The Importance of Employee Survey / Feedback

Are your employees aligned with your organizations strategy and objectives? What makes top performers leave? What makes them want to stay? What are the most important issues facing your employees? What do employees feel needs to be changed in your organization? What percentage of your employees is happy in their current positions?

A survey will give you insight into widely shared employee views on a full range of workplace issues. Employee Surveys are an important and popular tool that organizations use to solicit employee feedback. Opinion surveys can be morale-boosting for those who may not have many other opportunities to confidentially express their views. Attitude surveys provide a way to improve levels of productivity and commitment by identifying the root causes of workplace attitudes. Satisfaction surveys allow for increased productivity, job satisfaction, and loyalty by identifying the root causes of employee satisfaction and targeting these areas. Engagement surveys measure the extent to which employees are passionate about their work and emotionally committed to their company and to their coworkers. Organizations may also benefit by conducting a more comprehensive organizational assessment survey. Listening to employees insights and suggestions for improvement provides the organization with valuable information that can be acted upon to increase satisfaction in the workplace. Also, employees leaving the organization can provide valuable feedback through employee exit interviews. Employee Satisfaction, Opinion, Attitude, Engagement, and Organizational Assessment Surveys along with Exit Interviews are all tools that may be used to measure and improve loyalty and commitment. The information from these surveys will allow you to boost organizational productivity and positively affect your organizations top and bottom lines. They are very effective tools for measuring and ultimately improving various relationships within organizations. It has become almost commonplace in this day and age for companies to proclaim, "Our employees are our most important asset." Commonplace, because everyone is saying it, and because, for most organizations, it is so patently and obviously true. The workforce the sum total of the intellectual capital, the alignment of human resources with organizational goals, and the commitment of employees is the organisation's only sustainable competitive advantage. Maintaining that advantage will become more challenging in the future as the competition for scarce knowledge and skills increases. Employee surveys can provide valid information that is extremely helpful in leveraging and retaining that most important asset. An employee survey provides an organization or business with the information to understand employee perceptions of their work environment. How employees perceive their employers attitudes and actions is critically important to management if they want to retain a motivated and happy workforce.

Smart employers regularly utilize an employee job satisfaction survey, an employee exit interview survey, and occasionally use surveys to ask employees about their attitudes, suggestions, and preferences. Employee surveys are also useful to collect information or employee feedback as to the effectiveness and usefulness of employee training and informational meetings. Employee surveys can reveal unfounded and potentially dangerous rumors which are circulating among employees. Employee surveys should be considered to solicit employee input before initiating organizational change or changes in employee work rules, pay or benefits. The data from an employee survey provides the employer with useful information to keep the organization on the right track. No one knows better the strengths and weaknesses of an organization and its management and then the employees who are responsible for delivering the employers product or service. The employees know what is working and what could work better. They are your greatest information resource. A survey allows an employee to share their concerns and perceptions with you in a safe environment. Employees who might never have the courage to speak up in a large meeting or stop by your office to share an insight or observation will often be comfortable offering their thoughts in a well constructed survey. This is especially true if the employees know from your past actions that you will seriously consider their input. Today almost every employer has a business email system and/or a business web page which makes doing an employee survey easier than ever before. If you are a small company without a lot of technical support there are survey software packages which allow you to easily design an employee survey, distribute it to employees and provide a convenient way for employees to return the survey.

Types of Surveys
Dissatisfied customers and disgruntled employees can both affect a companys bottom line. Employee insights into the workplace can help companies identify and deal with issues of satisfaction, thereby ensuring harmony and high productivity. The type of employee survey to use depends on a companys individual needs. The following are a few types of employee surveys: Employee Satisfaction Surveys The most common purpose for surveying employees is satisfaction. Employee satisfaction surveys deal with workplace issues, such as benefits, commitment to diversity, and effective communications. The data from these surveys helps paint a picture of employee attitudes and opinions. These kinds of surveys are particularly useful after a company has undergone some sort of change, such as a layoff, an acquisition, or a new department head. They also help employers isolate the root causes of persistent problems, such as low productivity or high expenses. Exit Surveys Another way to gauge employee attitudes is through exit surveys. Written exit surveys have been shown to help elicit more honest responses from people who are leaving their jobs than exit

interviews, which lend themselves to unrealistic and overly rosy scenarios. The data from exit surveys can be used to create policies and procedures designed to help increase job satisfaction and lower costly turnover. Customer Care Surveys No one knows customers needs like those who are in direct contact with them; so many companies survey their employees opinions on customer care. A well-designed customer care survey can help companies improve areas where service may be lacking, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. Surveys on Specific Issues When companies wish to float specific changes or proposals, such as new insurance providers or changes in the workweek, they often survey employees opinions to determine their levels of acceptance or resistance. Surveys allow employees an opportunity to offer input and employers an opportunity to review and refine changes before implementation. Increasing Commitment and Retention While organizational effectiveness has become a key focus in employee surveys, increasing commitment and retention remain very important. Accurately measuring these areas means going beyond "satisfaction" questions, and the employees' affective response to organizational conditions. Here are some examples:

My boss expresses appreciation when I've done a good job; he/she says "thanks a lot good job done. The pay program here motivates me to work harder to reach my performance goals. I have good opportunities to develop my knowledge and skills (on the job, additional training, etc.). I understand how my performance contributes to department and company goals.

Companies who make progress in these areas will be more successful in gaining commitment, ensuring alignment and retaining talent. One could argue, by the way, that these areas also have a direct impact on organizational effectiveness. In fact, the distinction between types of items, and between different outcome variables they impact, is somewhat artificial and arbitrary. Retaining talent is becoming increasingly important for many companies, and employee surveys can provide a quantitative basis for determining which actions will have the biggest impact on retention. One way this is done is to compare the employee survey results across different parts of the organization that differ on turnover rates. Higher turnover units, of course, will have less positive employee perceptions, but analyses will show the specific issues that are related to turnover. Exit interviews can provide insight as to why people leave; surveys can provide insight as to why they stay.

Conclusion An organizations best source of competitive advantage is its people. Strategies, business models, products, and services can all be copied by competitors. Talented people, comparatively, cannot be duplicated and will always set your organization apart. Achieving a competitive advantage through people requires that organizations succeed in attracting and retaining talent. This means engaging the hearts and minds of employees at all levels.

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