We now globally understand the importance of employee satisfaction. Organizations know that satisfied employees feel like putting in more effort than what is expected from their job profile. Satisfied customers are more engaged and motivated at work and greatly contribute to greater productivity and innovation at the workplace.
It may seem obvious for businesses to be concerned about their employee’s satisfaction. Every company should ensure employees feel job satisfaction and are engaged in their work.
What is an Employee Satisfaction?
Employee satisfaction is about how content employees are with their job. The factors that concern job satisfaction can be company values, salary and benefits, work-life balance, bosses, and how comfortable they are with the people in their team or their bosses. Employee satisfaction is also affected by tangible and non-tangible components related to the job.
Employee satisfaction results in employee engagement, and you can not ask for engagement at work if the employees are not satisfied. For example, when the employees feel satisfied with their entire work experience, they feel like going that extra mile for the company, known as employee engagement.
On the other hand, when people are not happy working at their job, they do the bare minimum, and if they are dissatisfied, they often develop a careless attitude that can harm the company’s reputation.
The employer has to work on various factors. It is assumed that the salary is the only reason people work at their job, but that does not mean that it leads to job satisfaction. You have to ensure that the staff comfortable with the work they are doing, both the nature of the work and the amount of time and effort it takes.
In addition to that, taking care of the present needs is not enough for job satisfaction you need to provide future growth opportunities to ensure that employees will stay in their present company longer.
What are Employee Satisfaction Surveys?
The job satisfaction survey or employee satisfaction survey is about how happy your employees feel while working for the company. Instead of guessing how effective your efforts are towards employee experience, it’s best to ask them directly.
That way, you can check the ground reality instead of indulging in assumptions and improve on the factors that need your attention. Job satisfaction surveys are the fastest way to measure employee satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Why Should You Measure Employee Satisfaction?
Measuring employee satisfaction is important as it shows employee happiness which is a prime factor in the productivity of any organization. The employee satisfaction survey is not just about measuring satisfaction and rejoicing in success but also detecting dissatisfaction. Employees who are not content with their job can’t be productive at work.
Those employees who are unhappy with their job or resent working in the company for one reason or another, are not just unproductive but can even be toxic for others. They are likely to indulge in gossip sessions and unhealthy office politics. Dissatisfied employees play an important role in spoiling the work environment. They also ignite complaining attitudes in their peers through their constant negativity.
The employee satisfaction survey questions help you identify the employees that can be harmful to the company culture so that you can address their issues and tackle the situation before it goes out of control.
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Benefits of the Employee Satisfaction Survey
The motive of employee satisfaction surveys is to find out the level of job satisfaction among employees. That is a good start to form a strategy for employee satisfaction in the future. In addition to that conducting an employee satisfaction survey brings you many benefits some of which are listed below.
➔ Direct Feedback
The major inspiration for conducting employee satisfaction surveys is to get direct employee feedback. Annual employee surveys and periodic employee surveys both provide the company with honest feedback from the staff. You don’t need to rely on the opinions of the managers to understand how your employees feel about the company’s culture, their team members, or any other factor you want to know about.
Employee satisfaction surveys can be designed to motivate employees to share their honest opinion. Employee surveys can help you significantly improve employee satisfaction as it gives you precise information about the factors you need to act on.
For example, often employees spend a lot of time with tools that do not support their productivity or slow them down at work. The survey will help you find such gaps.
More than half of the employees choose to suffer in silence rather than speak up. They might fear attracting negative attention from their manager or worry that their team members think they are complainers. This poor communication leads to some crucial issues if not resolved quickly.
➔ Increased Productivity
As we all know, the primary purpose of the employee satisfaction survey is to understand where you are lacking the employee engagement or employee satisfaction effort so you can improve it to do something that increases employee satisfaction.
Employee satisfaction survey helps you to easily identify the pain points that the employee struggling with. Once you start to work on it, the productivity of the employees improves as a natural byproduct.
We all know that the productivity of any organization is the total output that the staff has. So conducting an employee satisfaction survey helps you increase the satisfaction levels among your employees, it also helps you to improve the productivity of an entire company.
➔ Employee Morale
Employee satisfaction surveys are also good for employee morale. If employees feel valued at work, they are likely to experience job satisfaction and employee engagement. That makes it essential that employers make their company’s culture more inclusive to all employees. Employees tend to connect more to the projects where their opinions are asked for and their contribution is valued.
Employee survey or pulse surveys makes an employee more involved and valued. Employee survey asks employees their opinion on various aspects of work. That communicates to them that they are a valuable part of the company’s mission. With higher morale, the employee is more motivated at work, that in the long run, helps to increase the productivity of the company.
