When looking to improve business operations, employee satisfaction and overall success of a business, organizations often don’t know where to begin. Businesses can commit a lot of time and money towards attempted improvements without understanding what the underlying issues are. And without knowing the issues, it is impossible to truly address them.
In our previous post, we discussed the challenges associated with employee retention and explored some key ways to mitigate them. Some of the topics covered were employees’ increased expectations of workplace flexibility, employees' departure from the workforce and the resulting shortages, as well as the increased cost of living and rising minimum wage. We also introduced and explained four key areas of focus to improve staff retention – workplace culture, job satisfaction, development and advancement, and compensation.
One of the areas we highlighted previously was the concept of employee satisfaction surveys as a tool to engage your staff and action better insights. In this article, we will expand on the idea to give you a clearer understanding of how these surveys can help your organization.
A Practical Approach to an Employee Satisfaction Survey
To truly improve employee satisfaction and retention, there must be a benchmark of measurable information. Introducing regular employee satisfaction surveys as a standard business practice is a great way to get honest and anonymous feedback to identify issues and improve your business. These surveys should be implemented at regular intervals (for example, annually) and employees should be provided advance notice as to when the survey will be occurring. You should frame for your employees why this survey is taking place, and make sure that they understand it is a safe opportunity to provide feedback without any fear of repercussions. Organizations can retain help to draft and execute surveys and a third party or anonymous platform should always be used to ensure employee privacy is guaranteed.
It is important to ask questions that will elicit honest and unbiased responses that can help identify the areas that need to be addressed. Take the time to ask critical questions to uncover feedback in business areas, particularly where you struggle. Implementing a process like this demonstrates that you value your employee’s opinions and that their views are important to your success. Finally, providing your employees paid time to complete the survey will ensure that they do not rush through it with brief (uninformative) answers.
Benefits of an Employee Survey
Your employees see your operations with a different lens than you do, they likely have unique insight(s) about what works and what doesn’t. Something that you think benefits the organization could hamper your employee’s ability to do their jobs efficiently or significantly reduce their job satisfaction. A survey, you may find, will help you better understand how to tweak your approach or communication. It also provides a safe space for staff to suggest new ideas that might improve efficiency or process, that they don’t feel comfortable volunteering unsolicited.
It is important not to guess about what your employees want, but rather invest in what is valued and needed. Upon receiving the survey results, you can make guided changes to assure your employees that you have heard their concerns and suggestions. This not only saves you time but possibly also money as you are addressing what is most important to your employees, rather than investing in initiatives that don’t improve performance, productivity, or satisfaction. As an added benefit, surveys may help to reduce daily friction and shift the overall conversations from existing issues to potential solutions.
Surveys can also provide important benchmarks for your current state to help you better understand the effect of future programs and initiatives as they relate to employee satisfaction. For example, you’ll be able to track their satisfaction over time and see the impact of different initiatives that you implement during a given period.
Instilling a culture of feedback and information might also open other opportunities for you to explore that you hadn’t otherwise considered. For example, exit interviews or surveys can also provide key insights when employees leave your organization.
Challenges
Eliciting honest feedback is not always easy, questions need to be relevant but unbiased and designed with analysis and follow-through in mind. Surveys can provide invaluable information to managers of any business, but the information is only useful if managers will actually listen to it. If there is no intention to enact changes/adjustments, it is not a worthwhile exercise. Another risk with implementing a survey is that the feedback you get may not be what you wanted or expected to hear, or worse it may be related to an issue that can not be easily improved. Nevertheless, this information is critical. Part of managing people is listening to their concerns and doing your best to address them, and a feedback platform is one of the best ways to collect information in this regard.
It is also important to note that not all concerns can be fully addressed to the satisfaction of everyone. There may be inefficiencies identified that cannot be improved, but you should still take the time to acknowledge what you have heard from your staff and talk openly about it. For example, if a pain point for your staff is dealing with difficult customers, you could address this by acknowledging that customer behaviour/tendencies are difficult to manage and encouraging collective discussions about effective ways to manage this as a team. This would also be a good time to talk about tools and resources to increase customer satisfaction.
Summary
With current challenges in retaining and attracting talent, it is important to listen to the staff you already have and provide a safe, supportive environment where people feel satisfied with their contributions. Change driven by staff can help keep employees engaged and provide them with purpose above and beyond their regular job duties. Incremental process improvements can cultivate a culture of excellence which will further improve job satisfaction and morale. As we discussed at length in our previous article on staff retention, it is much more cost-efficient to retain staff and keep them happy than to deal with high attrition rates. Staff surveys are a proactive strategy that can empower you to improve your business practices through data. Your people are your greatest asset, and they have meaningful ideas, feedback, and insights to help you evolve your business.
