You may have often heard that CUSTOMER = KING.
The most sustainable way of succeeding in your business is to ensure that your customers are satisfied. And the most sustainable way to ensure your customers are satisfied is to keep your employees satisfied. When your employees are happy and content in the job, they will go the extra mile to make the customers happy.
So how can you find out if you’re doing everything right and your employees are satisfied? – through employee satisfaction surveys.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about making an effective employee satisfaction survey and what kind of questions you must ask.
What is an Employee Satisfaction Survey?
Employee satisfaction surveys is questionnaires directed towards your employees to understand whether they are comfortable with their jobs, the work culture, environment and to see if they are facing any issues. Such surveys are conducted not only to understand how happy they are with their jobs, but also to understand how committed and aligned they are to the company’s mission, vision and objectives. These surveys are an important tool towards measuring the health of a company and understanding areas of improvement, as well as to enhance the company’s employer branding.
( Also Read: Employee Engagement – A Complete Guide )
Best 27 Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions To Include In Your Survey
Once you’ve decided the frequency and mode for conducting the survey (online/offline), you then need to start working the questions that you want to ask your employees. Here are a few sample questions that you can include in your survey and make sure that you get data that can provide you with actionable insights:
- Do you enjoy your company’s culture? Is there anything you want to change?
- Do you find your work meaningful?
- Are you provided with all the resources necessary for your work?
- Do you feel you have enough opportunity for career development and promotions?
- Do you feel valued for your contributions?
- Does the management seem invested in your and your team’s success?
- Are you happy in the job and at work? Is there anything you’d like to change?
- Do your personal goals are aligned with the organization’s goals.
- Do you get enough room for learning, development, and growth at the company?
- Does your manager encourage and inculcates an environment of collaboration?
- Are you comfortable voicing your ideas and opinions to your manager?
- Are you comfortable voicing your concerns to your manager?
- Do you have the authority and autonomy required for you to perform well at your job?
- Are you a part of a team where your contribution is valued, and ideas are well received.
- Is there transparency in terms of operations in the company.
- Is your salary is credited on time?
- Do you trust that your managers and senior executives have your & the company’s best interests at heart?
- Are you empowered to make decisions that best serve my customers?
- Is your job challenging and exciting?
- Do you receive feedback that helps you to improve your performance continuously?
- Are the company’s work ethics and values are in alignment.
- Does your work give you a feeling of personal accomplishment?
- Are you proud to be associated with this company?
- Does your manager hold weekly/monthly meetings?
- Are your opinions, ideas, and inputs are valued in your team.
- Would you see yourself working with the same company for another 2 years?
- Would you recommend your company as a potential workplace to a job seeker?
( Also Read: Everything About Employee Engagement Survey )
How To Conduct An Employee Satisfaction Survey?
There are five basic steps to conduct an employee satisfaction survey. These are:
Step 1: Understand the reason behind conducting the survey
While all surveys share some commonalities, they do differ in terms of the end result desired. Based on the kind of results you wish to achieve or data you wish to gather, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
- What type of feedback do you want?
- What is your budget?
- How many employees do you have?
- How are you planning to conduct the survey?
Step 2: Create questionnaire
Once the goals behind conducting the survey are set, the next step is to create the questionnaire for the survey. You can follow the tips mentioned above and refer the sample survey shared.
Step 3: Collecting Results
Once the survey is ready, you need to figure out how you can circulate it and gather results. There are plenty of ways to do so:
- E-mail survey: You could send the survey to your employees’ e-mail address. This will have a lower cost and data collection can be quicker as multiple people can answer the survey at the same time. It also saves you inputting time as all information will be already stored electronically. You can also make use of Google Forms to gather data.
- Phone surveys: Using an autodialer, all your employees can be called and feedback recorded by the market research team. If your questionnaire has a large number of open questions, a phone survey will allow you to capture richer insight. While this may be more time consuming, the quality of the information is amazing.
- Postal surveys: You can go old school on your satisfaction surveys and send physical copies to your employees in all the offices. While this method may be more time-consuming, it is a cost-effective manner to gather feedback.
- Face to face surveys: Similar to phone surveys, face to face surveys would be conducted like interviews. The cost of this approach is higher, and it does require physical space and a dedicated person to conduct one on one interviews. It is preferable to have someone from outside the organization conduct these surveys.
Step 4: Analyze data
Data analysis is a key step in the process. All surveys should be analyzed, and findings put within context. Qualitative open-ended questions require a more in-depth and time-consuming approach to data analysis. Analysts will have to read through the answers and identify key points in all the answers.
STEP 5: Take action
With all the information analyzed, it is important that the management team takes on board the feedback and designs an action plan. Managers and HR executives must ensure that all pointers from the data analysis are kept in mind whilst devising solutions to enhance employee satisfaction within the organization.
Why Do An Employee Satisfaction Surveys?
In a workforce engagement study, Gallup found that companies with highly engaged workforces outperformed their peers by 147% in terms of earnings per share. Moreover, the study also concluded that engaged employees can be up to 22% more productive.( 1)
Therefore, employee satisfaction surveys are key weapons in a company’s arsenal that enable it to boost productivity and performance by understanding whether their employees are satisfied, just about happy or dissatisfied, and then taking measures accordingly.
Some benefits of having an satisfied and dedicated workforce are:
- Higher Productivity
- Higher Employee Motivation
- Higher Customer Satisfaction
- Higher Revenues
- Higher Profits
- Shareholder Wealth Maximization
- Enhanced Employer Brand
- Lower Attrition Rates
Keys To Employee Satisfaction
According to a survey conducted by The Conference Board, the overall employee satisfaction is just 45%, with only 35.7% of employees under the age of 25 being satisfied with their jobs. As this particular age group will soon be constituting the majority of the workforce, it is important to ensure good levels of employee satisfaction. A few factors that impact employee satisfaction are:
- Job Security
- Perquisites and Benefits
- Compensation
- Growth and development opportunities
- Work culture and environment
- Relationship with immediate supervisors
- Recognition
- Autonomy and independence in the job
How Often Should You Conduct an Employee Satisfaction Survey?
While many organizations conduct employee satisfaction surveys every 6 months, the best time to conduct the survey is annually. This is because it gives employees the chance to reflect upon all of the various changes that have already been made in the workplace for enhancing their performance, as well as well as to determine what it is that is keeping them from being actively engaged, and how managers can aid their productivity. However, if yours is a huge organization having a global footprint or having employees spread across multiple cities, you may need more than one survey a year.
The State of Employee Engagement research concluded that most organizations conduct their survey annually, with 18% surveying more than once a year and 4% using a system of continuous feedback. If your company requires a system of continuous feedback, then you may want to schedule one such employee satisfaction survey every quarter.
The decision behind the frequency of the survey depends on how long it takes to actually complete a survey and gather data. The idea is to give enough time to the employees to be able to fill up the survey honestly, and not have to hastily move through it – rendering the entire process redundant.
( Also Read: 61 Innovative Employee Engagement Ideas )
What to Do With Your Employee’s Feedback Data?
Just conducting a survey periodically will not solve any problems for the company, neither will it yield any results. At the end of the day, what matters most is that the purpose is fulfilled. Therefore, it is important to make note of all the issues raised through the employee satisafaction surveys and analyze the results effectively.
This can be done by First identifying the deviation that is found as compared to set standards and practices. The next step is to go through the subjective answers in the employee satisfaction survey and identify the key factors that led to the deviations.
Once you’ve enlisted a few of the possible drivers of low employee satisfaction, you then you need to dive deep and check whether these problems actually exist in your workplace and then find optimum solutions accordingly.
The data gathered through the survey must be assimilated in a proper manner and thorough analysis of the key issues must be done. Else, the purpose of conducting the survey is defeated.
Types of Employee Satisfaction Survey
Below are a few employee satisfaction survey templates that you can use to find out if your employees feel valued and appreciated in the workplace.
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Workplace Evaluation Surveys
Workplace evaluation surveys are usually conducted in order to understand how satisfied employees are with the offices, work environment and whether or not they are facing any difficulties with respect to these.
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Organization Culture Assessment Surveys
Such surveys are undertaken to assess the work culture prevalent in the organization at various hierarchical levels and across departments. The idea is to ensure that there is no toxicity and the general tone keeps the employees engaged, happy and productive.
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Benefits Satisfaction Surveys
Conducted specifically to understand core HRM function of Compensation, this survey allows HR managers to understand whether they are able to offer adequate benefits to employees or if they need to alter the compensation structure.
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HR Training and Development Feedback Surveys
These surveys are slightly different from the others in the sense that these are more recurring in nature. Such surveys are conducted after every HR training and development activity in the organization in order to understand whether the activity led to any value addition, or if employees have any other thoughts on the process.
Final Thoughts
In today’s fast-paced, tech-driven world, it is critical for businesses to do everything within their power to keep their employees satisfied. After all, satisfied employees are happier, more productive, and less likely to look for a job at another organization. Conducting employee satisfaction surveys will help modern day organizations better understand the grievances of the employees and work towards making the workplace more enjoyable and productive.
