In a competitive world with the need for businesses to be more streamlined and productive a company can often find itself with a workforce working under pressure resulting in low moral and high staff turnover. The benefits of a company having a highly motivated workforce can be considerable and the two goals of having a workforce that is both motivated and productive should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.
When problems are left unresolved then there is a risk of companies alienating their employees leading to employee frustrations growing to a point where managers find that they are on the back foot with problems that just cannot be ignored.
In an ideal world employers would take time to understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are often themselves tied up day to day 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. Managers 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.
Not just about the money
The following are the most common problems 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- Out of date working methods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 a child. 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 business, may be more flexible working hours.
It is about communication
It is important for any organization to encourage communication. An organization where the management do not communicate well with their employees, or will wait for problems to be raised, can often think that they have a content workforce when the reality is that they don’t. It can very easily start with a small problem and one aggrieved employee for the problem to escalate to involve an entire workforce and generate a ‘them and us’ attitude.
Improving communication
Ideally management would hold one to one meetings with each employee but in practice this would only seem 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.
Having 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 can be used to ask each employee specific questions and demonstrates 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 often take counsel from others before making a decision. By issuing a survey the employer is able to keep the initiative and tackle problems from a position of strength as opposed to waiting for problems to manifest and then possibly develop out of proportion.
Leave small problems unresolved and a small problem might just break the camel’s back and at the drop of a hat change the mood of the workforce from positive to negative.
It is quick and easy
For most companies online surveys represent a proactive and low cost solution. For the majority of organizations where most of the personnel have desktop computers making online surveys quick to design and quick to deploy direct to the individual.
If there are situations where individuals do not have personal access to a computer there are still options available to using the online survey solution such as through the use of a shared computer, operator input or, as a last resort, a hardcopy survey.
Job satisfaction
There are elements that together will help towards providing an employee with job satisfaction, including company ethics, working environment, methodology and ethos to having effective and decisive management. Job satisfaction brings benefits through improved productivity and motivation 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 a difficult situation and get valuable feedback from the employees as to the best solution. In this situation it is rare that the workforce would appear negative and more likely that they will feel informed and empowered that might in itself turn a potentially negative problem into a positive challenge that unites the workforce.
Exit surveys
Exit surveys are a method for management to confirm that when people leave the organisation they are leaving for valid reasons and not for reasons that if appreciated earlier could have been addressed and possibly resolved. Although identifying a problem may not prevent a person leaving, having identified a problem it can then be addressed and that may be enough to prevent other key personnel from leaving.
For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template
Charlotte’s Blog