Employee Survey Secrets

Time and time again we hear the same concerns from HR professionals like you when they've been give the task of implementing an employee survey in their organization. How do we get good participation? How do we ensure valid responses? How do we get valid comparisons to other companies? How do we design a survey that meets our needs?

We've been in the research business for more than 30 years and there's nothing we haven't encountered when it comes to surveys. Here are some of the things we've learned that go miles towards making a project successful. These shouldn't be secrets, but we're always surprised when these simple principles (which should be obvious) go unheeded or ignored.

Read the full article on our site: Four Employee Survey Secrets

The Insightlink 4Cs Model of Employee Satisfaction: Commitment

Research tells us that employers can favorably influence their employees’ commitment to their organization by taking action to create a positive work environment, one that demonstrates that the employee is valued.
The following factors and initiatives have been shown to have a positive effect on employee satisfaction:

• Clearly stated roles and responsibilities and appropriate work behavior;
• Open and supportive communications with both immediate supervisors and senior management;
• The quality of the relationships between employees and their immediate supervisors;
• Opportunities for training and development;
• Well-defined and communicated career paths and goals;
• Formal and informal recognition provided on a consistent basis;
• Coaching and feedback on performance provided regularly;
• Policies that provide for good work/life balance and actions that support the policies;
• Sufficient pay, benefits and rewards, provided in a fair and equitable manner.

Ideally, the organization will strive to successfully develop a balance of quality products and/or services, financial stability, and a positive work environment that demonstrates a commitment to fair treatment of employees, recognition of employees’ needs and support for the organization's values. Such balance is not easily achieved and requires careful nurturing for the organization to thrive.
The importance of these factors and policies are the basis behind Insightlink's 4Cs model of employee satisfaction, with the four key drivers being Commitment, Culture, Communications and Compensation.

Insightlink Communications are experts in the design and execution of employee surveys. Let us help you with your next project.

The 4Cs of Employee Satisfaction and Engagement

As part of an extensive review of both academic and business research on employee satisfaction and engagement, Insightlink designed a framework for questionnaire development and strategic analysis called the “4Cs,” which are:

• Commitment
• Corporate Culture
• Communications
• Compensation

These four key elements drive employee satisfaction and engagement and are the foundation for all Insightlink employee surveys.
What is included in each of these 4Cs?
Commitment:

• Includes job “fit,” the sense of accomplishment employees feel when completing a job or task, and their willingness to go “above and beyond” for the organization
• It is important to assess Commitment both “to” and “from” the organization

Corporate Culture:

• Includes the work environment, the organization’s mission, vision and values, the application of company policies, the organization’s understanding of employee issues, job security, and work/life balance

Communications:

• Includes the effectiveness of interactions with supervisors, management and coworkers, the degree to which employees know what is expected of them and how free they feel to voice their opinions openly at work

Compensation:

• Compensation is a basic condition of satisfaction and productivity but the perceived fairness in distribution can be more influential than the absolute level of pay

Having this comprehensive framework to evaluate your survey results enables you to target your action plans based on that areas that will give you the greatest impact.

Insightlink Communications is an expert in the design and execution of employee surveys. Let us help you with your next project. 

Why do an employee survey?

If you are considering implementing an employee opinion survey, Insightlink Communications, a company that specializes in employee research, offers the following reasons to proceed:
1. To give employees an opportunity for feedback and identify the issues important to them
In our experience, employees want to be heard. Yes, there will be a few employees who say they don’t have time to complete an employee survey or who say the survey is too long, but the completion rate for employees doing our 4Cs employee survey is 96%. That’s a lot of employees who take it seriously and appreciate having the opportunity to express their opinions.
2. To provide timely and accurate feedback
In order to take action to improve employee satisfaction in your organization, you need to be sure that the action you are planning to take is relevant. You may think you know what is contributing to employee satisfaction but an employee survey can identify the most important drivers of satisfaction for your employees.
3. To highlight what is viewed positively by employees & areas of concern
At Insightlink, we also encourage you to identify what you do well so you can maintain those strengths.
4. To compare & benchmark your performance against other organizations
You may look at your survey results in isolation and think that your scores are too high or too low. This may lead you to overlook certain areas or concentrate on others. However, when you compare your results with benchmark norms for your industry, you may look at your scores in a different light.
5. To prioritize the action you need to take to improve your organization
We emphasize that there is no value to doing a survey unless you take plan to action on the results but we also recognize that it may seem overwhelming to tackle the issues that may be identified in the survey results. A correlation analysis will help you identify the workplace elements that have a disproportionately positive impact on employee satisfaction within your organization.
6. To Improve Overall Organizational Performance
There is substantial evidence that highly satisfied and engaged employees lead to more positive outcomes for their organizations, including higher productivity, improved employee retention, greater customer satisfaction and even better financial performance

Insightlink Communications are expert in the design and execution of employee surveys. Let us help you with your next project.

