How to Conduct an Employee Satisfaction Survey

What is an Employee Satisfaction Survey?

Employee satisfaction surveys examine employees’ commitment to the company, their harmony with their colleagues, the adequacy of the physical conditions of the workplace, internal communication, understanding of career and development opportunities in the company, etc. These are studies conducted to question the state of the relationship between employees and the workplace on many issues.

Benefits of Employee Satisfaction Survey

• It helps reveal the weaknesses and strengths of companies.
• It positively affects the employees’ view of the institution.
• It allows determining the effectiveness of applications made in the workplace.
• It increases employees’ loyalty to the institution.

Survey Topics

Although survey satisfaction criteria are generally determined by management and human resources experts in the workplace, evaluations are mostly made using the following criteria.

– Working environment and conditions

– Commitment to the workplace

– Job security

– Participation in decisions

– Company reputation

– Leadership and management

– Opportunity Equality

– Performance management and rewarding

– Career management

– Training and development

– Relationships with colleagues

– Teamwork

– Inside communication

– Worker’s health and work safety

– Wage and benefits

 

How to conduct an Employee Satisfaction Survey?

An employee satisfaction survey can be conducted once or twice a year, as needed, or after an activity to measure the effectiveness of the activity.

When preparing an employee satisfaction survey, it should first be decided on which issues satisfaction will be measured. Starting by creating direct questions does not lead to a sufficient result. Therefore, the criteria should be questioned first, the purpose for which the criteria will be evaluated and whether any action will be taken as management based on the results should be decided in advance. Thus, the effectiveness of the survey will increase and the decisions taken by the management based on the survey results will have a more positive impact on the employees. After the survey is completed, if the management ignores the results and does nothing, employees will be even more negatively affected by this situation. For example; If satisfaction with wages is wanted to be questioned, but if a general improvement in wage levels is not possible in terms of budget, the questions on this subject should not be about the adequacy of the wage compared to the market, but should mainly be in areas that can make improvements, such as whether the practice within the company is fair or satisfaction with fringe benefits. .

After defining the criteria correctly, it is time to prepare the questions so that they can be perceived correctly. It is very important that everyone who reads the question understands it in the same way. Therefore, questions must be written in extremely clear, easily understandable expressions. The best way to be sure of this is to have people with similar education levels read the questions to reflect the employee profile and ask what they understand before starting the application. To be even more successful, verification can be made by applying the survey to a sufficient sample group and using statistical validity and reliability tests. Thus, there will be a chance to correct the wording of misunderstood questions. After creating the right questions, another important issue is the scoring scale. In general, evaluations out of 3, 5, 10 and 100 are common. It is very difficult to reach a fair evaluation result in a multi-option scoring such as 10,100. In an evaluation out of 3, on the contrary, no intermediate options are offered. Therefore, the most commonly used scale in satisfaction surveys is on a 5-point scale. Thus, sufficient but not excessive intermediate options are created in the answer. Rather than just writing a score option, it is important to also state the explanation of the scores (e.g. agree, partially agree, etc.). Because the person who fills out the survey will decide his score based on this statement.

Preparing and applying surveys in accordance with statistical rules ensures that healthy and useful results are obtained. A report prepared in Excel only gives the averages of the questions and does not reveal any analysis. However, for example; If the data is analyzed with widely used statistical programs such as SPSS, many analyzes can be achieved, starting from the validity and reliability of the survey, to what kind of trend shows which criteria according to which demographic variables.

Analysis methods used

• Segmentation Analysis: It is an analysis method that reveals the demographic characteristics of the people with the highest satisfaction level and which employee groups should be given priority.
• Survey validity and reliability analysis: This is a study conducted to measure whether the questions asked in the survey are distinctive in measurement. Thus, the psychometric consistency of the questionnaires is determined.
• Descriptive Statistical Analyzes: It enables the determination of the arithmetic average consistency and average of the results obtained in each dimension of the survey. In short, the level of satisfaction that employees provide is measured.
• Correlation Analyzes: Measures the correlations of survey questions with each other and their degree of importance to each other.
• Regression Analyzes: Reveals which are the most important questions asked in the survey.
• Anova Analysis: The purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the differentiation between groups is greater than the differentiation between individuals. It is an analysis that compares groups with low satisfaction levels and groups with high levels of satisfaction and shows in which dimensions they differ.

Survey studies will gain meaning when they aim to reveal the current situation regarding satisfaction as much as possible and to make the necessary improvements in line with the results. Surveys prepared without careful thought and planning do not produce convincing results and also reduce the reliability of the survey. The subject of employee satisfaction should be prepared carefully, diligently and with the aim of increasing satisfaction, just like a customer satisfaction study. When improvement plans and expectations are considered and prepared realistically, targets will be determined more accurately in line with the purpose. When these are stated correctly and clearly to employees, trust will increase as the goals are achieved.

 

Companies have been paying more attention to employee satisfaction in recent years. The main reason for this is to increase the loyalty and retention of qualified workforce. Employee Engagement is one of the most important issues emphasized by institutions all over the world. