- Communication: How good is the communication between staff and supervisors, supervisors and top management, across departments? Does everyone understand the mission and know their role in fulfilling the mission?
- Physical Environment: Do employees have the equipment they need? Good lighting? Chairs that don't give them a backache? Do they feel the organization tries to make their workplace comfortable, functional, and safe?
- Managerial Support: Do employees respect their manager? Do they feel safe asking questions? Are managers more likely to criticize than praise?
- Collaboration: Are employees involved in finding solutions that move the organization forward? Is there a collaborative and cooperative spirit? Do employees feel they are part of the team?
- Compensation: How do employees rate pay and benefits? Do they feel compensation is better or worse than elsewhere? Which features of the benefit package are most valued by employees?
- Training: Do employees find training beneficial? Do they think it could be improved? Are they comfortable with their own knowledge and skills?
Valuable insights from your employees
Employers want employees who are fully engaged, take pride in their work and move the organization forward. Employees want a workplace where they have a sense of belonging and a feeling of accomplishment; where they enjoy coming to work and feel good about what they do. But the wishes of employees and the good intentions of management are not enough to create the finely-tuned workplace.
Of course the workplace is more difficult to tune than any machine. There are all the tasks that constitute workflow, plus the bureaucracy, the various levels of employment and management, and there are the "human factors"; the attitudes, feelings, and aspirations of all the people involved.
A confidential and independent employee survey is a great way to listen to your employees. A survey can be used to examine only one issue, but it's more typical to ask questions covering the multiple factors that affect the workplace environment and employee performance. Here are just some of the possible factors:
A breakdown in any of these areas is enough to clog the machinery. As an example, a survey of department heads of a large corporation (as reported in The McKinsey Quarterly) showed a great variety of opinion as to the overall mission of the organization. How does the organization move forward when there is disagreement about where it is supposed to be going?
Employees may worry that an Employee Survey is a way for management to spy on them. An employee survey can’t be effective unless it is independent (performed by an outside firm) and confidential (management never sees the results from individual employees).
If your organization relies on a high standard of service quality to succeed, it is essential to create a satisfying work experience for your employees. An employee survey will give you the information you need to do that, and ultimately build your organization’s reputation as a great employer.
