Top ten tips for doing an employee survey
In an era where opinions and decisions are increasingly data driven, employee surveys are a way of collating information about the “organisational temperature” – or how employees feel about their work. They can also help to collect ideas and feedback from employees about a whole range of issues – from reaction to mergers and acquisitions and changed processes to questions about culture, communication and customer service. Employee surveys can also be used to measure progress towards certain organisational goals.
Making employee surveys work for your organisation isn’t difficult – as long as you get the basics very, very right. Our top ten tips are below.
- Be very sure you want to know what they think
Asking people to give you their views and then ignoring them is not only a waste of everyone’s time – but it encourages cynicism and employee alienation. It’s easy to spot the organisations where nothing happened with the results of the last employee survey – the response rate is very low.
We’ve seen senior management conduct employee surveys because they see it as best practice (which it is) but they don’t consider the implications. Employee surveys can be a Pandora’s Box of issues for which they are simply not prepared.
We can’t stress this enough – if your senior management is not prepared to act on the results of an employee survey, DON’T DO IT. The exercise requires total commitment – and possible a strong nerve - to follow it through.
- Be sure what you want to know
The best way to ensure you get what you want out of an employee survey is to write a brief. This will include some background on the organisation, recent events which might guide the research questions and influence the findings, research objectives, the type of employee you want to reach, managerial involvement, a schedule and (preferably) a budget.Defining the research objectives ensures your survey focuses on the areas on which you’re prepared to take action – and at this stage can act as an early warning to identify the areas you’re not ready to tackle. Qualitative research – for example focus groups - can be useful in helping to identify which are the “hot spots” in the organisation which would be useful to explore further in the survey.
- Ask only one question at a time
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Consider this standard survey question:
I feel treated with fairness and respect
What would a respondent answer if they felt treated fairly (i.e. the same as everyone else) – but not respected as an individual? What if they are treated with fairness and respect by their colleagues, but not their manager?
Ensure you pilot your questionnaire to check it is understandable, unambiguous, easy to understand and therefore complete, and above all, gives you the information you want.
- Ensure independence and confidentiality
Employees will be more likely to give their frank views if they are certain the research is being conducted in confidence. The findings are more likely to have impact if they are regarded as independent, and free from management bias. For this, an external contractor can be helpful.
- Enlist manager support
Managers are essential to encourage employees to distribute and complete the survey and assure employees that their answers are confidential. To get them on board, you should ensure that managers perceive some benefit in doing the survey. For example, the survey can collect information to help them plan more effectively
- Communicate, communicate, communicate
…..that you’re going to do it, how to fill in the survey, what the timeframe is, and what the responses said. This serves to remind employees that you’re asking for their views, when the deadline is approaching and that you value the time they’ve taken to complete the survey. All of these will contribute to a high response.
- Ensure they have time to fill it in during work hours
You’re asking for their views which ultimately will benefit the organisation. It may not take long to complete, but managers should be asked to arrange time off the job – particularly for production workers – to fill it in. If managers haven’t been consulted and don’t explicitly tell workers they can complete in work time, you may reduce the response. And allowing employees to complete it during working hours sends a message about the importance of the survey.
- Access for all
Web based surveys have lots of benefits – easy to distribute, often quick to complete, and some cut out data entry altogether, feeding straight into a database, thus enabling you to give instant feedback to respondents. However – not everyone sits at a desk at work, or has access to the web. Mixed method surveys (web-based AND paper) may take a bit more organising, but where not all employees are office based, this ensures everyone can participate.
- Give employees the results
At the very least, there should be a summary of the results distributed and a full report available for those who want to see it. A better process would be to cascade the results (particularly departmental results) through a series of presentations given by managers (see points 1 and 5 above). If you don’t do this, it’s the equivalent for employees of putting their views and thoughts into a black hole, never to be seen again…
- DO something with the feedback
See point 1 above. Managers can start the process of collecting ideas for improvement when presenting the results to employees. Alternatively, gather a task force to address some of the issues raised in the survey – we can almost guarantee that “better communication” will be amongst them. One benefit from conducting an employee survey is that you have a ready-made benchmark against which to measure your activity.
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