Employee Satisfaction Surveys Guide
The benefit of deploying an employee survey on an annual basis has for a long time been widely accepted but many organizations are reluctant to conduct them due to the amount of effort that is required.
Many organizations who have conducted their own internal employee satisfaction surveys use word-processors to design and compile a survey, then go through the effort of printing and distributing the survey and invest time chasing and collecting the completed surveys and then more time transferring the survey response information into a meaningful management report.
Fortunately with the introduction of the Internet and hosted survey websites what was once a time consuming, resource hungry, long winded and cumbersome process is now slick, quick and easy.
This document provides a step by step guide to help implement a survey that will bring considerable benefits to any organization.
Step 1 - Identifying The Need
There are countless reasons an organization might benefit from conducting a survey. Listed here are a few of the common reason why employee satisfaction surveys are conducted.
Event Driven
If your organization is about to embark, or is going through, a process reengineering program a series of employee surveys can assist in managing the change program, measure the effectiveness of the change, help to deliver a ‘message’ and gather valuable feedback throughout the change cycle.
Where an organization is experiencing a period of rapid growth employee surveys can make sure that the employees are aware of their reporting and management responsibilities.
If an organization is suffering from poor moral stemming from either internal or external influences an employee survey can be used to identify what the specific concerns of employees are so that those concerns can be properly addressed.
Where there is an increase in turnover of staff employee surveys can help an organization identify the underlying cause of employee unrest and through their findings help find solutions.
Periodically
As part of a periodic assessment, surveys will help an organization review their personnel and monitor on an individual level job satisfaction, training and career development.
Employee surveys also offer senior management the opportunity to look at the soft underbelly of their organization to confirm that their ‘top down’ view of the organization matches the reality and ‘bottom up’ perspective.
Employee surveys will help an organization establish good employee/employer communication that will in turn bring direct and indirect benefits.
Step 2 - Management Support
Although having management buy-in to a survey is always desirable and in some cases it may prove essential to ensure it is a success, in some instances the results of a survey that may not have had full management support at the start could lead to kick-starting a management that has grown complacent and detached from their employees.
Some senior management teams will recognize and drive the need for employee surveys, while other management teams may need to be convinced of the direct and indirect benefits an employee survey will bring.
The level of management commitment to an employee survey will have some bearing on the nature of the survey and to some extent will help determine what questions are to be asked and the manner they are asked.
A management that is supportive of the initiative may require feedback on specific areas of the business or they may give the go ahead because they feel confident that the results will only confirm that the level of employee satisfaction throughout the organization is high.
Step 3 - Designing The Survey
Good surveys will take some time and effort to write but providing the basic rules of survey design are followed and a concerted effort is made to include the ‘need to know’ questions and omit the ‘nice to know’ an effective survey will begin to take shape.
Deciding on what questions should be asked will be entirely dependent on the individual organization, its structure and the previously identified primary need and objectives of the employee survey.
When considering what questions to ask consideration should be given to how the results are to be analyzed. For example there may be a desire to ask for individual comments but these types of answer formats can be very time consuming and cumbersome to analyze and should therefore be avoided or used sparingly.
Online surveys make it practical to conduct multiple smaller surveys than one very long survey and avoid the higher the drop out rate that are associate with longer surveys.
Step 4 - Checking And Testing
Grammar, Spelling And Clarity
Before publishing the survey make a careful check for spelling and typing mistakes and incorrect grammar. If available it is always recommended that you have a colleague who has not been involved in the survey design to proof read the survey with clean eyes, if no colleague is available try to take a break before checking through the survey again.
Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say
When checking the survey you should consider the survey from the viewpoint of the respondent, will the employee interpret the question the same way that you intended them to?
Allow The Employee To Answer Truthfully
Where the employee will be required to choose from a number of available responses, closed questions, have you allowed the employee to answer accurately? Make use of answer response options like ‘No Comment’, ‘Not Applicable’ or ‘Don’t know’ where you want to make the question mandatory but the employee may not be able to answer.
Consider allowing the employee to include an ‘Other’ answer but also appreciate that ‘Other’ answers will add to the complexity when analyzing the survey results.
Don’t Insist on a Response to Questions that may not have one
Check that for any questions that you have made mandatory you do require an answer, for example open questions such as asking for additional comments should not be mandatory unless you definitely require the respondent to write a comment.
Check that the Data can be Analyzed
Check through the survey again but this time looking at how the results of the survey will be analyzed. Consider how you are likely to want to analyze the survey data, have you asked the right questions to be able to perform detailed analysis? For example if you wanted to view the detailed response data from the perspective of the different genders, or maybe departments, check you have asked the employee to indicate their own gender and/or department.
Don’t Ask Anymore Questions Than You Need To
Consider all the questions in the survey and make sure that they are all ‘need to know’ questions.
Test the Link and Try Completing the Survey
Publish the survey and then send the survey’s link to a number of people who will be willing to test the survey. By completing you own survey yourself you will get a feel for how the respondent will view the survey. From your own and others feedback stop and make adjustments to the survey as required.
Repeat this process until you are happy with the survey.
Check the data
Take time to view the online summary results of the test data and confirm that the data is being collected in a manner that can be properly analyzed and that will give meaningful results.
Step 5 - Promoting And Deploying The Survey
Where the vast majority of employees have access to the Internet or company intranet deploying an online survey is easy, either via email and/or by establishing a link to the survey from your own website or the Intranet.
If there are employees that do not have direct access to the Internet there may be a number of alternatives that can be used such as issuing the survey in printed form, providing access through a shared terminal or giving them an incentive to complete the survey at home.
Step 6 - Monitoring
While the survey is in progress you are able in to view the real-time results online and the number of surveys that have been both started and completed.
After a few days if the number of completed surveys falls short of that expected it is recommended that one or more reminders are sent to employees asking them to complete the survey.
Step 7 - Analyzing the Results
When it comes to analyzing the results data there are no hard and fast rules. Much depends on the individual survey, the questions asked and the number of responses.
On the proviso that the right questions have been asked when the survey data is first analyzed a number of ‘headline’ results will often stand out that can provide you with an overview and an assessment of the general mood of the organization.
In areas where the results indicate areas of concern a more detailed analysis may be advisable. For example if employees were asked if they felt the organization provided equal opportunities to both genders and 25% gave a negative response it would be useful to know the gender split of the organization and also to look at what the gender split was of the 25% that answered negatively. Was the negative view shared by employees of both genders, evenly spread throughout the organization, or of a particular gender from a particular department?
Step 8 - Further Action
Probably the most important step is the last. An employee survey will either confirm that the perfect organization exists or it will highlight areas that are less than perfect by identifying individual and common concerns.
It may be that further more detailed surveys are required that target specific areas. For example the results of a survey may reveal that employees working in a particular department are unhappy, but the reasons for their dissatisfaction may not be clear. A smaller, specifically targeted follow-up survey may help reveal the root causes.
When employee surveys are run on a regular basis an organization that has a track record of addressing the issues highlighted by surveys will see their efforts rewarded in the results of subsequent surveys. Almost all organizations have problems and it helps an organization’s moral to see that a channel exists that will highlight problems that can then be addressed and resolved.
Summary
These guidelines are intended to help an organization conduct successful employee satisfaction surveys, they are however, only a guide.
By utilizing existing technology and conducting surveys online you are now able to monitor the heart beat of an organization, quickly, easily and at minimal cost.