With the need for many organizations to be more streamlined and productive a business can sometimes find itself with groups of employees working under pressure that if not addressed could then lead to low moral and a high turnover of staff. Organizations that have a highly motivated workforce can benefit enormously and having a workforce that is both productive and motivated should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.
Left unattended employers run the risk of alienating their employees, events can cause employee frustrations to boil over resulting in employers finding themselves on the back foot, faced with a problem that cannot be ignored.
Ideally employers would allocate the time to fully understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are too often themselves tied up with the day to day task of fighting their own fires.
With the intelligence gathering process being automated and the survey results being made available in a format that can be readily analyzed online surveys provide employers with a cost effective and efficient method to help towards the goals of staff satisfaction and high productivity.
Unproductive & dissatisfied
There are many reasons why employees may be dissatisfied with their job and more often than not staff frustration is channelled into a demand for higher salaries and less hours. Employers who tackle these issues head on, making it all about salary and hours, will often find themselves dealing with the symptoms and not the root cause.
It’s not just about the money
The following are common barriers to achieving productivity, none of which are likely to be resolved by increasing salaries or reducing hours:-
- Insufficient training
- Out of touch management
- Out of date working methods
- Lack of proper tools and equipment
Increasing salaries is not always a solution to employees’ problems nor as many studies have revealed is it the most important motivator for most employees.
Take the case of a single mother who is juggling a full time job with the need to look after two children. Out of frustration she may demand more money so that she feels that she is able to cope where a better solution, for both her and the company, may be more flexible working hours.
Two way communication is what it is all about
It is in any company’s interest to establish good communications. Without good communication between personnel and management, or where management wait until problems are raised, management may assume that they have a content workforce when in actual fact the opposite is true. It can take only one aggrieved employee with one small problem for an entire workforce to develop a destructive ‘them and us’ attitude.
Improving communication
One to one meetings between employer and employee would be ideal but in practice only practical for very small businesses.
Regular meetings between management and worker representatives are good in theory but they often become talking shops and can begin to lose their edge as the participants become familiar with one another and the forum runs the risk of being hijacked by the more extrovert personalities.
Suggestion boxes are useful but can be viewed as token efforts by management as they wait for personnel to highlight a problem.
Newsletters can be a positive step, but their purpose is generally to inform and not discuss issues.
Keeping the initiative
Conducting employee satisfaction surveys on a regular basis you are able to ask each employee specific questions and present a pro-active management initiative where the whole workforce can be consulted on various issues. Surveys are able to provide a level playing field between the quieter and more vocal employees.
Consultation should not be seen as a sign of weakness, a confident manager will take counsel from all quarters before making a decision. By issuing a survey and keeping the initiative the employer is able to tackle problems from a position of strength as opposed to waiting for problems to fester and then develop out of proportion.
Leave a small problem unresolved and it can lead to a situation where a minor problem might just break the camel’s back and the mood of the employees change from positive to negative over night.
It is quick and easy
For the majority of organizations online surveys represent a proactive and low cost solution. For the majority of organizations where most of the personnel have desktop computers, online surveys are quick to design and deploy direct to the individual.
Where not all of the personal have access to a computer there are various options available that will allow you to accommodate their responses such as providing a shared computer, conducting telephone surveys or as a last resort, a hardcopy survey where the hard-copy responses can be added to those who competed the survey online.
Job satisfaction
There are combined elements that will contribute towards an employee’s job satisfaction, including company ethics, working methodology, ethos and environment to having decisive and effective management. Job satisfaction brings benefits through improved motivation and productivity from a workforce that feels that they are treated as individuals and not a commodity item.
Inform and educate
An often overlooked benefit of online surveys is that they can be used to educate and pass on important information to the workforce, ensuring that the ‘message’ does not become corrupted as it is handed down by the phenomenon of Chinese whispers.
An online survey can explain to the employees a difficult situation and get useful feedback as to the best solution. It is rare in this situation that the workforce would appear negative; it is more likely they will feel informed and empowered and that might be enough to turn a potentially negative problem into a positive challenge that unites the workforce.
Exit surveys
Exit surveys represent are a good way of making sure that when people leave an organisation they are leaving for the right reasons and not due to reasons that if appreciated earlier could have been addressed and resolved by management. Although identifying a problem may not prevent a person leaving it could solve an unappreciated issue that may, if left unchecked, result in other key personnel also leaving.
For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template