How NOT to Promote Your Employee Survey

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Insightlink Communications is an expert in the design and execution of employee surveys. Let us help you with your next project.

Why Your Employees Are Leaving

One day when I was out getting a coffee, I overheard a man talking on his cellphone.
“We need to be stricter with our hiring practices next year,” he said. “We want to keep them past a year.”
I wanted to turn around and tell him, “Maybe you don’t need to be stricter with your hiring practices. You can bring them in but you’re not keeping them. It could be your corporate culture.”


Authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman said in their book, First Break All the Rules: What The Worlds’ Greatest Managers Do Differently, that people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. If employees don’t get along with their managers, don’t like them or don’t respect them, they will leave a company despite a high salary or great benefits. A bad manager is a big factor in employee performance. A good manager, no matter the salary, will inspire loyalty.

Managers who don’t create the right opportunities for their employees, don’t communicate with them, and don’t appreciate them often find themselves dealing with a high turnover rate. Good managers are people you keep in touch with even after you leave a position. Bad managers are people you keep track of so you can avoid them in future.
Read the full story: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reneesylvestrewilliams/2012/01/30/why-your-employees-are-leaving/

Insightlink Communications is an expert in the design and execution of employee surveys. Let us help you with your next project.

More Canadian workers looking for new jobs

Firms in good position to attract new talent
The amount of Canadian workers actively looking for a new job has increased over the last quarter, according to Randstad's latest labour mobility index.
Overall, compared to third quarter results, the mobility index has risen from 103 to 105 points (levels last seen in the first and second quarters of 2011). This increase indicates more employees worldwide expect to be employed elsewhere over the next six months, said Randstad.
In a global context, no other country has experienced greater movement in the labour market in the fourth quarter as Canada has, with an increase of 12 points over the last quarter. Belgium (up eight points) Switzerland (up five points) and Argentina (up five points) have also seen an increase while Singapore (down seven points) has experienced a decline in the fourth quarter, found the index.
Full story on Canadian HR Reporter

Employee engagement, business intelligence and Sunday morning football.

December 14, 2009: Business Intelligence, Human Resource Musings

by Chris Sands

Yesterday I read the MacLeod review on employee engagement, ‘Engaging for Success’ . It bought to mind my experience as a Sunday footballer. Much of the time I played in teams who were at the bottom or close to the bottom of the league. Getting out of bed on a Sunday morning was miserable. The pitches were always too wet or too hard. The knocks always hurt. And what has this got to do with David MacLeod and Nita Clarke’s report? Well, it reminded me that when I played in a team that did very well, funnily enough getting out of bed was easy, the pitches were great and it was easy to shrug off bumps and bruises. Under all the criteria of engagement I would say that I was much more engaged when we were winning.

Did we win because we were more engaged, or did our winning make us more engaged? I think that this lies at the heart of a lot of the frustration that HR professionals currently feel. They see Rolls Royce companies such as Diageo, Astra Zeneca and, oh, Rolls Royce being held up as shining lights that have ‘got’ this engagement thing. They see the ‘compelling’ evidence that those companies that were in the top engagement quartile were 12% more profitable and 18% more productive and had earnings per share 2.6 the level of those below the 50th percentile. So why is the Board not falling over themselves to adopt an engagement strategy? It boils down, in my mind , to whether you are seeing the cause or the effect? Believe me, in a lot of the teams I played in no matter how engaged we were, we would still have been rubbish.

So let’s get back to first principles. Peter Druker, whose centenary it is this year, said that a business is “defined by the want the customer satisfies when he or she buys a product or a service. To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business”. When customers stop wanting horse drawn buggies or gas lamps or video players, no matter how good we are at it and how engaged our staff are we will be out of business. To achieve the function of a business we assemble people, land and capital and we do this in the best possible way to deliver to those customers.

Having said all of this, let me be clear, engagement is important, but not as an abstract concept. Here HR professionals have to work with their colleagues in other functional areas such as sales and marketing and production. If your organisation wants to be more innovative because this will better serve your customers with the products and services that they need then we can use engagement measures as part of the executive dashboard. There is a narrative that the executive team will understand and which can be tested. Let us say that our customers want new products at lower prices but with higher quality. We can measure all of these things. How many new products we release, whether they are variations or whether they are standalone new products. What price points we are able to achieve and what are the levels of quality. And so on.

Now measure engagement. Don’t over do the measurements at first. Why not start with the question that Dr Jim Hartner of Gallup and Dr Frank Schmidt of the University of Iowa found to have the most effective correlation to performance, “At work, do you have an opportunity to do what you do best everyday?” Then drill into the data. Is there a correlation between areas of high engagement and the outputs that the organisation wishes to achieve? If there is, then get to understand that specific area better. Is there a causation? What is driving that difference? Is it better and more appropriate leadership? Or do the people there have a better understanding of what they are supposed to be doing, or have better information or understand how they fit into the overall scheme of things?

