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

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.

Case Studies in Employee Engagement

by David Zinger

Let’s look at a couple of case studies on employee engagement.

Case study #1:

Tina works at a local gas station as the cashier. Tina is fully engaged. She offers welcoming teasing/banter with each customer, she is the most efficient person I have seen on a cash register, she engages the other employees and has them providing more efficient service, and she uses the word ‘we’ when she talks about the company she works for. I will go out of my way to get gas when Tina is working there.

Tina is an exceptional model of employee engagement. She doesn’t know what the term means; she has never been surveyed. When I asked her about her approach to work and her level of engagement, she was surprised by the question and took it for granted that everyone should be engaged.

Case study #2:

Bob is the antithesis of Tina and was chronically disengaged on the job before finally retiring. He even built a spreadsheet to determine when his last day of work would be and couldn’t wait till the day arrived. He hated his job, he hated the people he worked with, and he didn’t care for his company. When I asked him if there was something he did like, he replied, “golf.”
I bumped into Bob a year after he retired and he still looked miserable. I asked him about golf and now he hated golf. He told me it was like a job to him and exhibited how disengagement at work can seep into the rest of our lives outside the company.

The ‘key’ to successful employee engagement

Whether you’re a Tina or a Bob, when it comes to employee engagement, I believe there is value in the plethora of perspectives to show the richness of the concept and that it is necessary to give space for each company, organization, and individual to play engagement in their own key.

Engagement helps employees remain valuable while ensuring the organization is viable. Engagement is not only how we approach work but can also act as a compass to powerful leadership, management, and performance.

“4Cs” Model of Employee Satisfaction

All Insightlink reports are structured on the basis of our “4Cs” model of Employee Satisfaction, which categorizes most survey results into one of four factors that influence and sustain employee involvement. These four factors are: Culture, Commitment, Communications and Compensation.

Most of the measures are based on 5-point agreement or rating scales. Wherever appropriate, summary means have been provided in addition to percentage distributions. The means are also calculated on a 5-point scale, with “1” being low and “5” being high.

Key benchmark norms have been included in this report to give context for organizations' performance against a norm for all U.S. employees and, when available, against a representative norm for their industry.

These benchmark norms are derived from an independent Insightlink study conducted annually among employees in the U.S. This study is based on representative samples of employees that is rigorously designed to match the most recent U.S. Census demographics and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics industry distribution.

4Cs Survey Feedback and Action Planning Workbook

Both extensive research and Insightlink's own experience with clients have demonstrated that, after an employee survey has been conducted, employees are much more interested in seeing action taken than they are in seeing the results of the employee survey. In fact, employee surveys have little or no value if nothing is done to make improvements at the organization. This is why successful action planning is a critical component of successful employee surveys. Insightlink is committed to providing our clients with the tools and help they need to create effective Action Plans that are designed for their organizations specifically. For this reason, we are pleased to announce the publication of the Insightlink 4Cs Survey Feedback and Action Planning Workbook.