A popular trend that is being followed these days is that more and more corporates are going in for employee surveys as a way to gather information about employee satisfaction. The aim is to find out whether any changes or improvements are required in the work place and to prevent losing out on talented employees to other different organisations due to similar or other reasons, or so it seems.

Therefore let’s find out whether employee surveys actually work. In order to check if that is the case let’s have a look at the statistics (Officevibe.com) of such surveys by finding out the various reasons for an employee’s limited participation…

Common myths or notions

It is a common myth that most of these surveys end up gathering dust in a Manager’s office. Well 1 in 4 employees think that managers look at these surveys, simply as a check box list. Another common notion that is circulated is that such surveys are pointless and 29% of employees thought them to be pointless and a waste of time.

Employee Views

Here’s what the employee views were for the unfavourable participation. The response rate despite all the costs and efforts involved is found to be 30%. 20% of surveys that take 7 to 8 minutes to complete are abandoned or go unnoticed with no replies due to limited participation, on the part of the employees.

Preferable Response rate

A +/- 70% of response rate is preferable anything above that means the data may not be authentic. It might not have followed a prescribe set of rules and a figure below +/- 70% means that your research wasn’t deep enough.

The concerns raised go to deaf ears

20% of employees mentioned that their boss never bothered to follow up with them about the concerns raised.  4 out of 5 employees think that their manager will not take any action towards the views expressed about the company. Are all clear examples of the concerns raised going to deaf ears, need I say more. 

Management facts

Most often than not the surveys almost always went unnoticed and was conducted just for formality sake. Here’s the results of similar surveys that were conducted 27% of managers never even reviewed the survey results at all and the 52% that took out time to review them; paid no heed to the concerns raised or took no action whatsoever.

Senior Management so out of touch

Moreover 48% of the senior management reported that the surveys were highly valuable which was contradictory to 45% of employees reporting that the surveys had little value. Another aspect that came to the fore with senior management was that they found the assessment to be very accurate. On the other hand 48% of employees felt that the survey had the exact opposite results. The contradiction in the stats is a clear indicator of how out of touch the Senior Management is.

Based on the information provided so far I think it is safe to say that, employee surveys aren’t doing as great as expected. So let’s find out some tips on how to improve and generate good responses from employees...

• Keep the surveys brief as far as possible
• Ensure that there is the anonymity of the respondents
• Explain in brief what will be done with the results
• Show that the Managers are all on board and proactive about the surveys
• Explain the benefits of the results to the employees
• Make sure there is transparency about the results
• Be very careful about the incentives

Well there you have it all the information you require to conduct effective employee surveys and that too in one place. How great is that? How about implementing them when creating employee surveys?  So what are your tips or views about employee surveys?  Do tell we’d really like to hear you’re prospective about Employee Surveys.