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
The reasons an organization would need a survey are as wide and they are long. 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 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.
For organizations that are experiencing rapid growth employee surveys can monitor internal communications and management structures to ensure that 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.
Employee surveys will help an organization establish good employee/employer communication that will in turn bring direct and indirect benefits.
Step 2 - Management Buy-In
It is always desirable and sometimes essential to have management support for a survey but where a management team might have grown complacent and detached from their employees the survey results may be all that is required to get them to positively reengage with the business and 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 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
Compiling an effective survey can take some time and effort but by applying the basics of good survey design and focusing on ‘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.
At the same time as considering what questions to ask consider 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.
With online surveys it is generally better to do a few smaller surveys than one very long survey as the longer the survey the higher the drop out rate will be.
Step 4 - Checking And Testing
Spelling, Grammar and Clarity
Before the survey is published carefully check that there are no spelling and typing mistakes or incorrect grammar. If available it is always better to have someone who has not been involved in designing the survey to proof read the survey with clean eyes, if no one 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 need to consider the survey from the viewpoint of the respondent, you may know what you mean by each question but will the questions be clear to the employee?
Allow the Respondent to Answer Truthfully
For closed questions where the employee will be required to choose from a number of available responses 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 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 the Result Data can be Properly Analyzed
Make another check of the survey but this time examine how the results of the survey will be analyzed. Give consideration as to how you will want to analyze the survey data, have you asked the right questions to be able to perform the detailed analysis that you desire? 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 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 colleagues who will be able to help you test the survey. By completing the 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.
Continue to 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 - Deploying and Promoting the Survey
Where all or the majority of employees have access to the Internet or company intranet deploying the 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 will be able to view the summary results online and also monitor in real-time 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 recommended to send employees one or more reminders to ask them to complete the survey.
Step 7 - Analyzing The Results
There are no hard and fast rules for analyzing the data. Much will depend on the specific survey, the questions that are asked and the number of responses that are received.
Providing the right questions have been asked when the survey data is first analyzed often a number of ‘headline’ results will immediately stand out that will provide you with an overview and an instant assessment of the general mood of the organization.
Where the results give 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 any negative view shared by employees of both genders, is it a view held throughout the organization, or is it one that is limited to a particular gender and/or a particular department?
Step 8 - Post Survey Action
The most important step is more likely to be the last. The results of an employee survey will either confirm that the perfect organization really does exist or, and more likely, it will by the individual and common concerns that are raised identify the areas that are less than perfect.
It may be that further more detailed surveys are required that target specific areas. For example the survey may reveal that employees working in a particular department are collectively unhappy, but the reasons for their dissatisfaction may not be clear. A specifically targeted follow-up survey may help reveal the root causes.
When employee surveys are periodically run an organization that has taken steps to address issues will see their efforts reflected in subsequent survey responses. Almost all organizations have problems and it will help the moral of an organization to see that a channel is available 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.