Why do employee satisfaction surveys matter?
Employee churn attacks a company’s profitability ruthlessly, leaving no prisoners. It’s arguably one of the most disruptive influences on business equilibrium. Around the world, senior management agrees that the following elements to the heart and soul of employee retention:
- Job satisfaction
- The use of a well-structured job satisfaction survey
- Understanding of employee satisfaction survey questions
A satisfied employee may not be an engaged employee
An employee who defines job satisfaction as doing the least amount of work for a regular paycheck is not engaged. Conversely, an employee aiming to take on more responsibility and develop skills inside a business is engaged, but may not be satisfied.
It’s doubtful if any engaged employee looking for ongoing upward mobility is ever 100% job satisfied. However, some job contentment is worth sacrificing if job actualization energizes employee motivation and boosts productivity. An employee satisfaction survey (or job satisfaction survey as it’s often called) should provide insight into the balance between job involvement and happiness in the workplace. Why?
- It’s a well-documented fact that replacing an employee costs, on average, $15,000.
- Companies should aim to make employees brand ambassadors, spreading the good word about their employee experience (EX).
- Leaving the business with positive EX generally creates a desire to work for the same employer again.
- On the other side of the coin, employees with frustrations, anger, and general discontent are brand detractors. As such, they can create significant harm. Bad news travels further and faster than new.
- If employees hang in with their jobs, suppressing dissatisfaction, their negative vibes wash over others – thus eroding peer morale and spurring others to leave.
- The domino-effect of disenchanted employees may stretch to the marketplace. After all, all human resources are there to serve customers, and disgruntled employee attitudes tend to rub off on the latter with negative results.
The big question is, how can managers know whether or not the EX is moving in the right direction? How can they tell if the things they do to keep employees engaged are doing the job? The overwhelming answer to these two questions is this:
- Structure a Job satisfaction survey with professionally derived Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions.
- There’s nothing like a job satisfaction questionnaire to dig down and discover underlying currents running through the employee ranks – good and bad.
- An employee job satisfaction survey conducted regularly keeps HR’s finger on the pulse. It can reverse negativity whenever it rears its ugly head.
Regularity depends on the degree of HR disturbance one notices. Still, it should range between monthly and quarterly to ensure stability and keeping things on track. Specific surveys are telling with only an annual incidence.
Some may think it’s a real hassle to implement a customer satisfaction analysis program, but nothing is further from the truth. There are affordable software programs that enable one to integrate these surveys seamlessly into the system without disturbing the normal workflow. Digital administration with complete anonymity is as easy as 1-2-3.
Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions – what are they, and how do you ask them?
Numerous employee survey templates are available from companies like SoGoEX that come with sample employee survey questions and focus entirely on employee motivation. A work satisfaction survey derived from professionals’ resources in the field will elevate the standard of your employee opinion surveys – demonstrating respondent feelings and thoughts you never imagined possible. The template content follows strict rules that erase bias and one-sided viewpoints from the evaluation:
Rule # 1
Ensure that your employee satisfaction survey questions communicate with the audience so that they don’t feel or believe there’s manipulation. Avoid company buzzwords to make questions look direct, honest, and objective.
Rule # 2
Divide your questions into three groups:
- Workplace dynamics and culture
- Management interactions
- Job specifics
The following are examples of each category to give you a feel for the strategy. It will help you zone in on the employee survey templates that will work best for your business:
A. Workplace dynamics and culture
Here is a mind-blowing statistic – only 24% of employees feel significant colleague-connection. In comparison, 74% of employees believe that such connection ties to better employee engagement. There’s a considerable gap between vision and reality.
So the first question that jumps out from this is, ” Do you feel close to your coworkers?”
Another cultural issue relates to adaptability as the company grows and diversifies. Therefore ask, “Are you encouraged by the company’s latest changes?
B. Management interactions
Typical questions are:
- How receptive are your managers to your feedback?
- Do you think they value your contribution?
- How communicative are your managers on the work done?
Employees are sensitive to management responses and reactions as projects and teamwork progress. Certain things are clear:
- Employees believe their working experiences close to the coalface create good ideas – helping the company significantly if accepted. When they see these adopted, it creates a sense of belonging, but motivation goes through the roof when it comes to recognition.
- Praising the employee’s performance to include family and peers as an audience may cement an unbreakable bond with the company.
- At the other end of the spectrum, it’s an alarming observation that four out of every ten employees who don’t respect their managers, interview quickly for another job.
- The reality is that slightly over 25% of employees feel genuinely valued by their supervisors or higher management. It’s a dismal metric that requires upliftment to nullify churn and promote employee retention.
Management culture is undeniably linked to employee retention
If employees sense that the supervisor’s goals are unaligned with their own, distrust builds in no time. Research indicates that management transparency is somewhat lacking, even responses directly from managers themselves. Between 22% and 39% of managers and employees combined think that there’s acceptable management openness. Keeping cards close to one’s chest is great for poker games but doesn’t gain ground in the workplace.
- Collaborative managers are appreciated far more than “bossy” bosses.
- The questions asked must penetrate these distinctions to understand if management is authoritative, collaborative, or dismissive of employees as valued organizational members.
So the questions are easy to construct?
- How transparent is management?
- Does management trust you with the responsibility you deserve?
- Do they overwork you with tasks that are understimulating?
It’s putting it all together that’s quite the challenge.
C. Job specifics
All the satisfaction questionnaires so far have been pointed at the environment around the job itself. Inspirational managers and encouraging peers can’t get you all the way to motivational satisfaction. If the corporate and management climate is pleasant, but the work tedious, unfulfilling, and dead-end, there’s bound to be HR hiccups. Satisfying work depends on the degree of latitude for self-expression, problem-solving, and the creativity it allows.
The resources provided to support the employee’s efforts individually or as a team member count a lot. Repetitive work has become a job satisfaction challenge solved by AI and robotic technology. Forward-looking companies focus on rechanneling human resources to do most of the thinking tasks.
Frequently, management and employees see the same things in a completely different light. Perception gaps result in shocks as resignations hit left right and center, and employee churn takes hold. Historically speaking, more than half the employees can’t see any clear advancement path, according to reliable HR research. Close to 67% hold little hope for promotion.
How much are you doing to inject job descriptions with the power to keep employees engaged? The following questions are often revealing:
- Do you find your work meaningful?
- Do you feel your career is growing?
- Can you see yourself rising on the corporate ladder?
- Are your duties and responsibilities well defined?
- How happy are you in your work? This one may not tell you about all the causes, but it’s a barometer question taking the employee contentment temperature.
Sogolytics and your Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions
Sogolytics is in the business of developing a job satisfaction questionnaire that’s right for all-sized companies from their library of employee survey templates. They can source probes that touch employee motivation from every angle. Get the professionals to harness the software that helps program all your surveys for the best results.
HR needs specialist expertise to outline a routine of sending out a satisfaction survey at least once a year. It’s one of the most penetrating insights on employee engagement and satisfaction. Sogolytics makes it look easy. You can get substantive results by asking one survey question at a time, and not bombarding employees with distracting questionnaires that look intrusive.
