effectiveness. It is available at a fraction of the cost of an independent evaluation by outside experts. However, the results are far more limited than an in-depth review.
8. Regulatory Safeguards. Professionally designed and administered surveys adhere to privacy, confidentiality, and data security best practices. This mitigates the risk of inadvertently exposing sensitive employee information, an important consideration in healthcare where compliance and HR intersect.

Summary: Professional employee compliance surveys provide more reliable, actionable, and credible insights than internal surveys, making them a strategic tool to strengthen compliance programs, mitigate risk, and foster a culture of integrity. Detailed reports of 20-30 pages can benchmark results and identify opportunities for improvement along with suggested actions. There are two common types of compliance surveys, one that tests employee compliance knowledge, generally using dichotomous (Yes-No) answer format; and the second, a compliance culture survey that measures the attitudes and perceptions concerning compliance, using a Likert scale answer format. 

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About the Author

Richard P. Kusserow established Strategic Management Services, LLC, after retiring from being the DHHS Inspector General, and has assisted over 3,000 health care organizations and entities in developing, implementing and assessing compliance programs.