Why conduct employee satisfaction surveys?

Employee satisfaction is really what the name suggests:

How satisfied or happy your employees with their jobs and their working environment?

This is usually measured with an employee satisfaction survey that covers the basic needs and concerns of the employees. These surveys look at areas such as compensation, workload, teamwork, employees’ perception of the management, resources and more.

These are all important areas to a company that wants to keep its employees happy and thus reduce turnover. But it is not only the company that benefits from measuring employee satisfaction — the employees do so in the first place. They get to make their voice heard and also feel that they are important to the company and that their opinion matters.

Some companies bring in consultants to conduct employee satisfaction surveys and they are often anonymous so that the employees can feel free to be completely honest without worrying about reprisals from their managers or colleagues.

Which factors contribute to employee satisfaction?

It is important that employers treat employees with respect and employees get regular recognition for their hard work. In addition getting benefits and compensations, and having a positive experience with management are key. If employees are happy with their employer, it is not only better for their experience. They also tend to put in more effort to make your business successful in return in comparison to those who are not happy with their job and work environment.

Once you have identified the areas where the employees are not satisfied, you are able to make some adjustments. Conducting surveys in the first place, will give you the opportunity to collect employee feedback and distill data for which changes may be needed. The changes don’t always have to be big and costly; employees can also greatly appreciate small gestures like free coffee and hot chocolate – little things that add to a healthy work environment.

A healthy work environment also goes hand in hand with ensuring employees have a healthy work life balance. It may also mean changes to the office space. This can include a customised workstation where the employee gets to pick his or her own décor and/or equipment. It also relates to the overall company culture and whether the business’ values align with those of the employees.

How to conduct employee satisfaction surveys?

If you are after an in-depth guide, do check out our ultimate guide to employee surveys. As a shorter introduction, let’s go through the most important basics here. Satisfaction surveys should be an integral part in your overall feedback strategy. They are usually conducted annually and are more in-depth.

They cover any areas that touch on your employees’ daily experience in their jobs. This can include but is not limited to: work life balance, the work environment, the variety of tasks and responsibilities, the communication in the team and with managers, as well as the general relation to the management suite and leadership style.

To make the survey as comprehensive and accessible as possible be sure to:

• keep it anonymous – so your employees can give honest feedback for you to work with.
• use concise and clear language.
• outline the purpose and goal of the survey when you send it out.
• use a digital software to make responding online as smooth and easy as possible.
• be consistent over time (i.e. on a fixed annual date so you can track data and improvement efficiently).
• make use of text analysis and other software tools to evaluate results and create reports.
• communicate the results and proposed changes with the employees afterwards.

To get a better picture of your employee experience, we recommend using an employee survey software to streamline various employee surveys. Check out our new platform Netigate EX for more insights into those possibilities. Basically, it means enhancing your feedback strategy with eNPS surveys, employee engagement surveys, as well as smaller pulse surveys to check in on the progress of changes or newly implemented processes. You should also consider 360 degree evaluations for your leadership suite.

Sample employee satisfaction survey questions

To give you a better feel of how you would cover the above areas in a satisfaction survey, here are some sample questions to use. Most commonly, you can ask: “How satisfied are you with …”

• “… your workload and variety of tasks?”
• “… the communication tone and tools across the team?”
• “… with your work environment?” (Here you could add an open ended question with a free text box, asking: “Which adjustments can we provide to make the work environment feel better?”)
• “… the recognition of your work?”

Be sure to include both close ended questions where employees can evaluate on a scale, as well as open ended questions for them to provide free text feedback in more detail. It is vital for structure, to include subheadings that categorise the questions, such as ‘work environment’ followed by all questions relating to that, then ‘leadership style and management’ and those questions, and so on.

What are the benefits of employee satisfaction surveys?

The importance of employee satisfaction surveys lies in the data you collect to create an action plan for changes. Implementing those to increase your employee satisfaction levels can lead to many benefits, including:

• satisfied employees are usually engaged employees who tend to be more productive and loyal
• fewer employees leave your business for new positions with other companies
• experienced employees stay longer, which keeps the costs for hiring and training new staff down. While ensuring that productivity remains constant, as opposed to the dip in productivity dips that comes with training new employees
• it is easier to fill open positions within your company as you have a reputation as a good employer and people have interest in working for you

It is expensive to hire and train new employees, so make an effort to keep employee satisfaction high long term and thereby keeping employee turnover low.

Read more on how Spotify used employee satisfaction surveys to improve their employees’ happiness or check out our VoE software! If you’re curious to get started, why not book a free demo? We’d be more than happy to help!