Employee surveys can be an effective way for companies to receive feedback regarding issues such as their employees’ level of satisfaction, how they feel about business operations and identifying areas for improvement.

You can have surveys developed, administered and analyzed in-house, or your organization may wish to contact consultants to educate you on employee surveys basics. Another option is to utilize online survey software to assist you in developing a successful employee questionnaire.

Keys to successful employee questionnaires include:

1. Anonymity. In order to get a true measure of employee attitudes, employees need to know they can express their concerns without fear of retaliation.

2. Action. Management must recognize and address the concerns and ideas presented to them in the employee feedback forms.

3. Follow-up. Employees should complete follow-up employee satisfaction questionnaires to allow you to see how the company is resolving issues raised by employees, whether employee morale has improved and whether other issues have come up since the previous employee survey.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Research online the various types of employee surveys you can administer

Review the various types of surveys you can administer, and decide what you want your survey to focus on. Are you interested in employees' opinions regarding company benefits, workplace morale or performance of management? If you wish to obtain employee feedback regarding two or more issues, it may be beneficial to divide the questions into a series of two or more surveys. If a survey is too long, you risk the employee of feeling overwhelmed or growing bored and not completing the survey.

I recommend: SuperSurvey provides an overview of the various types of employee surveys. SurveyZ.com provides tutorials on many aspects of creating an online employee survey. The site also offers a library of free employee surveys that you can access and modify to suit your needs.

Consult employee survey providers to assist your company with employee information surveys

If finances permit, incorporate the resources of employee survey firms to assist in the development and administration of surveys. Hiring a consultant also assures employees that they have anonymity. This assurance will increase the likelihood that employees will complete the surveys with honesty because they have no fear of retaliation.

I recommend: Infosurv and Talentmap are companies providing employee surveys basics to companies through the development, administration and analysis of survey results. Both companies offer surveys relating to topics such as employee satisfaction, relations between management and employees, benefits, training and company policies and procedures.

Use survey software to create and administer your surveys if finances are limited

Survey software can guide you through the process of developing your own company surveys geared toward evaluating various aspects of employee attitudes.

I recommend: HR-Survey allows you to custom design your own employee surveys. SurveyMonkey.com not only provides a library of existing surveys templates covering a wide range of topics, but they also offer several sensible pricing plans that are based on survey needs.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Treat the survey as a corporate communications survey. Utilize surveys as a vehicle to create open communication between management and staff by reviewing and discussing survey results. One way to maintain communication is to establish a committee consisting of individuals representing every work group in the organization that routinely meets with management to discuss issues identified in survey results.

Employees are the most important asset at any company, and employee surveys are a great way to tap employee ideas and gauge worker satisfaction. Surveys can net you valuable insight on how to plan your growth, and stem small problems before they get big.

Employee surveys done right can deliver insight into what needs to be done to make your business better, and they show employees that their opinions matter. To conduct employee surveys properly, consider what you want to accomplish.

1. To gauge overall employee satisfaction, survey employees about things like benefits, workload, diversity or how well management communicates with employees.
2. To understand why employees are leaving, perform exit surveys. They can work better than exit interviews, which can stymie candid responses.
3. Understanding customers is a difficult task. For some important insights, survey employees who work directly with customers. After all, they are the ones who field calls and put out fires.
4. If you plan to implement a new process or switch insurance providers, survey employees before making any decisions. You’ll get valuable feedback and instill a sense of ownership and community within the company.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Figure out what you're going to ask and design the survey

These resources can help you word a survey properly to get the best responses.

I recommend: Knowledge Base Super Survey walks you through the fundamentals of building a good employee survey, while Question Pro provides free survey templates.

Build your own survey

These software solutions enable companies to easily survey employees.

I recommend: Survey Monkey is one of the cheapest and simplest online survey tools. Key Survey is more costly, but it's designed for personnel surveys. So is Success Factors' survey software.

Leave it to the pros

While wanting to undertake the entire survey process is noble, there are many companies out there dedicated to performing surveys and analyzing the results.

I recommend: Toolpack Consulting, ISR and National Business Research Institute are three well-known companies that provide services for small businesses.

Avoid mistakes

Investing time and resources into a survey that is misleading or incomplete is counter-productive. Here's a source that can save you frustration and money.

I recommend: Troubleshoot with Why Employee Surveys Fail.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  To get honest answers, let your employees know their answers will be anonymous and make sure that survey results are kept confidential.
• •  Too busy to host a full-blown survey? Try a quick poll. If your company has an intranet, you can do the quick poll online. If you want it to be low-tech, post a poll in the break room. These types of mini surveys can answer the big questions like where to hold the company picnic or what to sell in the vending machine.
• •  Keep surveys simple and short. If you pack too many items in one question, you won't get great results.

