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Why Employee Satisfaction and Employee Exit Surveys are Important

June

7th

admin

It 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 a company having a highly motivated workforce can be considerable and having a workforce that is both motivated and productive should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.

Left unattended employers run the risk of alienating their employees, events can cause employee frustrations to boil over resulting in employers finding themselves on the back foot, faced with a problem that cannot be ignored.

Ideally employers would allocate the time to fully understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are too often themselves tied up with the day to day task of fighting their own fires.

Online surveys provide employers with an affordable and efficient method to automate the process of collating the information and storing it in a format that allows for real-time analysis there by helping the management towards the goals of achieving 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. Managers who tackle problems thinking it is all about salary and hours, will often find later that they have been dealing with the symptoms and not the root cause.

It’s not just about the money

The following are barriers to achieving productivity, none of which are likely to be resolved by increasing salaries or reducing hours:-

Inadequate training
Out of touch management
Working methods that are past their sell by date
Lack of proper tools and equipment

Numerous studies have shown that salaries are rarely the most important priority for employees and providing an employer is paying a fair rate they would be fundamentally wrong to think that paying higher salaries is a panacea to all employee problems.

Take the case of a single mother who is juggling a full time job with the need to look after three 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 is what it is about

It is important for any company to encourage 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 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

Meeting one on one between the employer and employee would be ideal but really it is only a practical solution for smaller companies.

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.

Having suggestion boxes are useful but can be viewed as token efforts by management as they wait for personnel to highlight a problem.

Newsletters represent a positive step but they only offer one way communication and their primary function is to inform and not discuss employee issues.

Keeping the initiative

An employee satisfaction survey run on a regular basis is able to ask each employee specific questions and represents a pro-active management initiative where the whole workforce can be canvassed 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 take counsel from all quarters 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.

If a small problem is left unresolved it could lead to a situation where a minor problem might just break the camel’s back and the mood of the employees change from positive to negative in a blink of an eye.

It is easy and quick

For most organizations 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.

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 combined elements that will contribute towards an employee’s job satisfaction, including company ethics, working methodology, ethos and environment to having decisive 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

An often overlooked benefit of online surveys is that they can be used to educate and pass on important information to the workforce, ensuring that the ‘message’ does not become corrupted as it is handed down by the phenomenon of Chinese whispers.

An online survey can explain to the employees a difficult situation and get valuable feedback as to the best solution. In this situation it is rare 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 are a method for management to confirm that when people leave the organisation they are leaving for valid reasons and not for reasons that if appreciated earlier could have been addressed and possibly resolved. If a problem has been identified it may be too late to prevent an individual from leaving but if addressed it could prevent other key personnel leaving for the same reasons.

Analysing the results

Having consulted with the workforce using an online survey the results are available for instant analysis. Common and specific problems can be identified and the senior management informed who will then have the opportunity to address the issues that have been raised.

Summary

Used regularly online surveys represent a simple and productive method of taking the pulse of an organisation and an easy way to establish a two way communication channel between employer and employee with the results providing management with vital, accurate and significant information.

For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey

For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey