A Guide to Employee Satisfaction Surveys
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 bit the bullet and conducted their own internal employee satisfaction surveys have often relied on word-processors to allow them to design and compile a survey, then gone through the effort of printing and distributing the survey and spent time chasing and collecting the completed surveys and then even 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. The following 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 change management program employee surveys can assist in managing the change, measuring 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.
An employee survey can help an organization identify the underlying cause of employee unrest that may results in an increase of staff turnover and through the survey 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.
With the help of employee surveys an organization can establish good employer/employee communication that will in turn bring both direct and indirect benefits.
Step 2 – Management Buy-In
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 organization may be fortunate in that the senior management recognize and drive the need for employee surveys, while in others the management may need to first be convinced of the direct and indirect benefits an employee survey will bring.
The degree that management commit to an employee survey will have a bearing on the nature of the survey and to some extent will help determine what questions.
A management that is supportive of the initiative may have specific areas of concern that they require feedback on or they may give the go ahead simply because they have no reason to think that the level of employee satisfaction throughout the organization is anything other than high.
Step 3 – Designing the Survey
Designing a good survey will take some time and effort but by following the basics of survey design and concentrating on the ‘need to know’ questions and removing the ‘nice to know’ a survey will rapidly 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.
While considering what questions to ask give consideration to how the results are to be analyzed. As an example you may be tempted to ask for individual comments but these types of answer formats can be very cumbersome and time consuming to analyze and it is recommended that they be avoided or at least 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 consider the survey from the respondent’s viewpoint, you may know what you mean by each question but will the employee?
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 good use of answer response options like ‘No Comment’, ‘Not Applicable’ or ‘Don’t know’ where you have made the question mandatory but the employee may not be able or wish to answer.
Give consideration to allowing the employee to include an ‘Other’ answer but be mindful that ‘Other’ answers add to the complexity when analyzing the survey results.
Don’t Require 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 be made optional unless you definitely require the respondent to write a comment.
Check the Result Data can be Properly 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 want to be able to view the detailed response data from the perspective of the different departments, or maybe gender, check you have asked the employee to indicate their own department and/or gender.
Don’t Ask More Questions than you Need to
Consider all the questions in the survey and look for questions that are not ‘need to know’.
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 the survey yourself you will get a feel for the survey from a respondent’s point of view. From your own and the feedback of your colleagues stop and fine tune the survey as required.
Repeat this process until you are happy with the survey.
Check The Data
Take the time to view the online results of the test data and ensure that the data is being collected and can be analyzed in a manner that will give meaningful results.
Step 5 – Promoting And Deploying The Survey
Where all or the majority of employees have access to the internet or company intranet deploying the online survey is as easy as ABC, either via email or by establishing a link to the survey from your own website or 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.
If after a few days the number of completed surveys falls short of any set target it is advisable to send employees one or more reminders to ask 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 it would be useful to have a gender split and if say 25% gave a negative response the ability to drill down further to see what the gender split was of the 25% that answered negatively. Was any negative view shared by employees of both genders, consistent throughout the organization, or was it restricted to a particular gender and/or a particular department?
Step 8 – Further Action
The most important step is probably 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 prove necessary to conduct further, more detailed surveys, to target specific areas. For example the survey may reveal that negative responses are received from employees working in a particular department but the reasons for their negativity may not be clear. A 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
It is hoped that these guidelines will 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.