What Employees are Experiencing, Thinking and Feeling -- Employee Engagement Surveys

By: Howard Deutsch
Submitted: 2009-10-20 17:51:06
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Employee Satisfaction and Employee Engagement Matter to Companies – Here’s Why

Employee satisfaction is a key driver of employee engagement, and employee engagement in turn is a key driver of customer satisfaction and loyalty, employee retention, productivity, sales, overall organizational performance and profit.

Employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys are the best way to accurately learn about what your employees are experiencing, thinking and feeling. These are the experiential and psychological factors that strongly influence employee behavior, and employee behavior can result in low or high levels of customer satisfaction, employee and customer retention, productivity, product and service quality, competitiveness, profit and growth.

While employee behavior is clearly reflected in the bottom line of all organizations, company financials and other “hard data measurements” do not actually assess employee behavior or what is driving employee behavior. Further, “hard data” measurements do not gather employee perceptions, opinions, feelings and suggestions.

Employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys are the best and most cost-effective way to gather and efficiently report information, insight and suggestions from all of your employees on an anonymous basis, ensuring that employees provide honest, comprehensive feedback without fear of retribution. Can any organization afford not to conduct employee satisfaction surveys / employee engagement surveys annually and take serious action based on the survey findings?

Identifying Outliers

Outliers are statistical observations that are markedly different in value from the others of the sample. Outliers are things that are situated away from or are classified differently from a main or related body. Quantisoft’s employee satisfaction surveys / employee engagement surveys identify outliers in companies and other types of organizations, including departments, products, processes and other important things that are rated very high or very low by employees.

The very highly rated outliers are the things that are your organization’s best practices, the things that are driving employee and customer satisfaction and engagement, and profit. They are the things that your organization should recognize for their excellence and focus on duplicating throughout your organization.

The very low rated outliers are the things that are eroding profit, driving away customers, tying up employees resolving recurring problems and hurting your organization’s reputation. Outliers often include identification of risks that can significantly hurt your company. They are the things your organization needs to work on to significantly increase employee and company performance.

Your Employees Have Lot’s to Say! Are You Listening? -- What Employees are saying in Employee Satisfaction Surveys and Employee Engagement Surveys conducted by Quantisoft

Could the following comment have come from an employee in your organization? It actually came from a sales person that sells sophisticated equipment, working at a large company that designs, builds, sells and services the equipment in North America, Europe and Asia.

“Everyone sits in their cubicle either protecting their piece of turf or covering their own tails totally incapable of making a decision that could serve a customer or help get an order”

During the deep recession, many companies have laid off significant numbers of employees, reduced or eliminated salary increases and bonuses and matching contributions to retirement plans, and they have cut back on employee benefits, including medical insurance. Companies have also been reducing expenditures on marketing, IT hardware and software and other things that bring in business and make the organization more efficient. Many employees are in fear of being laid off and they resent the cutbacks in compensation, benefits and business expenditures.

As a result of all of these cutbacks, Quantisoft has been seeing lower levels of employee satisfaction and employee engagement in many of our employee satisfaction and engagement surveys. More employees are commenting on their dissatisfaction and some are saying they are planning to look for a new job as soon as the job market opens up again.

Here are some of the other things we are seeing in employees’ comments in employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys:

1. Communications within and across departments and business units needs improvement

2. Communications from senior management filtered by middle managers and supervisors

3. Mission, vision and values not communicated effectively and not executed consistently across organizations….. Unclear company direction, short-term focus

4. Poor leadership

5. Corporate culture that is not supportive of innovation, asking for and listening to employees’ ideas, empowerment and decentralized decision making

6. Internal turf battles, workplace conflict, excessive politics and inward focus

7. Verbal abuse and occasional physical abuse

8. Insufficient coordination, teamwork and cooperation between business units with inadequate companywide focus on customers

9. Some managers that are “managers from hell”….. very difficult to work for, exhibiting favoritism and biases

10. Cumbersome, inefficient processes and business practices

11. Inadequate focus on quality and customer service

12. Employees not having the tools and information they need to perform their job effectively (e.g. slow PC’s and networks, lack of access to company databases from the field, mission critical enterprise software such as SAP, Oracle and Sales Force Dot Com not working effectively several years after initial implementation, now supplying smart phones and laptops to field sales force when the competition does, etc. etc. etc.)

13. Some companies barely using the technology solutions they are selling when it would enhance their own employees’ and company’s performance

14. Inconsistent adherence to the performance planning and measurement process…..some managers not preparing & conducting performance reviews, inaccurate, incomplete and unfair information included in performance reviews…..compensation changes not based on performance reviews

15. Inadequate training, development and mentoring

16. Inadequate orientation for new employees

17. Perceived discrimination based on age, race and gender

What’s on the Minds of Your Employees – Final Thoughts

Many senior executives think they know what’s on the minds of their employees. While some may have a good feel about their employees’ feelings, perceptions and opinions, many others are only guessing and have very limited information and insight. Yet as demonstrated in this article, accurately knowing what is on the minds of your employees is critical for making better business decisions, increasing employee engagement and performance, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, and boosting sales and profit. Employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys are the best way to identify employees’ feelings, perceptions, opinions and suggestions from across your organization at a very low cost. There is every reason to conduct employee surveys annually and to make sure the findings are acted on.

Article source: Expert Articles