Employee Satisfaction Survey – As a Retention tool and a Hygiene factor

 What is employee engagement exactly? Alpha Measure defines employee engagement as the level of commitment and involvement an employee has towards their organization and its values.

The primary behaviors of engaged employees are speaking positively about the organization to coworkers, potential employees and customers, having a strong desire to be a member of the organization, and exerting extra effort to contribute to the organization’s success. Many smart organizations work to develop and nurture engagement. It is important to note, the employee engagement process does require a two-way relationship between employer and employee.

Why is Employee engagement so important?

An organization’s capacity to manage employee engagement is closely related to its ability to achieve high performance levels and superior business results. Engaged employees will stay with the company, be an advocate of the company and its products and services, and contribute to bottom line business success. Engaged employees also normally perform better and are more motivated. There is a significant link between employee engagement and profitability. Employee engagement is critical to any organization that seeks not only to retain valued employees, but also increase its level of performance.

Need for an ESS

There are two questions to ask yourself.

1. Do you have employees?
2. Do you know how they feel about their jobs and their work environments?

The need to survey is greater when one or more of the following factors are present.

1. Rapidly growing organization
2. High or growing turnover rate
3. Excessive rumors
4. Planned or recent organizational changes, including change of leadership.
5. Highly competitive industry
6. Contemplated changes in pay and benefits

Organizational environment where an ESS is used as a tool

As a hygiene factor: When the company environment is good and the morale is high, in this scenario looking at ESS can be very effective. These will be the expected downloads of the results of a survey in a good environment driven company. In case you are looking to meet either of the needs or have similar objective with a similar work scenario then a ESS would be most effective

• Implement value adding talent enhancement interventions – There should be a free and open environment for enhancement of employee talent. The employee should be treated as a key critical resource. These factors will help achieve higher productivity and lower turnover   

• Identifying the expectations of the employees about their career growth – every individual has a career goal that needs to be in correspondence to the organizational goal. In case the goals are not concurrent then there may be a disconnect among the employee expectations and companies offerings.

• Working on any innovative recommendation given by the employee who was surveyed – In a conducive working environment instead of more complaints there will be innovative suggestions put forth. Many of these suggestions could be implement able and can be very useful. These are the advantages compared to an aggrieved employee.

• Managers can work on the feedback more positively since they anyways get a boost at work – Feedback will be accepted with open arms

• It will boost the motivation level of the current managers  - Since the environment is conducive it means that most of the managers are being fare and just to their team. So the feedback will be positive. The flip side to this is that the non-performing managers will show out more categorically.

• It is proactive tool for retention – This is a proactive tool for retention. In this scenario the employee will feel wanted and heard. This is a great tool for keeping your employee engaged

As a retention tool

When then environment is not conducive the ESS is used as a retention tool to take corrective actions.

A standard employee retention surveys cover nearly every facet of employee retention, including:

Overall satisfaction
»  Corporate culture
»  Supervisor relations
»  Training
»  Pay and benefits
»  Work environment
»  Communications

Standard employee retention surveys are comprehensively designed to identify and isolate key independent and dependent variables.

Independent Variables	Dependent Variables
Supervisor relations	Overall satisfaction
Pay & benefits	Likelihood to recommend
Work environment	Likelihood to stay
Corporate communications	Employee loyalty

Research shows that employee attitudes are a better predictor of future employee behavior than past behavior. Employee retention surveys are specifically designed to accurately measure attitudes that affect real business metrics, like employee retention rates and turnover.

Employee retention survey results data is useless without insightful analysis.

Employee Satisfaction Survey – Pros and corns of different environment driven satisfaction survey:

In conducive environment	In Retention scenario
More impact	Lesser impact
Innovative ideas	More grievances
Employee motivation is high	Low employee motivation
Reactive	Proactive
Employee loyalty	Employee retention
Talent enhancement	Talent retention
Motivated managers	De-motivated employees
Good working environment	Poor working environment
Communication channels are open	Communication is informal and in form of rumors
Overall satisfied employee	Irrate employee

Process of the survey

Step 1

Selling the Survey to Management

It is common to understand the need for an ESS. But what is critical here to convince the need of ESS to the key managers who are going to be decision makers. The need for an ESS should ideally be a demand by the line managers. Very rarely this ideal situation arises and many times it is a task of the ESS team to build the idea.

So to use the right channel to communicate your ESS module should be a path such like where you interest the managers first and then speak through an open medium to the employees. Employees appreciate being asked for their opinions, and appreciate it all the more when survey results are acted upon. When changes are made that make employees feel better about coming to work, several benefits, aside from decreased turnover, can result. These include:

• More energetic employees,
• Increased productivity, as happier employees will tend to "go the extra mile,"
• Improved teamwork, as employees get to know each other better (since they are staying longer),

Higher quality products and services, due to a more competent, energized workforce and improved processes 

More satisfied customers, due to the higher quality products, services, and service levels provided by the energized workforce.

Step 2

Designing a ESS

Do’s:

·         Customized as per the company or department requirements

·         Periodically there should be reviews of the projects based on which the questionnaire can get some meat

·         There should be clear communication that the employee who has filled the questionnaire will be kept anonymous

·         To get valid information for building the questionnaire we should try to get the information from the key client groups who interact

·         After the first cut of the draft is launched there should be heavy marketing by the ESS team. They should hit the floor to meet the

·         If required it can be customized at a particular vertical

·         Involve the whole top management in the survey process

Step 3

Selecting the Methodology for Your Employee Satisfaction Survey

There are two primary methodologies for conduction employee satisfaction surveys -- Internet and paper-and-pencil

Step 4

Proofing and Testing the Employee Satisfaction Survey

After the test has been prepared it should be administered on a sample group to check its validity.

Step 5

Marketing Your Employee Satisfaction Survey to the employees

To market the ESS we need to:   

• Determining the target audience,
• Creating awareness of the product or service,
• Communicating the benefits of the product or service,
• Letting people know how to obtain the product or service.
• Assign a champion for the survey who will be mode of communicating the Ess to all

Step 6

Interpreting the Results of Your Employee Satisfaction Survey

It is astounding how much "data" can be created by a survey. Each scale question has multiple possible answers, each of which must be reported along with each item's average score; there are results for various subgroups, and there is statistical analysis. The data must first be packaged into information (via proper presentation of tables, graphs, and statistical analysis). Then, it must be properly interpreted. Different analysts may take different approaches. Here is one approach.

1. Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses.
2. Look for Patterns like inter departmental problems where the teamwork scored are low
3. Leverage Analysis. Limited company resources require companies to be able to quickly identify those areas that are most important (leverageable) to its employees. Leverage analysis provides a way of selecting areas to focus on, by calculating each area's leverage on a "bottom line" measure - overall satisfaction. The high-priority targets identified by quadrant analysis (see chart below) are those areas which meet two criteria:
1. They need improvement, and
2. Their improvement will strongly leverage the bottom line - overall satisfaction.

Step 7

Sharing the Results of an Employee Satisfaction Survey

It is critical to share results in a timely manner for at least two reasons:

1. Everyone must know where the organization as a whole and their individual areas stand if you are going to fully leverage the creativity and efforts of the employee base.
2. Employees need to know that the time they spent in completing the survey was worthwhile.  
3. In-built information-sharing culture.

The Basic Principles of Sharing Employee Satisfaction Survey Results

1. Be honest.
2. Be timely
3. Share appropriate information at each level.
4. Don't embarrass people in front of their peers
5. Discuss what happens next.

Respect confidentiality.

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