The Survey Initiative: An Introductory Guide to Employee Research and Employee Surveys.
Basic advice on how to get the most out of an employee survey and avoid the main potential problem areas.
Why research employee opinion?
There is a growing body of evidence that HR outcomes influence business outcomes. This critical link between employee satisfaction and organisational performance has been clearly established by a number of researchers.
- Employee perceptions of the organisational environment are related to their job involvement, effort, and performance (Brown & Leigh, 1996).
- People practices have been found to have a significant impact on improvements not only in employee satisfaction, but also in the organisation’s productivity and financial performance (Delaney & Huselid, 1996) (Koys, 2001).
- There is a significant amount of research demonstrating that employees have
- the greatest single impact on customer service (Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994).
- Many aspects of organisational communication have been found to have significant influence on job satisfaction, for example communicating job responsibilities, goals and objectives, deadlines and job expectations, communicating freely and regularly, and reviewing work and salary regularly (Ilozor, 2001).
Using employee research you can establish an understanding of employee perceptions within your organisation and build on this to positively affect the bottom line. An employee survey, in particular, can be used to provide insight into what motivates your employees, what makes them like their job and enjoy their careers. The simple metric output from a survey can help you identify areas for action and allow you to track improvements once changes have been put into place.
Measurement systems have long been in place for other company metrics, such as return on investment or earnings-per-share (Norton & Kaplan, 1992) and in the same way employee survey metrics can be powerful tools in bringing about strategic change.