Step by Step - Employee Satisfaction Questionnaires

The benefit of running an annual employee survey has for a long time been widely accepted but many organizations have been put off by the amount of effort that is required.

Many organizations who have conducted their own internal employee satisfaction surveys use word-processors to design and compile a survey, then go through the effort of printing and distributing the survey and invest time chasing and collecting the completed surveys and then more time transferring the survey response information into a meaningful management report.

Fortunately with the introduction of the Internet and hosted survey websites what was once a time consuming, resource hungry, long winded and cumbersome process is now slick, quick and easy.

This document provides a step by step guide to help implement a survey that will bring considerable benefits to any organization.

Step 1 - Identifying the Need

There are countless reasons an organization might benefit from conducting a survey. The following are a few of the common reason why organizations conduct employee satisfaction surveys.

Event Driven Drivers

If your organization is about to embark, or is going through, a process reengineering program a series of employee surveys can assist in managing the change program, measure the effectiveness of the change, help to deliver a 'message' and gather valuable feedback throughout the change cycle.

Where an organization is experiencing a period of rapid growth employee surveys can make sure that the employees are aware of their reporting and management responsibilities.

If an organization is suffering from poor moral stemming from either internal or external influences an employee survey can be used to identify what the specific concerns of employees are so that those concerns can be properly addressed.

An employee survey can help an organization identify the underlying cause of employee unrest that may results in an increase of staff turnover and through the survey findings help find solutions.

Periodically

As part of a periodic assessment, surveys will assist an organization in regularly reviewing their employees and monitoring an individual’s job satisfaction, training and career development.

Employee surveys also offer senior management the opportunity to look at the soft underbelly of their organization to confirm that their 'top down' view of the organization matches the reality and 'bottom up' perspective.

Employee surveys will help an organization establish good employee/employer communication that will in turn bring direct and indirect benefits.

Step 2 - Management Buy-In

It is always desirable and sometimes essential to have management support for a survey but where a management team might have grown complacent and detached from their employees the survey results may be all that is required to get them to positively reengage with the business and employees.

Some senior management teams will recognize and drive the need for employee surveys, while other management teams may need to be convinced of the direct and indirect benefits an employee survey will bring.

The level of management commitment to an employee survey will have some bearing on the nature of the survey and to some extent will help determine what questions are to be asked and the manner they are asked.

A management that is supportive of the initiative may have specific areas of concern that they require feedback on or they may give the go ahead simply because they have no reason to think that the level of employee satisfaction throughout the organization is anything other than high.

Ideally management will buy-in to the employee survey from the very start as they have the most to gain and they are in a position to effect any change that is later identified as being required.

Step 3 - Designing the Survey

Good surveys will take some time and effort to write but providing the basic rules of survey design are followed and a concerted effort is made to include the 'need to know' questions and omit the 'nice to know' an effective survey will begin to take shape.

Deciding on what questions should be asked will be entirely dependent on the individual organization, its structure and the previously identified primary need and objectives of the employee survey.

While considering what questions to ask give consideration to how the results are to be analyzed. For example there is nearly always a wish to ask for individual comments but these free text answers can be very time consuming and cumbersome to analyze and should therefore be used very sparingly.

With online surveys it is generally better to do a few smaller surveys than one very long survey as the longer the survey the higher the drop out rate will be.

Step 4 - Proof Reading And Testing

Grammar, Spelling And Clarity

Before publishing the survey make a careful check for spelling and typing mistakes and incorrect grammar. If available it is always recommended that you have a colleague who has not been involved in the survey design to proof read the survey with clean eyes, if no colleague is available try to take a break before checking through the survey again.

Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say

When checking the survey consider the survey from the respondent’s viewpoint, you may know what you mean by each question but will the employee?

Allow the Respondent to Answer Truthfully

For closed questions where the employee will be required to choose from a number of available responses have you allowed the employee to answer accurately? Make use of answer response options like 'Don't know', 'No comment' or 'Not Applicable' where you have made the question mandatory but the employee may not be able to answer.

Consider allowing the employee to include an 'Other' answer but also appreciate that 'Other' answers will add to the complexity when analyzing the survey results.

Don't Require A Response To Questions That May Not Have One

Check that for questions that have been made mandatory that you definitely do require an answer, for example open questions that ask for additional comments should be made optional unless you really do require the respondent to write a comment.

Check You Will Be Able To Analyze The Data

Check through the survey again but this time looking at how the results of the survey will be analyzed. Consider how you are likely to want to analyze the survey data, have you asked the right questions to be able to perform detailed analysis? For example if you want to be able to view the detailed response data from the perspective of the different departments, or maybe gender, check you have asked the employee to indicate their own department and/or gender.

Don't Ask More Questions than you Need to

Consider all the questions in the survey and look for questions that are not 'need to know'.

Test the Link and Try Completing the Survey

Publish the survey and then send the survey's link to colleagues who will be able to help you test the survey. By completing you own survey yourself you will get a feel for how the respondent will view the survey. From your own and the feedback of your colleagues stop and fine tune the survey as required.

Repeat this process until you are happy with the survey.

Check the data

Take time to view the online summary results of the test data and confirm that the data is being collected in a manner that can be properly analyzed and that will give meaningful results.

Step 5 - Deploying and Promoting the Survey

Where all or the majority of employees have access to the Internet or company intranet deploying the online survey is easy, either via email and/or by establishing a link to the survey from your own website or the Intranet.

Where there are some or many employees that do not have direct access to the internet there are a number of alternatives that can be used from issuing the survey in printed form, providing a shared terminal or giving them an incentive to complete the survey at home.

Anonymous Responses?

There is a choice to allow all surveys to be completed anonymously. Allowing a survey to be anonymous may encourage employees to speak their minds enabling the survey to provide 'a warts and all' report, in turn giving management an opportunity to address underlying problems before they become serious.

However, allowing anonymous comments also allows employees to be more flippant and cavalier with their responses. Some organizations may only wish to take account of the views of those employees that are prepared to stand by their convictions and that will also allow the organization to follow up the specific concerns of individual employees.

Deciding to allow anonymous responses or not will mainly be down to the individual organization, the specific nature of the survey, the type of survey, the management style and the existing employee/employer relationship.

Step 6 - Monitoring

You are able to view in real-time the results online and the number of surveys that have been both started and completed.

After a few days if the number of completed surveys falls short of that expected it is recommended that one or more reminders are sent to employees asking them to complete the survey.

Step 7 - Analyzing The Results

When it comes to analyzing the results data there are no hard and fast rules. Much depends on the individual survey, the questions asked and the number of responses.

The majority of surveys will benefit from the results being displayed in graphical as well as tabular form.

On the proviso that the right questions have been asked a number of 'headline' results will often stand out when the survey data is first analyzed that can provide you with an overview and an assessment of the general mood of the organization.

In areas where the results indicate areas of concern a more detailed analysis may be advisable. For example if employees were asked if they felt the organization provided equal opportunities to both genders it would be useful to have a gender split and if say 25% gave a negative response the ability to drill down further to see what the gender split was of the 25% that answered negatively. Was the negative view shared by employees of both genders, is it a view held throughout the organization, or is it one that is limited to a particular gender and/or a particular department?

Reports can display the result data in tabular and/or graphical form allowing those who are interested in the results to view the raw data.

As a complement to the first, another method is to study the results and provide an analysis of the data and offer an opinion as to what the meaning is behind the results, what circumstances may have contributed to the results being as they are and in cases where the results have exposed negativity, propose initiatives that could address and resolve the problems . If the analysis is done by a single individual it is likely to be a personal opinion, if done collectively by a committee it is still likely to be more objective and possibly open to interpretation.

Step 8 - Further Action

The most important step is more likely to be the last. An employee survey will either confirm that the perfect organization exists or it will highlight areas that are less than perfect by identifying individual and common concerns.

It may be that further more detailed surveys are required that target specific areas. For example the results of a survey may reveal that employees working in a particular department are unhappy, but the reasons for their dissatisfaction may not be clear. A highly focused follow-up survey may help reveal the root causes.

When employee surveys are periodically run an organization that has taken steps to address issues will see their efforts reflected in subsequent survey responses. Almost all organizations have problems and it will help the moral of an organization to see that a channel is available that will highlight problems that can then be addressed and resolved.

Summary

It is hoped that these guidelines will help an organization conduct successful employee satisfaction surveys, they are however, only a guide.

Each organization is different in style and structure and the organizations 'personality' will go someway to influencing the tone and nature of the survey and organizations will have many different circumstances and primary reasons for conducting a survey.

By utilizing existing technology and conducting surveys online you are now able to monitor the heart beat of an organization, quickly, easily and, by using websites like Survey Galaxy, at a very reasonable cost.