Are employee surveys the key to retaining employees with one foot out the door?

The important thing is you’re trying to keep your human capital, before you start to lose it. If you’re reacting to a sudden rise in turnover, you might be too late.

“It is critical you start creating retention solutions that work in your organisation NOW! Don't wait until you lose that first key employee, wrote Robin Throckmorton, in article called Retention: How Many Employees Can You Afford to Lose.

“Once you know what employees want, start implementing some of the solutions they shared to help retain your workers.”

He is one of many industry experts who point to well-executed employee surveys as a preemptive strike. These surveys can give you an accurate picture of how your employees feel about their job and the company—for better of for worse.

Employee morale can rise and fall, often without management noticing or reacting. However, employee surveys can help you avoid being in the dark about team or individual problems.

“Whether you call the survey an employee opinion, engagement, satisfaction or climate survey, the key is you want to find out information from your employees about how they feel about your company, supervisors, work conditions, job, and even intentions for staying.”

If you have any questions about what employee surveys can do for your company, please contact us any time.

If you’re not pleased with the results of your latest employee engagement surveys, remember: It comes from all levels of your organization. Not just the top.

Many people assume employee engagement starts at the top and trickles down. That is true to a degree, but there’s much more to it than that. Even your new hires have a direct impact on employee engagement.

Larry Myler, a Contributor at Forbes.com recently explored a new hire’s impact on engagement in a conversation with Sue Marks, founder and CEO of a talent management company called Pinstripe.

Myler wrote:

“According to Sue, ‘Employee engagement starts long before the recruiting process begins.’ Prior to initiating recruitment services for any new client, the Pinstripe team first establishes what they call the ‘employee proposition.’”

“This concept is based on the hiring company’s brand, and it helps guide all recruitment efforts toward that elusive and all-important prize known as fit—i.e. compatibility between the company and the new recruit. “

There’s nothing easy about it. Recruiting skilled people is hard enough. Bringing in the right people who can get on board with your goals and culture right away is tough. But trying to engage disconnected employees is much harder.

If you have any questions about what employee engagement surveys can do for your company, please contact us any time.

Do bosses have more favorable job satisfaction surveys than employees? Yes, it seems they do.

Despite the longer hours and more responsibility, recent research shows that most bosses report a higher level of satisfaction—both professionally and personally.

“The study doesn’t say why bosses are more satisfied, but that’s not hard to figure out,”  wrote Jeff Haden in an article at LinkedIn.

“While higher pay is certainly a factor since bosses almost always earn higher pay than individual contributors, people in leadership positions also tend to have greater autonomy, more responsibility, a clearer sense of how their work impacts company results, the sense of fulfillment that comes from helping other people grow and develop and succeed … all of which make work a lot more meaningful and re

warding.”

This doesn’t mean morale has to be low among non-managers at your company. Use a job satisfaction survey to see exactly how everyone feels about their jobs. This gives you an opportunity to make any necessary changes to help people gain more satisfaction from what they do.

Perhaps moving someone from one team to another can help. Many employees report of a lower job satisfaction level if they feel their skills aren’t being fully utilized.

If you have any questions about what an employee satisfaction survey can do for your company, please contact us any time.

Are disenfranchised employees rubbing off on your customers? Maybe. You might want to start using employee engagement surveys before you start losing customers. 

There is a direct link between employee engagement levels and customer service levels. If you’re employees are disconnected from their work, it shows. Even when they’re trying to put on their “work face.”

“If employees – especially those in front-line roles dealing with either outside customers or other departments within the organization – are engaged and enthusiastic they enjoy work more. And that is good for the business,” wrote Roger Trapp, at Forbes.com.

Trapp added that a universal truth is that engagement levels start high at the top of an organization, then falls down the ladder with each rung. 

“They continue to fall between upper levels of management and lower levels of organizations, so that by the time front-line positions are reached they are exponentially lower.”

It makes sense. Clearly a high level executive at The Gap is going to feel more invested in the company than a summer student selling the jeans. However, that doesn’t mean you’re frontline employees should feel no connection by default.

Using employee engagement surveys are a great way to find out what motivates your employees and connects them to their job—or what could connect them, anyways.  

If you have any questions about what employee engagement surveys can do for your team, please contact us any time.

If you polled small businesses and larger companies, which side would have a better job satisfaction survey? Recent data seems to favour the little guys. 

According to a recent infographic 81 per cent of surveyed people working in small and medium businesses in the US are satisfied with their job. This percentage is higher than the 68 per cent of all full-time US employees surveyed in a Workforce Development study of January 2013, by Rutgers University Heidrich Center.

Small business employees also spoke very well of their superiors. Six in 10 gave their management team an A or B, with only 3 percent giving a failing grade to their bosses.

This survey was commissioned by GFI Software conducted online by the GfK Group (formerly Knowledge Networks) using sample from the probability-based KnowledgePanel®, which is designed to be representative of all adults in the United States.

The survey was originally intended to ascertain how people in small business use the internet and social media. For example, six in 10 respondents would remove all their personal information from the Internet at the snap of a finger, if they could.

If you have any questions about what employee satisfaction surveys can do for your business, please don’t hesitate to contact us any time.