Why conduct employee surveys?
As an organization, your biggest asset is your workforce: people are the backbone of any company, not machines or buildings. Just as we typically allocate time and money to maintaining and upgrading equipment, we also need to find out what our employees think-about their tasks, where they work, the future of their careers in the organization, and the leadership and effectiveness of the company as a whole. Here are the top 8 reasons why you should conduct regular employee surveys in your organization.
1. Give employees a voice
Surveys give employees the opportunity to share feedback with management. This is a great opportunity to turn the usual one-way downward communication into a two-way loop in which employees participate in both the planning and execution of company activities.
This is important because employees perceive both strengths and weaknesses in the company’s structure and processes. With a working knowledge of the organization’s daily workflow, employees can share valuable information on how these daily operations can be improved.
2. Positive Work Environment.
Conducting surveys also helps create and promote a positive work environment in your organization. Listening to employees’ opinions will show that management really listens to what they have to say and make them feel valued.
It also makes them feel more invested in the future of the company.
3. measuring employee engagement
The main reason for surveys is to measure employee engagement. Factors that can be measured include: salary/benefits, job satisfaction, career opportunities, leadership quality, work environment, work relationships, communication, accountability, recognition, and company policies.
4. Increase employee engagement
Once you’ve measured employee engagement, you can take tangible steps to improve engagement. The data collected from the employee survey will help you determine what specific factors should be prioritized for improvement.
For example, by finding out which employment benefits employees value the most and which ones they would like to receive, you can revise your benefits package to keep existing employees engaged and attract new and talented ones.
It’s also worth emphasizing that taking the survey in and of itself increases employee engagement by showing how much you care about their opinions.
5. Understand the atmosphere in the workplace
Employee surveys allow you to find out employees’ feelings, opinions, and perceptions about what’s going on in the organization. This is especially important for businesses going through a restructuring or merger/acquisition phase.
This is necessary to understand how employees are undergoing major changes and whether they remain committed to the company’s mission and vision.
Employee surveys also allow management to learn about working conditions, because no matter how hard managers work to create an ideal work environment for employees, only honest feedback from the employees themselves can give insight into how effective their efforts are.
6. Help employees make each other better
Employee opinion surveys can be structured as a Performance Review.
This provides a holistic, layered perspective and gives the employee a deep understanding of what colleagues think of them and what they think they should do better.
7. Solve problems before there are more of them.
Employee surveys are a way of “checking the temperature” of your organization, solving small problems from the root before they turn into disasters. For example, attracting and retaining talented employees is essential to business success.
Employee dissatisfaction, which leads to high employee turnover (and associated costs), can be quickly identified through surveys.
A common type of survey is the exit survey. Such surveys allow you to understand the reasons for an employee’s termination. This information allows you to assess what changes need to be implemented to prevent similar layoffs, as well as what training and development suggestions to offer.
8. Benchmarking
Conducting surveys allows for benchmarking. Data from the first survey is used as a baseline to then track changes over time.
Benchmarking also allows you to determine which problems are specific to the company and which are industry-specific. Surveys can also be used to indirectly survey other key stakeholders in the organization. For example, your employees can share helpful feedback on how loyal customers are to recently released products.
Original article: https://bit.ly/2yJmmkI