Employee surveys: A Key Way to Measure Employee Engagement

By Alison Young

An employee survey is an important tool for any company or organisation, helping to measure levels of employee engagement, employee satisfaction, and general morale at work, as well as the reasons why the results or scores are as they are.

In today's competitive market it is harder than ever for businesses to survive. Despite the recession, many organisations have continued to conduct employee surveys since they see it as more critical than ever to understand and analyse the opinions and ideas of their employees. This understanding is increasingly critical for improved business performance and growth.

Before conducting any employee research, the manager responsible should consider and get agreement to the main objectives of the initiative, along with the best means for collecting the data - for example, should it be done via an online survey, printed/postal questionnaires, focus groups, workshops, interviews, or other means.

Employee surveys help to demonstrate that management wants to hear what staff really think. In this way they help to maintain good relationships between the company and its employees, even when times are tough. This kind of approach in itself can often result in greater employee engagement with the business.

Typically, employee surveys will look at topics such as: key measures of employee engagement, how well the communication flow is working, perceptions of senior team leadership and business strategy, satisfaction with line management support and motivation, aspects of training and development, general working conditions and the relationships within and between teams.

Employee surveys are very useful for identifying underlying problems in the workplace and barriers to employee productivity and customer service - but another important reason to run a survey is to identify and measure what is working well currently. So often a survey is seen as a tool to find faults, when it can be even more useful in identifying the things a company is doing right. This information can be critical to attract and retain high quality staff - the very marketable individuals you dont want to lose!

The first employee survey conducted within a company is usually broadly based, enabling that company to put a stake in the ground and collect a range of benchmark measures, often on up to 50 subjects. However, as experience with employee surveys develops, there may be a trend to address a more limited range of topics, or to run a more focused survey, sometimes on a single topic, such as internal communications for example.

More specific types of employee survey include exit surveys (for those leaving the company), welcome surveys (to see what new employees think), training needs surveys (to help to develop company-wide training plans), and barometer or temperature check surveys (designed to test a few key questions on a more regular basis).

Overall, and despite extremely tough times, many more organisations are finding that in order to compete effectively, they need the kind of feedback and measures that are provided by employee surveys. - 26221

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