According to TimesJobs, 60% of employees are not satisfied with their jobs. Besides, 50% of them claim that they hate their jobs because of people-related problems. How will an organization identify the concerns of the employees? If a team has a bad manager, how will the team communicate their problems to the top management without going through the manager? This is where employee surveys come into the picture. Employee surveys can enhance employees’ overall experience in an organization. If not taken seriously, employee surveys can also be disastrous.  

You cannot just take a white paper and pick random questions with multiple choices and mail it to all employees to fill. The success of a workplace survey depends on informed designs. You cannot follow a model that was in practice decades ago. With careful research, you must find the present-day experts’ advice and follow it while executing the survey plans. In 1997, the employees of United Parcel Service held a strike against the increase in part-time jobs in the company. This particular complaint never made its appearance during the annual employee survey. The reasons could be either the survey questionnaire did not cover this aspect or the employees gave answers that could satisfy their superiors. If workplace surveys happen in this manner, then it is just a waste of time and effort.  

Here are a few tips to make your workplace surveys successful.  

The right time for honest answers  

HR professionals may think that lay off period is not the right time to conduct surveys, but that is really the perfect time to conduct surveys as HRs can communicate their positive intentions to the entire workforce. Employee surveys do not necessarily be conducted only once-in-a-year like an annual ritual. Depending upon an organization’s domain and needs, the frequency of employee surveys can be decided. You can even survey after a big party or a major policy decision to know the opinions of employees.   

Embrace Anonymity to make your employees speak  

When you conduct surveys during lay-offs or when an organization undergoes a major change, the employees might give only the pleasing responses that their superiors would like to hear, fearing termination. These kinds of surveys may do more harm than good. The HR team should not reveal the details of the responses and assure the workforce to protect their right to privacy. When anonymity is guaranteed, employees tend to speak out more.

Explain Why to your people  

Why do you conduct surveys? Tell your talents the reason behind each survey and how it helps the organization. Communicate clearly to your workforce that you expect honest answers to collect data and formulate policies and strategies accordingly. It is also important to guarantee them that the survey will take place in a confidential way.  

Hire Third-Party Vendors  

Employees also fear that the confidentiality might just be namesake and management will easily track them using the IP address or other details to find the owner of the responses and use the answers against them in the future. It is better to hire vendors who are specialized in conducting surveys to gain the trust of your employees. The vendors will collect the data, analyze them, and collate the information before sending it back to the organization.  

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Closed-ended questions for clear responses  

Employees hate open-ended questions which force them to answer in a descriptive manner. Employees become conscious of their words and language and fail to focus on communicating their problems. Close-ended questions are easy and simple to answer. A question with 5 options where 1 and 5 depict strongly agree and strongly disagree is usually preferable because they can measure the intensity of opinions of the workforce. Besides, close-ended questions make it easier for the HR team or the vendors to analyze the data.  

Do not focus on more than one topic in a question

Imagine that you have a question, “Do you agree that system administration and facilities management follow their schedule perfectly?” The employee answers, “strongly agree.” Did the employee strongly agree to the perfection of facilities management or system administration? It is confusing, right? Hence, focus on one topic at a time.  

Focus on observable behavior that falls into the performance criteria  

If you ask questions on the character of the manager, each employee will answer differently depending upon their experience with the manager. Workplace survey questionnaire should not talk about the character of a person, but rather talk about the observable behavior. For instance, Does the manager attend all the inquiries submitted in the query section? The employees’ responses can also be verified with the data on customer satisfaction.  

The questions should be based on the behavior that is in the job description of the superior. You cannot rate a manager on his/her designing skills instead of leadership quality.  

Take Action to resolve the problems of the employees

To ensure the success of workplace surveys, appropriate action should be taken on the issues highlighted by the employees in the survey questionnaires. If no action is taken, the morale of the workforce and their trust in surveys will be destroyed. Develop an action plan, discuss it with the employees, and also update the progress. This approach will strengthen the employer-employee relations and build mutual trust and respect.  

Surveys should be fun  

People hate being forced to do things when they are busy with work. Therefore, let employees complete the work for the day or postpone the deadlines for the tasks to make them fill the survey questionnaires. Provide refreshments and arrange some fun and exciting activities as they fill in the forms. These activities can also be considered as another employee engagement project.  

Technology is your friend

With technology, deep insights and reports can easily be acquired. Data from the surveys will be extremely helpful to the management to know the strength of the work culture and environment. The employers can also make data-driven strategic decisions, and the reports can also be used for future references once stored in the cloud. Technology also makes the survey questionnaires easily accessible from anywhere and anywhere. A mobile survey is the most preferable among the employees.