Instead of seeing an Employee Satisfaction Survey as an obligation, see it as a powertool!

The do’s and don’ts of employee satisfaction surveys.

Who’s waiting for it to happen? Who’s getting anything out of it? The yearly employee satisfaction survey is coming up soon and you can hear the employees sigh (“not another boring questionnaire”), you can hear the managers complain (“let’s find out how much work I’ll have to do”), and you can see the organization including its HR stressing (“are we supposed to read all these pages and understand all these numbers?”). Still, a survey like that can help you win the War on Talent. It just requires the right approach.

Looking for new employees? Long live your current employees!

There’s no organization that doesn’t have to deal with it: the War on Talent is ruthless en trying to engage and bond your employees requires time, energy, and often money. The good news is that you already have all the tools you need: your own people! They can tell you exactly what they find the most important and how they are experiencing their work and you as their employer. What are you excelling in? What do you especially need to do to improve your organization? Your employees are basically your most reliable source of information. But how do you get the right information? An employee satisfaction survey? And then what? Check out our Fan Scan!

A fool with a tool is still a fool…

The results of an employee satisfaction survey serve as a tool for your investments, whether these are leadership trainings or performance support tools of recruitment tools. These are all expensive investments. So it’s good to know first what to invest in.

1. Are we looking forward to it, folks?

Thankfully are most HR advisors aware of the fact that an employee satisfaction survey executed by an external party usually results in a higher response. This is explained by the anonymity that comes with an external party as well as being able to be completely objective. A higher response means more representative results of the organization. Still, often are employees not engaged. Why? Because surveys are often too long and too boring, and they eventually lead to huge reports with too many numbers to understand. The results are often not even shared with the employees, except through a short message online that nobody understands anyway. Of course this will lead to disengagement and employees will most likely not want to participate in the next upcoming employee satisfaction survey. Can you blame them?

2. Understand the results to tackle the relevant issues

Collecting, analyzing and interpreting data requires the right skills. Even renowned agencies often make the mistake and deliver reports filled with facts and numbers, but without the right context, a relevant benchmark and/or concrete advice for the long-term. And are they even considering that measuring merely satisfaction is not enough? Only with the right focus and insights you can identify priorities and invest in the right tools to improve things.

3. Follow-up… and now?

The biggest mistake you can make with an employee satisfaction survey is leave that report unread. If you don’t implement any next steps based on the results, things won’t change. Your employees will think that you don’t value their time and effort. And you can expect a very low response on the next employee satisfaction survey.
 

Get the most out of your Employee Satisfaction Survey

Enthusiastic employees who contribute input, appreciate feedback and want to get started with the results themselves; supervisors who want to coach their teams based on insights and want to implement the right changes; management and HR who know exactly how to engage their employees and to make them excel… with the right approach you can make it happen:

• Discuss upfront what you want to measure and why;
• Organize an energetic kick-off session for the managers and activate them to achieve a high response. Make sure you do the same with sharing the results of the survey: inspire the managers, discuss the steps that will be implemented through HR, and give them the tools to implement their own personal plans;
• Engage your employees: participation should be fun, safe and employees should be able to get feedback afterwards;
• Choose a benchmark specific to your sector;
• Measure more than just satisfaction, measure the Fan Factor of your employees;
• Measure every 100 days the progress, so you can step up where necessary.

 

Do you want to know how our employee satisfaction survey works? Read more about the Fan Scan or call Marthe for an appointment (06-10571901). We’d love to tell you more about it!

Kind regards,

Marthe van der Kint – Consultant at Fan Factory

Marthe.vanderkint@fanfactory.nl