Employee Satisfaction Survey: Everything You Should Know

Employee satisfaction survey is a tool that companies use to gauge the levels of satisfaction of their employees within the company and their work. Such a survey helps the leadership get insights about their employees and helps them take steps to improve employee engagement.

Great Place to Work®, present in over 60 countries globally, studies the work culture of over 10000 organizations every year.

Through our extensive research we have found that the best and most successful organizations have the highest levels of connection, trust, care and emotional safety. Broadly speaking, it is safe to say that these are some pivotal elements that comprise employee satisfaction at the workplace and are also key drivers of employee engagement. If you are looking to assess employee satisfaction, these
are some crucial components to evaluate.

1. Maintains confidentiality

Many employees do not want to reveal their identity and feel comfortable answering a survey rather than a personal interview/interaction. Anonymity often gives people more confidence to share honest feedback. An employee satisfaction survey is therefore important.

2. Retains Employees

Employee satisfaction surveys help you identify and solve employees’ problems and keep employee engagement high. Satisfied employees tend to stay longer in a company. Time and investment for re-hiring new employees also gets reduced and benefits the organization.

3. Improves productivity

Employee satisfaction survey provides great diagnostics on employee engagement that help you to improve and provide better comfort to your employees. This automatically boosts employee productivity and in turn, impacts business results positively.

Employee satisfaction surveys, through a series of questions, help the organizations identify the levels of fulfilment that the employees are feeling at their workplace. These surveys are crucial for the management to identify any gaps in terms of employee experience and accordingly take necessary steps to fill them.
With so many rapid changes, it might seem like now is an unstable time for employee satisfaction
surveys.

“After all,” you might think, “with this being such an unstable time, I know responses won’t be representative of the way things normally are around here. It would be better to wait until things return to normal, so we can make changes based on the way the business usually operates, not the way we’re doing things during COVID-19.”

The reality is that employee satisfaction surveys are an essential listening tool right now, while the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting how your organization operates.

The act of launching employee satisfaction surveys at difficult times depicts that the personal experiences of the employees is a priority for you. When you survey employees on their satisfaction levels during tough times, you are showing them that you are committed to their well-being. Surveying now would acknowledge the stress created by the COVID-19 pandemic and send a message that you are here, and you are listening.

However, only launching an employee satisfaction survey is not enough. In order to reinforce that you care, it’s critical that post the employee satisfaction survey, you:

• Share the survey results
• Take action on the results

Sharing the employee satisfaction survey’s results, what you learned from the survey and what actions you’re taking as a result of it, helps build the kind of trust and credibility that are a hallmark of Best Workplaces™ — and a key component of the Trust Model™ that 30+ years of research have revealed to us.

In fact, to assess how invested organizations, that are associating with Great Place to Work® year or year, really are in acting on the feedback taken, Great Place to Work® India has introduced a new category of recognition called ‘Commitment to Creating a Great Place to Work’.

The next step after capturing the feedback through employee satisfaction surveys, should always be to analyze the data for a holistic diagnostic of where the gaps lie and accordingly formulate action plans on how to fill those gaps. Unless your employees know that their pain points are being taken care of, they would not find it useful to take out their time and share feedback in the future again.

As part of the Great Place to Work® Assessment and Certification program, post a survey (which is more than just an employee satisfaction survey), we also comprehensively evaluate your HR practices and share a detailed diagnosis on your employee engagement and action-oriented insights for you to continually improve and emerge among the best workplaces.

Surveys can be performed every 6 months. The cycle of time involves performing a survey, thanking your employees, getting insights and implementing them.

An adequate response rate is required for employee satisfaction surveys to be successful. Great Place to Work®, for its survey, takes a statistically valid sample of all employees across demographics and require a minimum 50% response rate (for large organizations) to provide accurate analysis of employee engagement. Broadly, the response rate varies with your employee strength.

To boost number of responses during employee satisfaction surveys, you can:

1. Make it fast to fill; have more rating statements than open ended questions
2. Explain to your employees how it could be useful to them
3. Try gamifying/incentivizing the process

Organizations often ponder over what to ask in an employee satisfaction survey.

Below are the broad categories to touch upon while formulating a satisfaction survey.

• Nature of work and skill improvement
• Internal Communication
• Mentoring and support by supervisor
• Distribution of work within team and work stress
• Recognition, appreciation received by employees
• Brand value and work culture as perceived by the employee
• Colleagues and bonding with other employees
• Long term career plan and its alignment with present work
• HR Benefits, Incentives, Bonuses

What should I ask in an employee satisfaction survey?

To answer this, we have highlighted top 10 employee satisfaction survey questions’ examples and their categories:

1. I am offered training and development to further myself professionally (Development)
2. Management is approachable, easy to talk with (Communication)
3. I am given the resources to do my job and am appreciated for good work (Supporting)
4. I am able to take time off work when I think it’s necessary (Balancing)
5. Everyone has an opportunity to get special recognition (Rewarding)
6. My work has special meaning: it is not just a job (Pride)
7. People care about each other here (Caring)
8. I want to work here for a long time (Pride)
9. I feel I receive a fair share of the profits made by the organization (Fairness)
10. Will you work with the same company for the next 2 years? (Satisfaction)

You can prepare a questionnaire and send it to your employees via mail. If you would like to skip the hassle of designing an employee satisfaction survey yourself, you may associate with us to help you out!