Why Staff Satisfaction questionnaires and Exit questionnaires Make Good Sense
Saturday, February 27th, 2010It is not enough for a business to adopt new methods of working if the resulting changes cause the workforce to suffer from excessive pressure and low moral. The benefits of an organization having a highly motivated workforce can be considerable and the two goals of having employees that are both motivated and productive should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.
When problems are left unresolved then there is a risk of companies alienating their employees leading to employee frustrations growing to a point where managers find that they are on the back foot with problems that just cannot be ignored.
Ideally 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.
With the intelligence gathering process being automated and the survey results being made available in a format that can be readily analyzed online surveys provide employers with a cost effective and efficient method to help towards the goals of staff satisfaction and high productivity.
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. Employers 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 is a list of common barriers that will prevent an organization from achieving an increase in productivity, none of which are likely to be resolved by increasing salaries or reducing hours:-
- Insufficient training
- Out of touch management
- Out of date working methods
- Lack of proper tools and equipment
Many studies have shown that salaries are rarely the number one priority of employees and providing an employer is paying market rate they would be fundamentally wrong to think that paying higher salaries is the answer to all employee problems.
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 business, may be more flexible working hours.
Good communications
It is in the interests of all organizations to encourage good communication. A business that makes it difficult for personnel and management to communicate, or that takes the view that if individuals have a problem they will say so, can often delude themselves into thinking that their staff are content when they are not. It can very easily start with a small problem and one aggrieved employee for the problem to escalate to involve an entire workforce and generate a ‘them and us’ attitude.
Improving communication
Ideally management would hold one to one meetings with each employee but in practice this would only seem practical for very small businesses.
Regular meetings between management and worker representatives are good in theory but can degenerate into talking shops and slowly lose their purpose as the participants from both sides become familiar with one another and the meetings run the risk of being hijacked by the more extreme personalities.
Suggestion boxes can be useful but can be viewed as token efforts by management as they wait for personnel to highlight a problem.
Newsletters can be a positive step, but their purpose is generally to inform and not discuss issues.
Keeping 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.
Consultation should not be seen as a sign of weakness, a confident manager will often take counsel from others before making a decision. By issuing a survey and keeping the initiative the employer is able to tackle problems from a position of strength as opposed to waiting for problems to fester and then develop out of proportion.
Small problems left unresolved can lead to a minor problem breaking the camel’s back and the workforce mood change from positive to negative over night.
Quick and easy
For the majority of companies online surveys represent a proactive and low cost solution. For the majority of organizations where most of the personnel have desktop computers, they are quick to design and deploy direct to the individual.
In situations where individuals do not have personal access to a computer there are still many options available to implement the online survey solution such as giving access to a shared computer, operator input or, as a last resort, a hardcopy survey.
Job satisfaction
There are a number of elements that combined will provide an employee with job satisfaction, from company ethics, working environment, methodology and ethos to having good and effective 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.
Inform and educate
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 to the employees a difficult situation and get useful feedback as to the best solution. It is rare in this situation that the workforce would appear negative and more likely that they will feel informed and empowered that might in itself turn a potentially negative problem into a positive challenge that unites the workforce.
Exit surveys
Exit surveys represent are a good way of making sure that when people leave an organisation they are leaving for the right reasons and not due to reasons that if appreciated earlier could have been addressed and resolved by management. Identifying a problem may not be enough to prevent a person from leaving but it could lead to an unappreciated issue being resolved that may be all that is required to stop other key personnel from also deciding to leave.
For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template