➔ Employee Retention
Employee satisfaction survey helps you to increase employee retention at the firm by keeping you in communication. It is good to send out your first employee satisfaction survey as soon as they join the company. That way, you get an idea about their expectations from the employers, and it helps you improve employee engagement as well as employee satisfaction.
Good employee retention means less hiring effort, less cost, more in-house experienced talent, and knowledge conservation for the company. When employee survey responses are analyzed frequently, you get the necessary information that you need to reduce employee turnover at the company.
Employee engagement survey questions can also be part of your satisfaction surveys. That way you get the data on both employee engagement and satisfaction in a single survey.
How to Conduct a Survey
Creating and conducting an employee survey may sound simple but you need to plan it meticulously. You need to consider a few crucial factors to ensure that the survey questions achieve the intended purpose.
For example, the most important thing about conducting a survey is the goal of gauging the level of employee satisfaction. All the factors that make good employee satisfaction surveys revolve around our primary goal. Below we will discuss the things to be considered for conducting employee surveys.
➔ Set the Objective
The first thing to do while you plan to conduct surveys is to determine the objective of the employee satisfaction surveys.
- Do you feel like your employees feel satisfied with every element of their workplace?
- What is the result that you are aiming for?
- Do you need employee feedback for the work culture and types of opportunities?
OR
- Are you trying to find out if they are satisfied with the recent changes made in the perk they get in your company?
The motive of employee satisfaction surveys can vary from time to time. Your survey needs to find out what an employee thinks about a particular aspect of your organization. Whether you want employee feedback for one of the factors or overall employee satisfaction, you need to decide in advance.
Once you set an objective for an employee satisfaction survey it acts like a guiding point and other factors in your survey can be determined accordingly.
➔ Frequency of Survey
Employee satisfaction survey has to be taken more frequently than most 0f companies do today. When you arrange only an annual employee survey or make it twice a year it’s not a great way to get feedback.
Like everyone else, employees suffer from recency bias. When the duration between the employee satisfaction surveys is too long you will get the idea about the amount of employee satisfaction only at the moment that the survey was conducted.
To understand what level of employee satisfaction your employees go through you need to make it frequent. Annual surveys are good but when you want to survey employees for the level of engagement and satisfaction, you should do it more frequently.
HR professionals should also ensure that you don’t cause survey fatigue by releasing too many pulse surveys or forcing staff to submit their responses. Successful companies do frequent surveys and get the right response scale. The key is to stay tuned to how employees feel while working for you.
➔ Format
The survey format is essential to get the results that you want. The format of the survey contains multiple things such as a sequence of questions, answer options, and much more. The format has to be determined with the objective and the audience of your survey in mind too, so that you can get the data accurately.
The order of questions is important for responders to make sense of what exactly the employee satisfaction survey intends to find out. In addition to that the right sequence helps to encourage better responses. That makes it more comprehensive for your employees.
Keep your survey easy to understand for everyone and it’s best to avoid complex language. The simpler you keep it the better its for employees to give their responses. Make the survey close to the objective and concise in the format.
➔ Survey Method
It’s crucial to choose the right method for employee satisfaction surveys. You need to consider elements such as,
- Number of employees that are going to participate
- Time span within which you intend to gather the result
- Ease to submit the survey response
- Nature of the questions included in the survey
- Ease to distribute surveys among the employees
You can use multiple methods to gather the survey responses it can be a combination of two methods if the nature of the survey needs it. It can be a good idea to give employees two survey methods to choose from so they can select according to their convenience.
➔ Encourage Response
As an employer, you should also have a strategy to get maximum responses from the employees. There is no point in having an amazing survey for employee satisfaction if no one is responding.
For improving employee satisfaction, it’s essential to get as many responses as possible so we can get enough precise information to take action. A company should encourage employees to submit their responses honestly as soon as possible.
It’s better to keep the survey anonymous and inform employees the same so they can respond to the survey without fear of judgment or harsh treatment. Use all the communication mediums that you have to inform and promote the survey.
You can use the official company email or news board on the employee self-service portal so that it catches employee attention. Give employees frequent reminders for the survey so they can submit their responses in their free time. You can also offer some rewards or incentives to motivate employees to take the survey.
➔ Show in Action
May it be an employee satisfaction survey or an employee engagement survey you need to share the results and findings with the employees. A great part of having satisfied employees is showing that you care about your staff. Provide them with what they need, may it be health benefits or career development opportunities.
