Areas to Focus On:
Management
A large component of employee satisfaction is how each employee perceives their manager. In fact, the role of the manager is so important that Steve Miranda, the Managing Director of the Center for Advanced Human Resources at Cornell University, posited that “employees don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.” If employees are dissatisfied with their managers, they are more likely to leave your company. Designate a section of your worker satisfaction survey to feedback about management; if there are any issues, you can correct them before they become too harmful.
Career Development
When employees feel like their roles are static, with no clear path of progression available, both job satisfaction and performance will be adversely affected. Your employee fulfillment survey should include an area that lets employees express how they view opportunities for advancement within your organization. If many people feel as if they don’t have any chance to progress professionally, they aren’t likely to stick around for long. This section can help you identify problematic areas and find creative solutions which can help your company retain employees.
Team Performance
If you’re in the process of drafting your next employee fulfillment survey, here are a few questions you may want to consider to elicit useful responses that can help you make improvements and changes where necessary (note: many of these questions work better if you provide a scale or a variety of response options employees can choose from).
- How satisfied are you with your position?
- How meaningful is your work to you?
- Do you find your role is challenging?
- Do you see opportunity for advancement within the company?
- Do you feel that employees are recognized appropriately?
- How flexible is the company in terms of work/life balance?
- How important is the company’s success to you?
- How accessible, available and approachable is the management team?
- To what degree do your coworkers value your opinion?
- How fair is your compensation for your work?
- How do you feel about the benefits you receive?
- Do you receive adequate feedback from your manager?
- Do you have access to the resources you need to do your job well?
These are just a handful of many, many questions you can include in your employee satisfaction survey. Regardless of the number of questions you ask, be sure that the survey addresses aspects that are important to your workforce, including satisfaction, professional development, compensation, feedback, management performance and so on. Also, make sure that you include a comments section so employees can voice themselves and address areas your survey failed to cover.
Ultimately, using an employee fulfillment survey can help your organization improve employee retention, boost productivity, identify issues, and help facilitate the development of your employees. If you take the time upfront to make the survey thorough, the rewards can be significant.
