When You Need to Conduct Employee Satisfaction Surveys

If you have a large number of employees (or maybe even a small amount), it is important to occasionally conduct employee satisfaction surveys. You, as the employer, need to know what your employees think of their jobs and their environment. By knowing this, you can help improve the environment, reduce employee turnover, and increase efficiency in your business. The need to conduct a survey is contingent on several factors; you should not release one just because you feel like it, you should do so when the right situation comes up.

The first situation in which an employee satisfaction survey should be done is when there are lots of changes occurring in the workplace. This could be new management, drastic changes to the work environment, or changes in the salary/benefits of employees. A survey would let you know how your employees feel about all the changes, and then you can make any necessary alterations to increase the comfort level of the majority of your employees. Another big change is the speedy growth of your organization. If your business is expanding at a fast rate, ask your employees how they feel about it. Some may have come in because they felt it was a small business, and now it is becoming large and they may be worried.

Sometimes, it is easy for office rumors to get out of hand. One common rumor is that of "downsizing", in which many workers would get laid off. An employee satisfaction survey will let you know how rampant this rumor is, and it will allow you to quell the rumor or even confirm it.

Often times, an employee satisfaction survey will let you see who is ready to leave your business. Knowing this helps you manage attrition rate and calculate employee turnover, and then manage it efficiently. Also, if an employee is very unhappy, the survey gives you an opportunity to make them feel better and possibly convince them to stay.

How does one conduct an employee satisfaction survey? Usually, an outside company would be hired to produce and give one. This ensures that the survey is unbiased, professional made, and impersonal. Also, since somebody else is doing it, the productivity of your organization is not affected, and it does not take very long for an employee to take the survey. It is not wise to conduct the survey yourself, as there could be bias in the survey which would make it nearly worthless. Leave it to a professional survey company, and you can be sure that you will get quality, helpful results from it.