Then, put a value on it. Marcus Buckingham in his white paper ‘The Strengths Engagement Track: A Benchmark Study of Sixty-Five High Performing Teams‘ gives the fascinating example of a US Retail giant with 3,000 stores that plotted store profit against a geographic economic potential measure and was able to highlight one store trading at a profit of $1,500,000 and one trading at a loss of $300,000 with the same economic potential, the same products and the same marketing. What would this mean to the executive? Well $1,800,000.

Now that should get HR some air time!

Employee Engagement Stats from Harvard

Fri., Dec. 11, My Strategic Plan (blog)
by Ed Adkins

Harvard Business Publishing recently posted the results of an employee survey to their Daily Stat blog, claiming that employees are more appreciative and enthusiastic about their jobs than a year ago. From 2008 to 2009:

* Employees who take pride in their jobs rose from 71% to 79%
* Those who recommend their employer rose from 53% to 58%

Since MyStrategicPlan is frequently used as an employee engagement tool or performance management software, we take a close look at the general level of engagement found across the US. But just like the writers at the Be Excellent blog, I question whether these findings truly indicate a more engaged workforce.

During the recession, with jobs being scarce, it stands to reason that employees would take pride in their jobs; they actually have jobs, unlike many of their unlucky neighbors.

…And about whether they’d recommend their employer, with so many people out of jobs, almost everyone has a friend who has asked for help looking for employment. If a job opens up at someone’s place of business, they’re far more incentivized to tell their friends about it than they were when jobs were plentiful.

With other recent reports and pundits warning that a recession recovery will present challenges in employee retention, I don’t believe Harvard’s rosy take on their daily stat should be a signal to employers that their people will stay put.

More than ever, it’s time to make sure that your people are engaged, that they see where they fit in your organization and they know how you plan to get where you’re going- together.

"Involve Your Employees," Says Google, CEB

A culture of involvement drives employee engagement and success

Fri., Dec. 11, 2009: Business Week

By the Staff of the Corporate Executive Board

As 2010 planning initiatives focus on strategies that will prepare companies to return to growth, leaders are looking for new ways to engage critical talent who execute key business priorities. The reason? Research by CLC Genesee, the HR consulting and employee survey division of The Corporate Executive Board (CEB), shows that companies with highly engaged employees demonstrate a 3-year revenue growth of 20.1%, compared to the 8.9% their industry peers will average. They also establish a 3-year EBITDA growth that is three times higher than their industry peers.

What's more, CLC Genesee research shows that shifting an individual employee from low engagement to high engagement can increase discretionary effort level by 60%, improve employee performance by up to 20%, and significantly reduce recruitment costs.

To achieve high levels of employee engagement, you need to first understand what they are thinking. One way to do this is to collect employee feedback through regular employee surveys. However, successful companies don't just rely on surveys as an event, but also steadily maintain communications and actions throughout the year to continually involve employees in driving positive change. One progressive and admired company leading the way is Google.

Google firmly believes that feedback and discussion are an important part of doing business, and finds avenues for "Googlers" (as Google employees are called) to not just raise problems but help solve them. Google's annual survey is critical in gathering employee feedback on what is working well and what can be improved. Beyond the survey, Google uses a variety of regular feedback channels to encourage employee involvement and leverage its philosophy that more minds on an important issue are better than one.

Strategy 1: Create a two-way dialogue on the most important issues on people's minds.

Open dialogue between employees and leaders has always been an important part of Google's business operations. Every Friday, Google holds a forum called "Thank goodness it's Friday" (TGIF) to have an active conversation and answer questions ranging from product decisions and external news to internal people-related policies and decisions.

This program initially started small with a few employees asking the founders questions on a Friday afternoon. As it evolved, TGIF now occurs almost every Friday, and the notes are distributed broadly across the company. Googlers use Google Moderator, an online tool to submit and vote on questions, and the top-voted questions are directly answered by Google's founders and executives.

TGIF also includes live questions. High levels of employee and executive participation in TGIF contribute greatly to the culture of transparency and create a more intimate atmosphere despite the company's size of 20,000 employees.

Strategy 2: Engage employees in solving problems, not just raising them.

Google encourages employees to attend problem-solving sessions designed to resolve business challenges. Appropriately called "Fixits," these sessions can invite a specific group of employees or be open to anyone. One recent Fixit addressed particular concerns regarding career development in a growing business unit.

For one week, suggestions for how to improve career development were collected via Moderator. Googlers submitted 51 ideas, in total receiving 5,615 votes, and the best three ideas were implemented. As employees were involved in the solutions, satisfaction in many areas in the annual employee survey improved one year later, including double-digit increases in the favorability scores on two career development items.

As demonstrated by CLC Genesee research, increasing employee engagement has clear business benefits. Following the lead of companies such as Google, organizations can creatively find new ways to encourage and collect employee input on important issues to achieve measurable business outcomes. It's not about making employees feel involved; it's actually involving them. The result is more informed leaders, more engaged employees, and ultimately better decisions for a stronger business.