You can share the findings of employee satisfaction surveys with your employees. You can do this over an email or make it a nice presentation to the employees. You can share not only the findings but also the steps you are going to take to improve employee satisfaction in the future based on the survey results.
It’s best to act on the employee feedback you get, that way you can convert an unsatisfied employee into a satisfied employee. When your action shows that you have a clear understanding of the employee satisfaction survey results you take a major step forward towards improving employee satisfaction. All the employees get a sense of being a team member as they feel included and valued by their company
How to Design Survey Questions?
The next step is to design the employee satisfaction surveys including types of questions, sequence of questions as well as how to phrase the questions.
➔ Types of Questions
Your survey questions can be open-ended, close-ended, or a combination of both types of questions. The form of question you choose depends on your motive such as finding employee satisfaction and the other aspect of employee experience.
▸ Close Ended
When it comes to close-ended questions you have to provide answer choices in the form of range or scale, yes or no, multiple options where a single option or multiple right answers are possible. The nature of the answer choices depends on the nature of your question.
The close-ended questions help you identify trends and patterns from the results you gather. When it comes to options for the answers before moving ahead check that you have included all the possible answers in the answers. You can add the ‘Others’ in your answers to ensure you know that the answer your employees wanted to give is not in the options your survey proposed.
▸ Open Ended
You can also choose to use the open-ended question where your employees can express their responses in their own words. That will make the results more detailed for you. You can use open-ended questions where you as looking for precise information which is unique for every employee so you can’t put in a predetermined answer format.
➔ Clarity and Comprehension
Phrase the question that is comprehensive so that your employees are comfortable answering it and do not feel like they need to ask another question to understand what is being asked in the question.
Use the language and words that your target audience is comfortable with. Remember that employee satisfaction surveys need not be written in beautiful language but in comprehensive language.
➔ Order of Survey Questions
A question can lead to another question, so ensure that you get the sequences right and there is enough context for responders. That will make your results comprehensive for you and relevant to the topic.
Ensure that all your survey questions are in a logical order and are not likely to make responders go back and forth to make sense of them. Do you feel like there are too many follow-up questions for a single question and you can’t keep all of those next to each other? You can consider the following options.
- Rephrasing questions so they can be independent
- Removing the question if it’s not that significant
- Creating a separate section or a survey for the concerned topic.
Mistakes to Avoid
Here are some common mistakes that you need to avoid while crafting an employee satisfaction survey.
➔ Be Open
Don’t come across like you are forcing your employees to answer in a certain way. That is likely to make employees feel less satisfied with the organization rather than measuring their satisfaction. Keep your own bias aside while phrasing survey questions and answers.
➔ Right Words
Ensure that the words you use while drafting your employee satisfaction surveys are not confusing for your employees. It is important to phrase your survey questions with the right words to avoid any type of confusion.
➔ Be Inclusive
Make your employee feel included in the survey. Ensure that your questions do not come across as if they are being targeted toward a particular group of people. Because doing so will make it look like that you only care about employee satisfaction of a limited set of staff.
Make your questions relevant to everyone. That will help you find out the employee satisfaction level for an entire organization. And considering everyone while drafting your questions will also make everyone feel valued.
➔ Don’t be Personal
You need to ensure that your survey questions do not invade the privacy of your responders. If you are asking some personal questions in your survey ensure that the information is necessary for the results.
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Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions
You need to be conscious of the survey questions you chose for your employees. As employee satisfaction levels are affected by the various aspects of the work culture you need to ensure that your questions address these factors. Ask a few questions employees about various topics. Listed below are just a few examples of employee satisfaction survey questions.
1. Do you feel that you have all the resources that you need to do your work productivity?
2. Is there something that the company can do to assist your personal growth at the workplace?
3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do you feel working with your team members?
4. Do you think you have a healthy employer-employee relationship at the company?
5. What are your suggestions for improving workplace culture?
6. Are you satisfied with the career growth opportunities offered to you at work?
7. Do you feel at ease with pursuing your career goals at the company?
8. Does your present work requirement hamper your work-life balance?
9. What aspects of our workplace culture bother you?
You can also have some of the employee satisfaction survey questions addressing the subjects such as job role, job performance, personal accomplishment, and much more.
When it comes to employee satisfaction surveys there is no fixed format that you can follow. You can also use some employee satisfaction survey templates and modify them according to your needs.
It is always best to give various response options such as response scales, multiple-choice options, or even descriptive answers depending on the nature of employee satisfaction survey questions.
Summary
Employee satisfaction and engagement are closely related and essential for the productivity of the organization. Define your objective and keep the survey simple and inclusive. Encourage responses and act on the data you get in the survey to increase employee satisfaction at your company.
