Employee Satisfaction and Exit questionnaires Make Sense
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 | Always Online
Organizations that implement a change management programme need to be careful that all the predicted efficiencies are not then negated by an abundance of dissatisfied employees suffering from low moral and excessive pressure. Organizations that have a highly motivated workforce can benefit enormously and having a workforce that is both motivated and productive should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.
If problems are left unresolved then companies run the risk of alienating their employees and events can then cause employee frustrations to boil over resulting in managers finding themselves on the back foot, faced with problems that cannot be ignored.
In an ideal world employers would take time to understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are often themselves tied up day to day fighting their own fires.
By automating much of the intelligence gathering process and providing the findings in a format that can be readily analysed online surveys provide employers with an efficient, effective and low cost method to help achieve a pleasant working environment, where staff satisfaction and productivity is high.
Dissatisfied & unproductive
There are a plethora of reasons why employees may become dissatisfied with their job that can result in them channelling their frustrations into demands for higher salaries and reduced hours. Managers who tackle these issues head on, making it all about salary and hours, will often find themselves dealing with the symptoms and not the root cause.
It’s not about money
The following are some common barriers to achieving productivity, none of which are likely to be resolved by increasing salaries or reducing hours:-
- Insufficient training
- Out of touch management
- Dated working methods
- Lack of proper tools and equipment
Increasing salaries is not always a solution to employees’ problems nor as many studies have revealed is it the most important motivator for most employees.
Take the case of a single mother who is juggling a full time job with the need to look after four children. Out of frustration she may demand more money so that she feels that she is able to cope where a better solution, for both her and the company, may be more flexible working hours.
Good communications is what it is about
It is important for any company to encourage communication. Without good communication between personnel and management, or where management wait until problems are raised, management may assume that they have a content workforce when in actual fact the opposite is true. It can take only one small problem and one employee to feel aggrieved for an entire workforce to develop a destructive ‘them and us’ attitude.
Improving communication
It would be ideal if the employer and employee could meet one on one but in practice this is impractical for everyone except very small organizations.
Meetings between management and worker representatives are good in theory but can often spiral into becoming talking shops and losing their purpose as both sides become more familiar with one another and the meetings run the risk of being hijacked by the more extreme personalities.
Suggestion boxes are useful but can be viewed as token efforts by management as they wait for personnel to highlight a problem.
Newsletters can be useful, but their main purpose is generally to inform and not discuss issues.
Maintaining the initiative
Conducting employee satisfaction surveys regularly you are able to ask each employee specific questions and presents a pro-active management initiative where the whole workforce can be consulted on various issues. Surveys are able to provide a level playing field between the quieter and more vocal employees.
Being prepared to consulate with employees should not be seen as a sign of weakness, a confident manager will take counsel from all quarters before making a decision. By issuing a survey the employer is able to keep the initiative and tackle problems from a position of strength as opposed to waiting for problems to manifest and then possibly develop out of proportion.
Leave small problems unresolved and a small problem might just break the camel’s back and at the drop of a hat change the mood of the workforce from positive to negative.
It’s easy and quick
For most companies online surveys represent a proactive and low cost solution. They can be created very quickly and for the majority of organizations, where most of the personnel have desktop computers, they are also quick to deploy direct to the individual.
Where not all of the personal have access to a computer there are various options available that will allow you to accommodate their responses such as providing a shared computer, conducting telephone surveys or as a last resort, a hardcopy survey where the hard-copy responses can be added to those who competed the survey online.
Job satisfaction
There are elements that together will help towards providing an employee with job satisfaction, including company ethics, working environment, methodology and ethos to having effective and decisive management. Job satisfaction brings benefits through improved productivity and motivation from a workforce that feels that they are treated as individuals and not a commodity item.
Educate and inform
A less appreciated benefit of online surveys is that they can be used effectively to educate and deliver important information to the workforce, ensuring that the ‘message’ is delivered consistently and does not become corrupted as it is passed down the line.
An online survey can explain a difficult situation and get valuable feedback from the employees as to the best solution. It is rare in this situation that the workforce would appear negative; it is more likely they will feel informed and empowered and that might be enough to turn a potentially negative problem into a positive challenge that unites the workforce.
Exit surveys
Exit surveys are an ideal method for management to make sure that when people leave the organisation they are not leaving because of problems that could have been addressed and possibly resolved if they had been appreciated earlier. Although identifying a problem may not prevent a person leaving it could solve an unappreciated issue that may, if left unchecked, result in other key personnel also leaving.
For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template