How satisfied are your employees?

Of course, most of us have probably heard the legendary song “(I can’t get no) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones many times. Unfortunately, the words are also a feeling shared by many people these days. All you have to do is check your Facebook newsfeed or Twitter account to find people who “can’t get no satisfaction.” If that feeling spreads into the workplace, it can become costly and problematic. A recent statistic published by the Harvard Business Review pointed out that lost productivity due to employee disengagement costs more than $300 billion in the U.S. annually. So how do you find out if your employees are truly engaged and satisfied with their job? One way is to ask them.

Employee-satisfaction surveys measure how content or satisfied employees are with their jobs. Businesses have several reasons why they would want to perform a satisfaction survey, including:

• To prevent loss of productivity
• When there is a merger or affiliation with a new organization
• When hiring a new HR manager who must establish workplace-satisfaction measurements   
• While creating a bonus structure that is based on employee-satisfaction scores
• When required in the industry
• During major growth in the organization
• As a component of strategic planning
• During succession planning
• Amid a decrease in sales or customer satisfaction

The process to conduct an employee-satisfaction survey is fairly straightforward and simple. Employee-satisfaction surveys can be structured to identify and evaluate all the different components of the employee experience including:

• Company culture
• Training
• Understanding of roles
• Teamwork and cooperation
• Management-related issues
• Safety concerns
• Loyalty
• Compensation and benefits
• Performance reviews
• Workload
• Perceptions of management
• Flexibility
• Resources

A team of employees can help determine the topics covered in the survey. The questions in the survey should relate to the perceived likes, dislikes, and challenges employees might experience in the organization. Questions should be evaluated to make sure they are not leading to a desired response, vague, or open to interpretation, depending on the employee reading the question.

Whether you decide to manage the survey in-house or outsource it, the results can provide many insights beyond just the data returned. The results can help to establish new benchmarks for departmental measurements and can uncover areas in need of improvement that are not readily apparent. Typically, employees will provide more honest feedback in an anonymous survey than they would normally tell their managers or even fellow co-workers.

For accurate and reliable results however, employee-satisfaction surveys should be developed by professionals who understand how to put questions together to obtain unbiased information. They should also be administered appropriately with care and consideration for the organization’s culture and communication. The main value of such research is to receive honest feedback from employees. Many people will be hesitant to give a “tell all” assessment of the company or to even participate in the employee survey if they do not have the trust of anonymity. A third-party vendor can provide that anonymity as well as objectivity in analyzing potentially sensitive findings.

The results should also be communicated effectively and acted upon quickly in an effort to maintain a relationship of honesty, integrity, and trust among organization employees. The employer must be committed to report the results to employees and dedicated to make changes to the work environment. Transparent communication about the changes, their impact, and future plans are all part of a positive satisfaction-survey process. Without transparent communication, results reporting, and employee updates, employees will not trust the employer’s motives in collecting survey data. Over time, employees will cease to respond or respond only with answers that they believe the employer wants to hear. This makes the data collected on the survey useless.

Improving employee satisfaction can be a lengthy process, but taking the time and effort to do it properly can pay off in the end in terms of productivity, stability, and ensuring a positive customer experience. Employee-satisfaction surveying can be an important first step in the path towards organizational excellence. 

Lori Lichorobiec is the communications coordinator for Research & Marketing Strategies, Inc., or RMS, a full-service marketing and market-research firm based in Baldwinsville. Contact her at loril@rmsresults.com