Companies that conduct employee surveys but fail to take action on the results could seriously damage employee commitment, according to research which questioned 3500 employees.
In organisations where employee surveys are conducted regularly but no follow-up action is taken, only 4 in 10 employees report a high degree of commitment, according to the research by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
In contrast, where issues are addressed in response to survey results, more than 8 in 10 employees say that they are highly committed to their organisation.
Dr Patrick Gilbert, Head of Organisational Research and Effectiveness at Mercer, said: “Organisations that fail to follow up on employee surveys not only waste their resources but, more importantly, they risk destroying employee commitment. Though a number of factors are always at play in building staff loyalty, organisations that take action in response to survey results are sending a clear signal to staff – we value your views and seek your input in guiding our decisions.”
He added: “It is ironic that, even when considerable time and resources have been spent on survey follow-up, companies often fail to communicate their efforts to staff. This is a real missed opportunity to use the survey to build motivation and commitment.”
2 Responses
Employee survey questionnaire
I would not recommend trying to use a standard questionnaire or one developed for another organisation. It is likely to produce misleading results or to demotivate your people who will easily spot that it does not relate specifically to their issues.
The best way to go about a survey is to conduct some qualitative research, preferably using confidential interviews of the management team and a cross section of the rest of the organisation. This will yield a great deal of useful information and will be highly credible to your staff. The interview findings can further be used to decide what items to include in the questionnaire, to verify the interview findings and to collect data by category, eg department, location, length of service, etc. You can also assess the quality of service being delivered internally by each department. The questionnaire should include an importance scale (three point) as well as a satisfaction scale (seven point).
The results from questionnaires requiring perceptual responses should be subject to statistical analysis to determine confidence intervals for each category, otherwise results can be misleading. Glad to help if I can. Email pburton@statec.co.uk.
Employee Surveys/Questionnaires
Does anyone have an employee survey/questionaire they would like to share? It could be on any topic in the HR spectrum. Our company employs 520 people in the IT/support services field.
Thanks