Guest Blog: Practices which were found best for employee surveys

 

Employee motivation is the key to professional success. It differentiates corporations that thrive from those that struggle to survive. A motivated workforce automatically offers superior services and products. This ultimately leads to increased customer satisfaction and greater sales performance. Furthermore, involvement in an employee survey is a direct result of how well the overall process is created and implemented. Basically, well-orchestrated surveys lead to much higher return rates.

Establish specific objectives and goals

During the first stages of planning, you must articulate your overall objectives and goals of the survey. It is advisable to define the projected return of your investment too. These targets need to be developed with management contribution and must be communicated clearly to workers. In the absence of long-term goals the survey will fail to elicit the management sustenance and secure the assets demanded for success.

Develop a broad communication strategy

You must prepare an ample communication plan to support each step of the survey. The plan ought to include a budget, a schedule of communication meetings, and formally assigned responsibilities. If you fail to provide a complex communication plan, employees may be unaware of the project’s importance.

Promote the survey process

It is vital to “brand” the survey. You could use an attractive logo and an enticing jingle to make your staff interested. By branding you’ll be able to provide continuity throughout the survey and establish the process as a continuum activity, rather than a singular event.

Allocate resources

Just from the start you should estimate the resources that will be needed to develop and put in practice the survey. You need to budget all these resources and include them in your business plan. Providing that you skip this step, the survey follow-up stages will lack the backing needed to be efficient. You may even meet resistance from management.

Outline responsibilities and roles

Support your survey by designing a network of internal survey campaigners with responsibility for determining the requirements for their business part, administering follow-up actions and managing data. Survey campaigners need to be offered a precise description of their role in the survey along with a specific area of operation.

Prove management commitment

The overall research process will have greater credibility if employees are convinced that it’s supported and endorsed by top management. Top management dedication will reassure employees that their opinions will be considered and put in practice. In case management commitment
lacks completely, employees may regard the survey as a basic PR exercise aimed
to project a considerate management style. They will not view it as a process
for identifying employee concerns.

Ask all the right questions in an appropriate manner

The survey should be created to measure areas of concern to employees and management. Although the questionnaire features standard items, the wording must be changed to reflect the company’s culture. A typical instrument that doesn’t reflect the corporation terminology and distinctive language will be regarded as irrelevant. It will not engage your employees and will finally offer inconclusive results.

Collect significant data

You should consider a data-collection methodology that is appropriate to your workforce. Conventionally, surveys are administered through printed questionnaires. However, the technology is now much more accessible and permits carrying online surveys that make data collection much easier, more effective and less overpriced. Ease and simplicity translate into better response rates.

Review and carefully assess the process

A formal assessment process must be planned in advance. It is aimed to monitor the efficiency of follow-up actions as well as to measure the progress made by the employees. Successful actions should be acclaimed and celebrated by all employees. You should also review the ROI linked to various follow-up actions to establish where investments need to be increased, reduced or ceased. Analysing the efficiency and considering the follow-up actions will improve the business relevance of the survey both for managers and employees. It basically sends out the signal that the survey is no longer a preferred thing, but it is vital for a successful business.

To sum it up, you should take into account these strategies when you design a survey to test employee effectiveness. Make it as complex and considerate as possible. Let your personnel know that you truly want to improve their working conditions and support them, so that you can be successful together.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2014
  Back in the old days when you wanted to find a job you waited until Sunday and got the Sunday paper,