Employee surveys provide feedback to management as to how employees feel the organization is operating. Survey results indicate employee attitudes, level of motivation, opinions/suggestions regarding areas of improvement and their level of satisfaction.

Employees typically complete surveys in one of two ways: on paper or online. However, informal meetings between management and staff can also be an effective tool in gaining insight into employee concerns and attitudes if there is a level of comfort and trust between the two groups.

Making the most of employee surveys requires companies to:

1. Ensure the survey is manageable and can be completed in a relatively short time.

2. Give employees a limited amount of time to complete surveys. If the deadline for completing a survey is two or more weeks, completing the survey may slip their mind.

3. Develop surveys that require true/false, yes/no or priority ranking responses. These types of responses provide management a more accurate reading of employees’ morale and satisfaction versus questionnaires uses range/ratings responses.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Utilize the resources of online employee survey providers to administer effective surveys

Employee feedback forms must be short and to the point, yet contain enough questions for management to get a read on employees' morale, opinions and satisfaction. If surveys are overwhelming in terms of in-depth questions or overall length, employees will lose interest and fail to complete the employee questionnaires.

I recommend: SurveyZ.com offers a library of free employee surveys online that companies can administer directly or modify to suit their needs. Grapevine Surveys also has online survey templates that you can utilize free of charge for a limited number of responses. If your organization requires a larger amount of responses, they offer several pricing plans based on survey needs.

Use exit interviews as a measure of employee satisfaction

Exit interviews can be an invaluable resource in gaining insight into employee satisfaction. Ask your employees why they are leaving. Are they leaving to earn more money, receive better health benefits or is management to fault? Exiting employees can inform you of concerns remaining employees may have and offer suggestions as to how the organization can make improvements.

I recommend: Innovative HR Solutions and ExitInterviews.com are two employee survey firms that provide a list of commonly asked questions that organizations can tailor for their exit interview questionnaires.

Take action on the results of employee information surveys

It is important for management to discuss survey results with employees. Action (or strategic) plans allow organizations to prioritize issues identified in company surveys and develop a plan that will address and resolve the issues.

I recommend: Creative Metrics and Human Capital Institute provides guides for organizations to utilize in the development and implementation of action plans.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Administer employee satisfaction surveys periodically to gauge an organization's progress in addressing employee concerns identified in previous surveys. This type of corporate communications survey can not only monitor the organization's progress in resolving existing issues and concerns, but also identify any new concerns that may have developed.

Employee surveys are an effective way to find out how your employees feel about working in your organization. This type of survey is usually tied to business objectives and can provide management with a view of how well the company is being managed and what can be done to increase productivity and profitability. A survey can be developed and administered in-house or there are a number of consultants who can do this for you. The advantage of having a survey done by a knowledgeable and experienced consultant is that employees are more likely to be candid because of the confidentiality guarantees that can be made when it is outsourced.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Employee engagement

Employee engagement surveys is a distinct type of employee survey that assesses the level of commitment and involvement employees feel toward their work. This type of employee survey measures how enthusiastic employees are about their work and is usually linked to business outcomes. The theory behind this concept is that if employees feel highly engaged, they can better understand how to help an organization be more successful.

I recommend: BlessingWhite has more information on why this is important to measure as well as the five levels of employee engagement.

Exit surveys

Exit surveys, another very typical kind of employee survey, are usually given when an employee has tendered their resignation and measure what the organization should or could have done to keep the employee.

I recommend: Grapevine Surveys describes this type of survey and also explains the benefits of doing one of these in your organization.

Double barreled questions

Double barreled questions allow for different responses to subparts. In these questions you might answer yes to one part and no to another part. Employee surveys shouldn't have these types of questions as they are too confusing to the responder.

I recommend: There is more information on this type of question found on Blurtit.com.

Dichotomous questions

Dichotomous questions are yes or no questions and are a very common type of question found in employee surveys.

I recommend: QuestionPro Survey Software has a good discussion on how to use this type of question to get more in-depth information from respondents on employee surveys.

Open-ended questions

Open-ended questions are one of the most effective ways of finding out how someone feels about an issue, product or proposition. They typically begin with words such as 'Why,' 'How,' or 'Tell me about.' Commonly used at the end of an employee survey, these types of questions can often be the most enlightening for management when they really want to know what is on the minds of their employees.

I recommend: Good examples and a comparison between open-ended and closed-ended questions can be found at MediaCollege.com.

Normative database

A normative database contains information on relevant industries that are comparable on a variety of factors. Comparing one company's results from an employee survey to others in the same or a similar industry is a good way to determine how well the company is functioning and what could be done to improve it.

I recommend: The GelFond Group has normative databases on employee surveys for a variety of comparable companies.