Although there are distinct advantages to conducting regular employee satisfaction surveys online to measuring employee satisfaction - there can also be risks.

Documented here are the main advantages, considerations and the possible risks to conducting employee satisfaction surveys online.

Advantages

Identify Problems - Surveys are can be very effective in identify problems areas before they become serious, especially those that are hidden from senior management.

Working Environment - From something small like a broken chair to the more serious problem of sick building syndrome that can result in personnel experiencing headaches; eye, nose, and throat irritation; a dry cough; dry or itchy skin; dizziness and nausea; and difficulty in concentrating. Surveys that focus on the environmental aspects of an organization will ensure that areas of concern are identified in a manner that can be properly measured and controlled.

Remuneration & Benefits - Measure and monitor how satisfied personnel are with their remuneration and benefits.

Mood and Moral - Provides a simple but effective method to measure and monitor the mood and moral of an organization.

Benchmark - In the same way that an organization will consider their financial position by comparison with previous years, so the regular use of online surveys will allow an organization to monitor and measure their progress and development in non-financial terms.

Processes & Procedures - As businesses evolve some of the traditional processes and procedures can become antiquated, personnel are often the first to know and the last to be asked. Businesses evolve and the business processes need to be regularly re-aligned.

Training - Lack of proper training is a common cause of dissatisfaction among employees and can lead to more serious problems such as stress.

Communication - For an organization to run efficiently good internal and external communications are essential, surveys can provide a method to help organizations to monitor and measure how well an organization communicates.

Goals and Objectives - Surveys can measure and monitor the extent that the personnel are aligned with the senior management’s business goals and objectives.

Cost Effective - Using survey questionnaire software surveys are quick and easy to create, simple to deploy and will provide real-time results.

Compliance - To properly comply with an ever increasing array of regulations the modern organization needs to be able to disseminate information throughout the organization and ensure, through records, that the information has been received, and importantly, understood. Online questionnaires can provide organization with a cost effective method to meet many of their obligations.

Keeping the Initiative - It is always better for management to ask than be told. Management are able to retain the initiative by conducting periodic employee satisfaction surveys and identifying early problems that could otherwise transform into demands.

Considerations

Management Backing - A survey that is both sanctioned and has the support of senior management will go some way in ensuring that any action required, based on the survey findings, will be implemented.

Ask the right questions - Consider careful the questions being asked. If employees feel that the survey is just trying to tick the right boxes the survey could backfire.

An annual survey should ask questions that will provide senior management with an overall temperature check of the organization.

Avoid questions that will only apply to specific departments or personnel. If some areas of the organization require detailed investigation consider running separate one-off surveys that can be targeted at specific personnel.

Incentive - Most employees will feel that by being able to give their opinions that they are already stakeholders in the exercise and will be happy to participate in the survey as they will expect to benefit from the process.

However, some incentive may help improve the overall response rate or could be used to encourage early participation.

Small incentives could be awarded to all participating employees or they could instead be entered into a prize draw in the hope of receiving a more substantial prize.

Anonymous - The decision to allow respondents to remain anonymous or not needs careful consideration. Surveys that are conducted anonymously may encourage employees to be more honest, however, the anonymity may also encourage some individuals to make wild accusations that can not be substantiated and cause unnecessary concern. It is often better to keep everything ‘on the record’ rather than ‘off the record’.

Where survey respondents are known there is the opportunity to chase for surveys that have not been completed and also to follow up on some issues directly with those employees who have raised them as problems.

Comments - Keep free text comments to a minimum because they are difficult and time consuming to measure and analyze.

Limit the number of questions that allow for free text responses, usually a question at the end of the survey that asks for general comments is sufficient and very effective; consider conducting further surveys to follow-up where the earlier survey identifies areas where additional and more specific information is required.

Risks

Management - Some managers can regard any form of employee consultation as a sign of weakness and may have a tendency to dismiss out of hand any negative comment.

Warts and All - A survey is likely to reveal warts and all. Surveys may reveal that the senior management’s top down view differs considerably from the employees’ bottom up view and that once problems have been exposed senior management would not be able to claim ignorance and would have to act.

Non-Action - Many employees will invest time and effort in participating in a survey and their hopes and expectations will be raised. Employees will be quick to develop a negative attitude if post-survey the issues that are apparent from the results of the survey are not properly addressed. It may result in it becoming more difficult to obtain employee feedback in future if the personnel start to regard it as a waste of time.

Management should be prepared to formally recognize and respond to any issue that is raised as a result of conducting a survey even if the demands of employees are not to be met. If the senior management team have previously advised the employees that some of the issues raised in previous surveys are to be addressed and resolved then that action should have at least started before any follow up surveys are conducted.

Can Cause Problems - Where surveys reveal, or bring problems, to the surface there could be a tendency for senior management to blame the messenger.

Summary

There are considerable benefits in conducting regular online employee satisfaction surveys, but for them to be effective important considerations need to be made upfront. Although the process of conducting a survey can be therapeutic in itself it is the post-survey analysis, response and action that will ultimately determine how useful and effective the process has been.

For a sample employee satisfaction survey: Employee Satisfaction Poll

By conducting effective market research what you can learn?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to target your marketing and fine tune your product or service.

Know your target market - Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age groups? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services - Do you have the products or services that people want? Is what you offer value for money? How do your services and products compare to those of your competitors? Can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do people find it easy to buy from you? Are all your staff properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. What are the marketing channels that are available to you, which ones should you concentrate on and which, if any, should you consider dropping?

Is your marketing message understood? Does all your marketing correctly reflect your brand? Do you advertise and promote through the right channels? Are you reaching your target audience?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

For any organization that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted market research is essential. Business decisions based on good market research can help minimise any risk and should pay dividends in the longer term. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate - Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking the customer you not only show them that you care but you also take the guesswork out of customer services.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to operate a new service and want to know the preconceived attitudes people have then market research can help, not only in evaluating the potential for a new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be honed.
• Market research will minimise risk - Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress - Unless you measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Early research can identify where improvements need to be made to a new service or where there are flaws in a product, by conducting regular market research it will identify if improvements are being made and, if positive, will in turn help motivate a development team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few organizations invest sufficient resources to enable them to gather good intelligence that will help them improve their business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.