With the need for many businesses to be more streamlined and productive a company can sometimes find itself with many of their employees working under pressure that can then lead to low moral and possible result in a high staff turnover. The benefits of a company having a highly motivated workforce can be considerable and the two goals of 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.
In an ideal world employers would take time to understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are often themselves tied up day to day fighting their own fires.
Online surveys provide employers with an affordable and efficient method to automate the process of collating the information and storing it in a format that allows for real-time analysis there by helping the management towards the goals of achieving 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. Managers 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.
Not just about the 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
- Out of date working methods
- Lack of proper tools and equipment
Many studies have shown that salaries are rarely the number one priority of employees and providing an employer is paying market rate they would be fundamentally wrong to think that paying higher salaries is the answer to all employee problems.
Take the case of a single mother who is juggling a full time job with the need to look after a child. 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 business, may be more flexible working hours.
Good communications
It is in all companies interests to encourage good 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 can take only one small problem and one employee to feel aggrieved for an entire workforce to develop a destructive ‘them and us’ attitude.
Improving communication
Ideally management would hold one to one meetings with each employee but in practice this would only seem practical for very small businesses.
Regular meetings between management and worker representatives are good in theory but can degenerate into talking shops and slowly lose their purpose as the participants from both sides become familiar with one another and the meetings run the risk of being hijacked by the more extreme personalities.
Suggestion boxes can have their value but they can be viewed as token efforts by management as they wait for personnel to highlight a problem.
Newsletters represent a positive step but they only offer one way communication and their primary function is to inform and not discuss employee issues.
Keeping the initiative
Conducting employee satisfaction surveys on a regular basis you are able to ask each employee specific questions and present 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 retaining the initiative and conducting a survey the employer is able to tackle problems from a position of strength as opposed to waiting for problems to arise and develop out of proportion.
Leave small problems unresolved and a small problem might just break the camel’s back and at the drop of a hat change the mood of the workforce from positive to negative.
It is 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 combined elements that will contribute towards an employee’s job satisfaction, including company ethics, working methodology, ethos and environment to having decisive and effective management. Job satisfaction brings benefits through improved productivity and motivation from a workforce that feels that they are treated as individuals and not a commodity item.
Educate and inform
Online surveys can be used to educate and disseminate information on to the workforce, ensuring that the ‘message’ is consistently delivered and does not suffer from the Chinese whisper phenomenon where a message can become distorted as it is passed on.
An online survey can explain to the employees a difficult situation and get valuable feedback as to the best solution. It is rare in this situation that the workforce would appear negative and more likely that they will feel informed and empowered that might in itself turn a potentially negative problem into a positive challenge that unites the workforce.
Exit surveys
Exit surveys are a good way for management to ensure that when people leave the organisation they are leaving for the right reasons and not due to reasons that if appreciated earlier could have been addressed and resolved. If a problem has been identified it may be too late to prevent an individual from leaving but if addressed it could prevent other key personnel leaving for the same reasons.
For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template