What you can gain from an Employee Attitude Survey?
Aim to gain understanding, better relationships with employees and customers and aim to develop those accounts through your people.
It is in the interest of all businesses to recruit, develop and retain good people who are company assets as well as employees. When employees become dissatisfied, there is nearly always a combination of reasons rather than a single reason. Conducting an employee attitude survey will give insight and understanding into a number of key areas. Also it is a good idea to conduct employee attitude surveys regularly to emphasise the need for continuous improvement.
The best way to start is to divide the survey into headings. Here is a good example of the headings and also the flow of the survey:
Attendance
Performance
Customer Satisfaction
Reward and Recognition
Training and Development
Market Share
Work-Life Balance
Communication
Profit
Every part of an employee attitude survey must be open and has to make sense. Whilst the individual contribution is confidential, there is always great interest in the final analysis of this type of survey. The perception is that a company who seeks this level of information will act on it. Management need to respond quickly to the analysis with an overview of what changes they will aim to implement with timescales. This is hugely reassuring to a workforce who may feel that what they think is irrelevant. However, if no action is taken, then some cynicism may well set in.
In terms of method, a web based or a pop up survey works best. Use plenty of closed and multiple choice questions to help with the reporting, and with these approaches you will be able to gather a great deal of information very quickly. Also look at incentives such as an entry in a free prize draw to make sure that the survey is completed within a certain timeframe.
Think ahead and where the employee attitude survey may raise issues such as stress, then use subsequent questionnaires to probe further, thereby increasing the employee's feeling of bring valued - please take a look at Stress Management for an example questionnaire.
