Spotlight - Employer, Employee and Human Resources

The mark of a good organization will often be that they have made the effort and established good communications between Senior Management and the workforce.

Although it is reasonable for a small business with a handful of employees to communicate with each other one on one, the numbers do not have to grow very high before the practicalities of one on one communications disappear.

No matter how large the organization, if done properly online surveys can be an effective method of maintaining the communication between the Boardroom and the coal face.

Listed here are a number of articles from Survey Galaxy's article library that are related to the Employer and Employee relationship.

Id	Title
6.	Why Employee Satisfaction Surveys And Employee Exit Surveys Make Good Sense
20.	Have You Fixed The Broken Window?
24.	I Can't Get No Employee Satisfaction
26.	Employee Satisfaction Surveys - Step By Step Guide
27.	The Advantages Considerations & Risks of Employee Satisfaction Surveys
28.	Why Do Good Employees Leave?
29.	A Manager's Guide To Redundancy
40.	Are Employee Satisfaction Surveys a Waste of Time?
41.	Employee Surveys – Asking the Right Questions
42.	Employee Satisfaction - Why Bother?

Writing Effective Surveys and Questionnaires Top Tips

Writing surveys is easy; or is it? The reality is that writing surveys is easy but writing effective surveys is more difficult. The following are twenty tips that if followed will help you with your survey questionnaire design and help you write effective surveys.

1. What is the purpose of the survey?

There are many reasons for conducting surveys. By phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When designing a survey do not lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The title of the survey is an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey's objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so encourage them that the investment they make will be worthwhile.

3. Ensure that you do not make the survey any longer than it needs to be

Every question asked should be asked for a reason. Minimize asking questions that will provide you with 'nice to know' information and concentrate instead on 'need to know' questions.

4. Use plain English, maintain consistency, avoid jargon and acronyms and don't ask questions that may result in ambiguous answers

Care must be taken in wording a question. If a question can be interpreted in more ways than one then there is a risk that any analysis of the survey results will be worthless or at the very least suspect.

5. Don't have long questions

Use concise sentences wherever possible. Long questions can cause a respondent discomfort and lead to them abandoning the survey.

6. Ask only one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like 'Do you like athletics and tennis?'

7. Don't influence the answer

It is important not to load the question. 'Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell cigarettes to minors be prosecuted?' is likely to have no value.

8. Make sure that the answer format used allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Ensure that the respondent is able to answer how they really feel or they may abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a "No comment", "Can't say", "Don't know" or similar response option.

9. While you are compiling your survey consider how the survey results are going to be analysed when the survey is complete

When asking questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, appreciate that such information is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider how the answers could be grouped. For example "Indicate your length of service?" - 'less than 1 year', 'between 1 and 4 years' and 'more than 4'.

10. Ensure that the questionnaire flows

Group the questions into clear categories as this makes the task of completing the survey easier for the participants.

11. Target your respondents carefully

Sometimes you will want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can't easily control the respondents consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents that don't match your target profile.

12. Allow the respondent to expand on their answer or make comments

Allowing respondents to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember though for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyze free text open ended responses.

13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured

If you have assured respondents that the survey is to be confidential you need to ensure that the collated data is not shared with anyone or used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained and any contact information deleted after the survey is complete.

14. Consider the benefits and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up specific complaints or match "pre" or "post" surveys. However in some cases allowing respondents to remain anonymous will allow respondents to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Carefully consider the best response format

Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. When creating your survey keep in mind that when analyzing the data radio buttons are easier to analyze than check boxes that offer the respondent multiple responses. Do not use a check box if a radio response would do.

16. Give the respondent an estimate as to how much time the survey will take to complete

If the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions then respondent drop out can occur. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so that the participants can choose the best time to complete the survey.

17. Provide respondents with the survey end date

Encourage respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise respondents as to the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Trial the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish the survey as a trial to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey carefully

Check and check again that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If practical get a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if no one else is available then take a break before checking again.

20. Thank the respondents

To complete surveys respondents need to invest their time and they should be thanked at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider incentives such as a reward of some sort.

Getting started is easy and there are many survey software websites to choose from.

Why Employee Satisfaction and Exit Surveys are Important

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. Organizations that have a highly motivated workforce can benefit enormously and having a workforce that is both motivated and productive should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.

Left unresolved employers run the risk of alienating their employees and events can then cause employee frustrations to explode resulting in employers finding themselves on the back foot, faced with problems that cannot be ignored.

Ideally employers would allocate the time to fully understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are too often themselves tied up with the day to day task of 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.


Dissatisfied & unproductive

There are a plethora of reasons why employees may become dissatisfied with their job that can result in them channelling their frustrations into demands for higher salaries and reduced hours. Employers 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.


It's not about money

The following is a list of common barriers that will prevent an organization from achieving an increase in productivity, none of which are likely to be resolved by increasing salaries or reducing hours:-

• Insufficient training
• Out of touch management
• Dated working methods
• Lack of proper tools and equipment

There have been many studies that have consistently revealed that financial reward is not the most important motivator for employees, providing an employee is being paid the market rate the employer would be wrong to think that the solution to all employee problems is through paying higher salaries.

Take the case of a single mother who is juggling a full time job with the need to look after three children. 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 company, may be more flexible working hours.


Communication is what it is all about

It is important for any company to encourage communication. A company where the management does not communicate well with their employees, or will wait for any problems to be raised, can often be deceived into thinking that they have a content workforce when they don’t. It only takes one small problem and one disgruntled employee to feel aggrieved for an entire workforce to develop a destructive 'them and us' attitude.


Improving communication

For very small organizations it may be manageable to have regular meetings between the employer and individual employees but for larger companies this would probably prove impractical.

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 provide a positive contribution, but their primary function is to inform and not discuss employee issues.


Maintaining 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.

Being prepared to consulate with employees should not be seen as a sign of weakness, a confident manager will take counsel from all quarters 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 a small problem unresolved and it can lead to a situation where a minor problem might just break the camel’s back and the mood of the employees change from positive to negative over night.


It's quick and easy

For most organizations online surveys represent a proactive and low cost solution. They can be created very quickly and for the majority of organizations, where most of the personnel have desktop computers, they are also quick to deploy direct to the individual.

Where not all of the personal have access to a computer there are various options available that will allow you to accommodate their responses such as providing a shared computer, conducting telephone surveys or as a last resort, a hardcopy survey where the hard-copy responses can be added to those who competed the survey online.


Job satisfaction

There are a number of elements that combined will provide an employee with job satisfaction, from company ethics, working environment, methodology and ethos to having good and effective management. Job satisfaction brings benefits through improved motivation and productivity from a workforce that feels that they are treated as individuals and not a commodity item.


Educate and inform

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 to the employees and get valuable feedback as to the best solution. It is rare in this situation that the workforce would appear negative; it is more likely they will feel informed and empowered and that might be enough to turn a potentially negative problem into a positive challenge that unites the workforce.


Exit surveys

Exit surveys are an ideal method for management to make sure that when people leave the organisation they are not leaving because of problems that could have been addressed and possibly resolved if they had been appreciated earlier. Identifying a problem may not be enough to prevent a person from leaving but it could lead to an unappreciated issue being resolved that may be all that is required to stop other key personnel from also deciding to leave.


Analysing the results

Having consulted with the workforce using an online survey the results are available for instant analysis. Common and specific problems can be easily identified and brought to the attention of senior management who will then have the opportunity to address the issues that have been raised.


Summary

Used regularly online surveys represent a simple and productive method of taking the pulse of an organisation and an easy way to establish a two way communication channel between employer and employee with the results providing management with vital, accurate and significant information.

For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template

For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template