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
