Why Use Employee Surveys

Do Employees Really Want to Be Surveyed?

Studies show that employee surveys can be very important and desired by most staff members. Contrary to any grumbling that management hears, employees, in general, like surveys. The primary reason: Someone is asking them for their opinion, thoughts, and feedback. Surveys provide an injection of empowerment and, to some level, control.

People tend to take surveys seriously, too. They typically conduct thoughtful consideration of their answers, even for surveys submitted anonymously. Employees want to be “heard,” they believe their ideas have value, and they appreciate the mere fact that they were asked.

What Employee Surveys Can Do for a Company

Management often spends large sums of money with third parties to generate ideas and suggestions for a wide variety of operational, financial, and marketing issues. While most of the time money and effort involved in third party surveys, reports, and consultations is well spent, management often overlooks an equally effective group: their workforce.

Regardless of the typical education level, years of experience, or developed expertise of staff, there typically is no other individual or group that has their level of operational familiarity with your company. Asking employees for opinions on current company conditions or ideas for future corporate improvement can yield wonderful benefits.

There are countless recorded examples of employees, regardless of their titles and responsibility levels, making straightforward suggestions that improve company operations, branding, controls, image, and marketing efforts. Simply constructed surveys can generate many wonderful performance enhancement ideas that management would not otherwise receive.

Most employees are reluctant to be proactive in submitting unsolicited ideas to management for fear of being ignored – or possibly even punished for suggesting improvements. Some employees worry that their suggestions for improvement might be considered as a criticism of management.

Numerous studies have shown that restricting employee feedback is often an operational and staff relations mistake. Yet, the essence of the term “feedback” implies that there was a “feed,” as in asking your employees to comment. Most employees are much more comfortable in voicing their ideas and suggestions when management asks for this input. Results can be very productive.

Nevertheless, many companies still neglect to ask staff for their feedback. The highly respected Opinion Research Corp. recently published the results of a survey of surveys. They concluded that many businesses were not getting the benefit of useable feedback and ideas from their employees. Over 40% of companies surveyed conducted no employee surveys at all. Of those that did, over 45% stated they made no changes as a result of the feedback they gathered, even though some ideas were good.

Conversely, over 80% of employees who completed company surveys felt good about being asked and believed their personal performance improved as a result. The only negative: Around 25% felt that changes made because of employee ideas were not communicated to staff effectively.

How Do Employee Surveys Improve Performance

1. They promote feelings of empowerment. Most employees sincerely appreciate being asked for feedback. They believe that offering suggestions and ideas, particularly if their feedback is used by the company, gives them satisfaction, professional pride, and control.
2. They display a concern by management for their employees. Regardless of responsibility level, all employees want management to appreciate their efforts and value to the business. Staff surveys indicate that management indeed respects the effort and value of their employees.
3. They indicate that management is dedicated to improving job satisfaction. Job satisfaction continually moves up the list of employee desires from their workplace. Asking employees for feedback (and the implied commitment of their employer to implement valuable ideas) is an important component of the job satisfaction equation.
4. They indicate that the company really wants to improve operations, which may translate to increased job security. This psychological stimulant alone may generate improved employee productivity and performance. Employees often believe that, even in a business climate of mergers, acquisitions, and staff reductions, by asking for their opinions and making operating improvements, their employer is stronger and better able to survive and prosper.
5. They often result in improved staff performance because they generate excellent ideas. Typically much closer to the pulse of the company, its products and customers, employees often have a valuable perspective on operating improvements that are overlooked by senior management.

The psychological benefits of employee surveys are often just as important as the concrete improvements that are generated. Just as many employee concerns are based on non-quantitative elements – favoritism in the workplace, type of benefit package, pleasant working conditions, etc. – a number of components of maximum performance are psychological (how they “feel” about their company and job) and not numeric (salaries, pay increases, incentives, bonuses, etc.).

An employee survey is an example of generating improved performance just by offering this “benefit,” regardless of the actual outcome and responses. While results prove that gathering up your pile of surveys and discarding them is an error in judgment, your company should enjoy short-term increased productivity merely because they asked for this feedback. To ensure long-term positive results, management should effectively communicate their appreciation of these employee ideas and suggestions. Should any operational changes be made as a result of one or more of these ideas, the company should concentrate on making every employee aware that management implemented this improvement as a direct result of information staff provided in the survey. Everyone wins!