Most of the time employees won’t express their suggestions, complaints, and grievances to the upper management at the workplace. What may be the reason, the fact is that this culture affects your business negatively? The most common reason is reprisal. Sometimes it’s the fear of offending your bosses or simply the fact that employees assume that the bosses don’t care. To overcome all this, you have to engage the employees on your own. There are several ways to do that. But the most effective way is to use employee surveys. There are many Customer/Employee Satisfaction Survey Apps to carry out the deed. The thing to focus on is using methods and questions that provide maximum output. You can change the work culture, improve business, and increase return on investment while getting continuous feedback from employees. Employee engagement is the key to a better employee experience, which in turn results in increased productivity and a thriving business.
What is Employee Engagement?
We all have heard the term “employee engagement” in the world of business. In a nutshell, customer engagement is the extent to which an employee is emotionally connected or invested in the organization they work for.
As the definition states, it’s an emotion. It is hard to measure emotion, will be an understatement, to say the least. It can be measured only when quantified. This can be easily done by using customer engagement surveys.
Now it is evident that “happy” or “satisfied” customers are not enough, but satisfied employees are also crucial for the success of any business. Understanding the needs and mindset of employees at a deeper level is important. To fulfill this purpose employee engagement surveys were introduced.
Today it is a common practice for large companies to carry out surveys. They ask both their customers and employees about their opinion and requirements.
Understanding Employee Experience or EX
Customer Experience or EX encompasses what people experience or encounter during every single touchpoint throughout their stay at any organization. When an employee starts a journey at any organization they go through an experience. Starting from the day they receive their appointment letter to the day they leave the organization for whatever reason. During their tenure, employees interact with all sections of the management from subordinates to superiors. Each interaction serves as a touchpoint. Every employee has different experiences and responses. These touchpoints combine to form an employee journey, which indicates the nature of employee experience (EX).
How EX is important?
Just like customers, employee retention is crucial. it costs employers 33% of a worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement if that worker leaves. Nowadays positive EX is an essential part of any business strategy. It is beneficial for every employer to invest in EX as far as possible. To make it streamlined and mutually beneficial. Although it’s easier than said, letting it get on top of you can be more harmful. A recent MIT research found that companies with the best employee experience face 25% greater profitability compared to competitors. Therefore keeping the facts in mind, it is safe to say that EX can be a deciding factor in the success of any business.
Since now we know how important customer experience is and how customer engagement plays a vital role in achieving EX. We can move on to understand how customer engagement surveys or better known as employee satisfaction surveys can achieve these targets.
What is an employee satisfaction survey?
Employee satisfaction surveys are exactly what the title suggests. It is the survey used to determine how satisfied employees are by working with their organization. Asking employees regarding their opinions regularly is important. This is where employee satisfaction surveys come in. The goal is to narrow down this gap. You can send out anonymous surveys regularly to ask your employees what they feel, require, and what could be improved.
There are several ways to carry out these surveys. It all depends on your business and requirements. You can use short surveys to gather information every month or you can carry out one comprehensive survey after a whole year. You also have the choice to combine both. You can choose the way that suits you the best. It’s really up to what you prefer and what are your end-goals.
Why use employee satisfaction surveys?
One might wonder why use the survey? The answer is quite simple. You can’t run a business without making sure that your employees are satisfied. So here are a few reasons why to use these surveys.
Anonymous Response
As discussed earlier one of the major reasons employees are reluctant in providing feedback is because they are afraid of offending the bosses and management. This is why employee management surveys are important. You can engage employees and empower them to provide constructive and real-time feedback. Employers can conduct online surveys to get instant feedback.
Customized Surveys
You have complete autonomy over the surveys. You customize the surveys according to your needs. Add questions that you want to be answered. There is the choice of using built-in professional survey questions or you can add new questions that are more personal and achieve your goals. Another way is to use smiley surveys. Smileys have taken over the world already. They are personal, easy-to-use, and effective. The important part is to keep the question easy and straightforward.
