Employee Surveys
Employees have the single greatest impact in customer service and significantly affect
quality and profitability. Understanding how employees feel about working in your
organization is critical to developing and retaining a high performance workforce.
The aim of employee surveys is to engage and empower a workforce allowing
employees to truly feel that their input is a significant factor in the way the organization is
managed. Not only can employee surveys, improve employee satisfaction, morale, and
communication, but they can identify areas that require improvement and areas where
the company excels.
Employee Surveys can be a very useful tool, if designed and utilized correctly. They can
also become an inconvenience and frustration for employees if they are not. Many
organizations do not maximize the potential benefits of the employee survey process
because they do not put the necessary thought into survey design. Often, a generic list
of questions are selected that seem to capture the themes that they want to know more
about, but in fact, they are not sufficiently calibrated to the organization’s objectives and
strategic plans for the results to truly be a useful measure or the basis for impactful
action-planning.
Survey design is the foundation for an effective feedback and action-planning program.
You need to first identify and think about things like your organizational objectives,
culture, strengths and challenges so that a survey can be designed that really gets at the
things that are important to the organization.
Participation is the key to any employee survey. Without strong participation, results will
be weak and may not truly or accurately represent the opinions of the majority of
employees. Communicate to employees the importance and significance of participating
in the survey; it is critical to employee acceptance of the program and participation.
Ensure managers create an environment where employees are able and encouraged to
take a few minutes out of their day to complete the survey.
It is important to maintain a high level of confidentiality when introducing the need for
survey feedback, implementing the survey, and gathering feedback from employees.
There will be an excellent participation rate if the employees know their ideas and
recommendations are kept confidential. Conversely, you cannot expect to receive
comments that are completely candid and honest if there is a potential of being identified
as having made them. Employees want to help make their environment better, but not at
the price of being disciplined for criticizing the company.
Types of Surveys
There are several ways to conduct surveys of your employees. It is critical that whatever
method is used, confidentiality is a primary consideration.
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Self-administered Manual/Paper-based Survey – Depending on the size of your
workforce, it may be practical to consider conducting a paper-based survey inhouse. In order to maintain confidentiality, you should have a drop box available
for employees to submit their surveys. The main drawback of this method is that
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you have to tally up the results manually, which can be time-consuming
depending on the number of responses you have and how many questions are in
the survey.
Self-administered Online Survey – There are many inexpensive self-service
websites that you can use to create an online survey that employees can access
from work or home. This can be challenging for environments where there are
significant numbers of employees who do not have Internet access at work. If
possible, it will greatly increase participation numbers if a computer terminal can
be made available for employees to use before and after shift as well as during
lunch and breaks. It is also a great practice where possible to allow employees a
few minutes during their shift to complete the survey. An advantage of these
online products is the automated reporting they offer.
Third Party Providers – Should you feel that survey design, administration,
reporting and interpretation are beyond what you have the time for, or you feel
you wish to bring in a higher level of expertise, there are many service providers
who can take care of the entire process for you. This may be a higher direct
cost, but may yield better results and allow you and/or your management team to
focus on core business instead.
Using Survey Results
You now have the results of your survey – it is important to actually act upon the results:
Communicate
The first thing that you should do is to communicate the results to the employees. If you
don’t share the results with employees, even if results are not what you hoped for, they
will assume that results are bad and that you are hiding them.
Action Planning
Next, you will want to explore further what the survey responses actually mean through
discussions with individual and/or small groups of employees. It is most effective when
you can put together teams of employees. Depending on the size of your organization,
this may be a selection of employees from across the company, or if you have a larger
team, you can have managers lead full department/team meetings. The more
employees you can involve, the better.
The meeting agenda should look something like this:
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Welcome
o Thank employees for attending
o Outline agenda
o Explain the purpose and objectives of the meeting
Review Results
o Discuss what employees feel about the overall results as well as
investigate further any very high and very low results
o Identify successes from the survey and others that employees might
suggest
o
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Try to rank by importance to the employees the areas that received lower
ratings
o What area do the employees feel that they want to focus on?
