Employee Surveys

Guide to Conducting Employee Surveys

In-house surveys can help you harvest talent and boost the bottom line
By Traci Purdum

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.