Intel for future decisions
Conducting a survey is one thing, using that survey is a whole nother story. Once survey responses are in, the next step is to use this information. Managers will analyze these responses to generate assessment reports. These reports can be highly helpful in future prospects. Use this information to take steps that can affect your business. Make changes, improve the process, and increase productivity in the workplace by acting on the results of these surveys.
Factors influencing employee engagement
Since we have discussed why you should use employee engagement surveys? Now the next step is determining what are the factors that affect an employee’s experience in any organization. What influences employee engagement.
Workplace Culture
A few years ago talking about workplace culture might seem like a waste of time. Nowadays a positive workplace culture is as important as any other aspect of your business. Most people examine the culture of any organization before joining the workplace. If an organization values career advancement and recognition, people are likely to link them with the organization. In a nutshell, company culture plays a vital role in making the workplace safe and productive.
Flexibility and adaptability at the workplace
The future’s not set in stone. This is valid in the workplace just like any other fragment of life. Employees today strive for change. With the ever-changing market, pulsating economy, altering political situation, and diverse attitudes, employees look for a change at every step of their experience. Offering flexibility and empowering employees to meet their needs at the workplace can affect your business greatly.
Relationship with Coworkers
No one likes working. This is embedded in human nature. Employers try their best to make the workplace friendlier for their employees. It is always nice to have a friend at work. With so many cases reporting workplace abuse and a hard-to-wark environment, it is more important than ever to create a safe and friendly workplace structure. It mostly depends on the nature of relationships between employees, management, and bosses. When the employees get along well then they will stay positive and will work as a team. Another important factor is the relationship between upper management and employees. Not having a working relationship with the managers can be really disturbing for the employees – in fact, 22% of employees leave the job because they are unsatisfied with the relationship they have with their upper management.
So far we have discussed all the how’s and why’s of the topic. We have established so far, that employee engagement surveys are extremely useful and important for any organization in order to get feedback from their employees. So the next step is to build an employee satisfaction survey.
Setting Up an employee engagement survey
Building your own bespoke employee engagement survey can be tricky. We will now discuss some of the basic parameters to keep in mind.
Before start designing your survey consider the following:
- Define deadlines and turnaround limits before starting
- Determine all the stakeholders involved in the process
- Include result-oriented questions
- Keep the questions straightforward. Only include “must-have” questions rather than “nice to have” questions.
- Give one person complete autonomy over the surveys
Now let’s discuss some of the outlines in detail when designing the survey.
Length of Survey
When it comes to surveys, there is no ideal length limit. The individual requirements of your organization determine the length of the survey. The key is to find the perfect balance between asking enough questions to be sturdy, and not including too many questions that your survey becomes too long. A rule of thumb (not the exact figure) is to include almost 40 questions for the ideal length of the survey.
Structure of Survey
An employee engagement survey is not just a set of questions. Think of it as a tool that will provide analysis and intel on customer experience. The goal is to reflect your organizational values in the survey. The most commonly used structure is to divide the survey into three portions. Each portion determines a different aspect of the survey. You can divide the survey into measuring engagement, factors driving the engagement, and open-ended questions measuring what your customers think and need.
Nature of Questions
We have discussed earlier that the nature of the questions decides whether the survey would be effective or not. Should the questions be short or long, open-ended or close-ended, all these aspects should be kept in mind when designing the survey. Although there is no definitive layout for the questions, still there are a few key points to consider when designing the employee engagement survey.
- Questions should be concise and clear. Try using a single subject to avoid confusion of any type.
- Make sure the questions are not ambiguous and represent the same meaning for everyone attempting to answer the survey.
- Use open-ended questions to allow employees to provide real feedback.
- Set end-goals for the survey and design the questionnaire in light of that.
- Make sure that the questionnaire comprises all the questions that you want to be answered.
Bottom Line
Just like customers, employee satisfaction is also crucial for growth and success. Employee engagement is the key to improve the employee experience. Using employee engagement surveys can be extremely helpful in this regard. Moreover, it is critical that you design a survey that encapsulates all your requirements, resonates well with your employees and is efficient to the maximum extent.
