The benefit of running an annual employee survey has for a long time been widely accepted but many organizations have been put off by 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 need 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.
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 offer the senior management the opportunity to look at the soft underbelly of their organization and will help them confirm, or otherwise, that their ‘top down’ view of the organization matches the reality and the ‘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 Support
Although having management buy-in to a survey is always desirable and in some cases may be essential to ensure it is a success, in some instances the results of a survey that may be all that is required to kick-start 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 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.
At the same time as considering what questions to ask consider how the results are to be analyzed. For example there is nearly always a wish to ask for individual comments but these free text answers can be very time consuming and cumbersome to analyze and should therefore be used very 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
Grammar, Spelling And Clarity
Before the survey is published carefully check that there are no spelling and typing mistakes or incorrect grammar. It is recommended that you always have a colleague who has not been involved in the survey design to proof read the survey with clean eyes before the survey goes live, 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
Check that for closed questions where the employee will be required to choose from a number of available responses; have allowed the employee to answer accurately? Make use of responses 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.
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 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 ensure 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 colleagues who will be able to help you 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 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 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 The Survey
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 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.
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 the 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 – Post Survey Action
The most important step is probably 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 prove necessary to conduct further, more detailed surveys, to 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 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 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.