The benefits of conducting an annual employee survey is widely accepted but many organizations have been put off by the amount of effort those annual surveys take to deploy.

Many organizations who have bit the bullet and conducted their own internal employee satisfaction surveys have often relied on word-processors to allow them to design and compile a survey, then gone through the effort of printing and distributing the survey and spent time chasing and collecting the completed surveys and then even 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.

Document here is 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

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.

Where an organization is suffering from poor moral brought on by either internal or external influences an employee survey can be used to identify the specific concerns of employees so those concerns can be properly addressed.

Where there is an increase in turnover of staff employee surveys can help an organization identify the underlying cause of employee unrest and through their findings help find solutions.

Periodically

As part of a periodic assessment, surveys will help an organization review their personnel and monitor on an individual level job satisfaction, training and career development.

Employee surveys will allow the senior management team the opportunity to look at what makes their organisation tick and confirm, or not, that their ‘top down’ view matches the reality and ‘bottom up’ perspective of their employees.

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

Although having management buy-in to a survey is always desirable and in some cases may be essential to ensure it is a success, in some instances the results of a survey that may be all that is required to kick-start a management that has grown complacent and detached from their employees.

Some organization may be fortunate in that the senior management recognize and drive the need for employee surveys, while in others the management may need to first be convinced of the direct and indirect benefits an employee survey will bring.

The degree that management commit to an employee survey will have a bearing on the nature of the survey and to some extent will help determine what questions.

A management that is supportive of the initiative may require feedback on specific areas of the business or they may give the go ahead because they feel confident that the results will only confirm that the level of employee satisfaction throughout the organization is high.

In nearly all cases it is good practice to at least try and get management to buy-in to the employee survey from the very start as they have a lot to gain and 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.

At the same time as considering what questions to ask consider how the results are to be analyzed. For example there may be a desire to ask for individual comments but these types of answer formats can be very time consuming and cumbersome to analyze and should therefore be avoided or used sparingly.

Online surveys make it practical to conduct multiple smaller surveys than one very long survey and avoid the higher the drop out rate that are associate with longer surveys.

Step 4 – Checking And Testing

Spelling, Grammar and Clarity

Before the survey is published carefully check that there are no spelling and typing mistakes or incorrect grammar. If available it is always better to have someone who has not been involved in designing the survey to proof read the survey with clean eyes, if no one 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 Employee 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 any questions that you have made mandatory you do require an answer, for example open questions such as asking for additional comments should be made optional unless you definitely require the respondent to write a comment.

Check You Will Be Able To Analyze The Data

Make another check of the survey but this time examine how the results of the survey will be analyzed. Give consideration as to how you will want to analyze the survey data, have you asked the right questions to be able to perform the detailed analysis that you desire? For example if you wanted to view the detailed response data from the perspective of the different genders, or maybe departments, check you have asked the employee to indicate their own gender and/or department.

Don’t Ask Anymore Questions Than You Need To

Consider all the questions in the survey and make sure that they are all ‘need to know’ questions.

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 the survey yourself you will get a feel for the survey from a respondent’s point of view. From your own and others feedback stop and make adjustments to 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 – Promoting And Deploying The Survey

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

Allowing Anonymous Responses?

You have a choice to allow all surveys to be completed anonymously. A survey where respondents are allowed to be anonymous may encourage employees to speak their minds promoting ‘a warts and all’ approach, in turn giving management an opportunity to nip potentially serious problems in the bud.

However, allowing anonymous comments also allows employees to be more flippant and cavalier with their responses. Some organizations would therefore only want to consider comments where employees are prepared to stand by their convictions and that will also provide an opportunity 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.

If after a few days the number of completed surveys falls short of any set target it is recommended to send employees one or more reminders to ask them to complete the survey.

Step 7 – Analyzing The Results

There are no hard and fast rules for analyzing the data. Much will depend on the specific survey, the questions that are asked and the number of responses that are received.

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

When first analyzing survey data often a number of ‘headline’ results will immediately stand out that will provide you with a general overview and, providing the right questions have been asked, give you an instant assessment of the mood throughout the organization as a whole.

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 and 25% gave a negative response it would be useful to know the gender split of the organization and also to look at what the gender split was of the 25% that answered negatively. Was any negative view shared by employees of both genders, consistent throughout the organization, or was it restricted to a particular gender and/or a particular department?

There is a method of reporting that presents 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 – Post Survey Action

The most important step is probably the last. The results of an employee survey will either confirm that the perfect organization really does exist or, and more likely, it will by the individual and common concerns that are raised identify the areas that are less than perfect.

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 run on a regular basis an organization that has a track record of addressing the issues highlighted by surveys will see their efforts rewarded in the results of subsequent surveys. Almost all organizations have problems and it helps an organization’s moral to see that a channel exists that will highlight problems that can then be addressed and resolved.

Summary

These guidelines are intended to help an organization conduct successful employee satisfaction surveys, they are however, only a guide.

Organizations are often different in style and structure and each organizations ‘personality’ will go someway to influencing the tone and nature of the survey and organizations will have many different 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 www.surveygalaxy.com, at minimal cost.

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