Law Department Management Blog
A down and dirty survey of the members of the law department can quickly, unobtrusively and cheaply check the morale temperature. Many companies have in-house survey tools and running it through human resources assures anonymity. If no tool is at hand, SurveyMonkey and other free choices are out there and a GC can give members of the department the right not to answer. Surveys can ask about more than morale, of course.
The style of question should be ratings on a 1 to 7 scale with a text box for comments. An example might be “Compared to pre-COVID19, to what degree has your workload changed?” Or, “Please rank the following challenges that you may face now with remote working.” Then list alphabetically plausible responses people might choose. Numeric questions are more amenable to analysis; text responses take longer to analyze and are more subjective.
Some people might not want to respond to the survey because they are concerned about breaches of anonymity. Others might prefer a telephone call or a chat exchange. The biggest challenge, however, is probably keeping the number of questions small and avoiding asking crude yes/no questions.