How to Effectively Action Plan
o Select no more than two or three areas for improvement as priorities to be
worked on first
o Select one or two strengths/successes that can be built upon
o Using the SMART Objectives (template available in Managing
Performance and Training & Development sections of this website)
approach, develop action steps to be taken by the company, manager
and employees to address the areas for improvement and build upon the
strengths/successes
Implementation and Follow-up
o Discuss how the action steps will be implemented, including getting
volunteers to stay involved and assist
o Discuss how using the SMART Objectives, you will monitor, track and
communicate progress
Summary and Next Steps
o Recap what was learned in the meeting
o Review what was agreed to and who is going to be responsible for what
o Establish a time for getting together again to follow-up on progress
Questions/Closing
o Congratulate the team on their participation and the results
Remember, the action planning process is a continuing cycle of communication, priority
setting and action steps to make your workplace a better place for employees, thus
increasing your ability to attract, retain and motivate a high performance workforce.
In this section, you will find a list of questions, grouped into subject areas that you can
select from if you are building your own survey or use to help you if developing it with an
outside vendor.
Employee Surveys: Questions
Management
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Do you receive useful feedback on your performance?
Do you feel that the feedback you provide is valued?
Is Management approachable?
Does your Manager communicate effectively?
Does your Manager bring out the best in employees?
Does your Manager encourage teamwork and cooperation?
Does your Manager effectively handle performance/discipline issues?
Is your Manager compassionate?
Is your Manager a good problem solver?
Does your Manager establish clear performance expectations?
When your manager assigns you work, do you know clearly what you are
being asked to do?
Reward and Recognition
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Do you feel that Management recognizes your performance and contribution?
Does <Company Name> do a good job of linking job performance to
rewards?
Do you feel appreciated at <Company Name>?
Do you ever receive non-monetary forms of recognition from your manager?
Are your efforts recognized and rewarded adequately?
Would you value non-monetary forms of recognition?
Training and Development
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Do you feel that you have the opportunity to advance at <Company Name>?
Do you feel that employees are promoted based on performance?
Do you feel that you’ve had enough training to perform your job adequately?
If you had the opportunity to participate in additional training and
development courses, would this interest you?
Do you feel that training and development is a priority at <Company Name>?
Compensation and Benefits
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Do you feel you are paid fairly?
Are you satisfied with your benefits package?
Do your benefits meet your needs?
Do you feel as though the compensation levels in your organization are
communicated effectively?
Do you feel that some employees within the organization more generously
paid compared to other employees for the amount of work that they provide?
Satisfaction and Motivation
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Is your work challenging and meaningful?
Do you know and take pride in the Company’s mission, vision, and values?
Do you understand what is expected of you?
Do you feel that the Company takes safety seriously?
What are 3 things you would like the Company to keep doing?
What are 3 things you would like the Company to stop doing?
What are 3 things you would like the Company to start doing?
Does the Company create customer satisfaction and excitement?
Would you recommend <Company Name> as a good place to work?
Are you proud to work at <Company Name>?
Communication
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Are you satisfied with the amount of information you receive from
Management about what's going on inside the Company?
Do you feel that Company meetings are frequent enough?
Were your expectations of this position close to what the position was
actually like?
Are you well informed about targets, work progress, and future plans?
Are there opportunities available for you to express your ideas?
Is there a good degree of communication between departments within
<Company Name>?
Work-Life Balance
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Are you able to maintain a reasonable balance between work and personal
life?
In emergencies, does <Company Name> adequately accommodate your
personal needs?
Is the stress level in your job acceptable?
Is the amount of time you have to work each week reasonable?
Equality and Respect
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Are employees promoted based on performance?
Do you feel that policies and procedures, including disciplinary action, are
applied equally to all employees?
Do you feel that <Company Name> values diversity?
Have you ever witnessed discrimination at <Company Name>?
Have you ever witnessed harassment at <Company Name>?
Are all employees respected at <Company Name>?
Do you feel valued at work?
Work Environment and Safety
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Do you feel safe in your work environment?
Is the air quality (including heat/air conditioning) acceptable in your work
space?
Do you have an adequate/comfortable amount of space in your work area?
Is your work area clean?
Is the lighting in your work environment acceptable/comfortable?
Are the tools, technology, and equipment required by your job readily
available?
Are the tools, technology, and equipment required for your job maintained to
your level of satisfaction?