Organizations that implement a change management programme need to be careful that all the predicted efficiencies are not then negated by an abundance of dissatisfied employees suffering from low moral and excessive pressure. The benefits of a company having a highly motivated workforce can be considerable and having a workforce that is both motivated and productive should not be regarded as being mutually exclusive to one another.

When problems are left unresolved then there is a risk of companies alienating their employees leading to employee frustrations growing to a point where managers find that they are on the back foot with problems that just cannot be ignored.

Ideally employers would take time to understand the needs of their employees and learn from their experiences of working on the front line, but employers are often themselves tied up day to day fighting their own fires.

By automating much of the intelligence gathering process and the findings being instantly available in a format that can be readily analysed online surveys provide employers with an affordable method to help achieve staff satisfaction and high productivity.

Dissatisfied & unproductive

There are many reasons why employees may be dissatisfied with their job and more often than not staff frustration is channelled into a demand for higher salaries and less hours. Managers who tackle problems thinking it is all about salary and hours, will often find later that they have been dealing with the symptoms and not the root cause.

Not just about the money

The following are common barriers to achieving productivity, none of which are likely to be resolved by increasing salaries or reducing hours:-

• Insufficient training
• Out of touch management
• Out of date working methods
• Lack of proper tools and equipment

Many studies have shown that salaries are rarely the number one priority of employees and providing an employer is paying market rate they would be fundamentally wrong to think that paying higher salaries is the answer to all employee problems.

Take the case of a single mother who is juggling a full time job with the need to look after a child. Out of frustration she may demand more money so that she feels that she is able to cope where a better solution, for both her and the company, may be more flexible working hours.

Good two-way communications

It is important for any organization to encourage communication. A company where the management does not communicate well with their employees, or will wait for any problems to be raised, can often be deceived into thinking that they have a content workforce when they don’t. It can take only one aggrieved employee with one small problem for an entire workforce to develop a destructive ‘them and us’ attitude.

Improving communication

It would be ideal if the employer could meet with each employee one on one but in practice this would only be viable for very small organizations.

Regular meetings between management and worker representatives are good in theory but can degenerate into talking shops and slowly lose their purpose as the participants from both sides become familiar with one another and the meetings run the risk of being hijacked by the more extreme personalities.

Having suggestion boxes are useful but can be viewed as token efforts by management as they wait for personnel to highlight a problem.

Newsletters can be a positive step, but their primary purpose is to inform and not discuss issues.

Maintaining the initiative

Conducting employee satisfaction surveys regularly you are able to ask each employee specific questions and presents a pro-active management initiative where the whole workforce can be consulted on various issues. Surveys are able to provide a level playing field between the quieter and more vocal employees.

Consultation should not be seen as a sign of weakness, a confident manager will often take counsel from others before making a decision. By retaining the initiative and conducting a survey the employer is able to tackle problems from a position of strength as opposed to waiting for problems to arise and develop out of proportion.

If small problems are left unresolved they can lead to a relatively minor problem breaking the camel’s back and management faced with a workforce whose mood has changed from positive to negative over night.

It’s easy and quick

For the majority of organizations online surveys represent a proactive, effective and low cost solution. For the majority of organizations where most of the personnel have desktop computers, they are quick to design and deploy direct to the individual.

In situations where not all of the personal have access to a computer there are options available to implement the online survey solution such as providing a shared computer, have an operator input their responses or as a last resort, a hardcopy survey.

Job satisfaction

There are elements that together will help towards providing an employee with job satisfaction, including company ethics, working environment, methodology and ethos to having effective and decisive management. Job satisfaction brings benefits through improved productivity and motivation from a workforce that feels that they are treated as individuals and not a commodity item.

Inform and educate

A less appreciated benefit of online surveys is that they can be used effectively to educate and deliver important information to the workforce, ensuring that the ‘message’ is delivered consistently and does not become corrupted as it is passed down the line.

An online survey can explain a difficult situation to the employees and get valuable feedback as to the best solution. It is rare in this situation that the workforce would appear negative; it is more likely they will feel informed and empowered and that might be enough to unite the workforce and turn a negative problem into a positive challenge.

Exit surveys

Exit surveys represent are a good way of making sure that when people leave an organisation they are leaving for the right reasons and not due to reasons that if appreciated earlier could have been addressed and resolved by management. Identifying a problem may not be enough to prevent a person from leaving but it could lead to an unappreciated issue being resolved that may be all that is required to stop other key personnel from also deciding to leave.

For a Sample Employee Satisfaction Survey:- Employee Satisfaction Survey Template

For a sample Employee Exit survey:- Employee Exit Survey Template

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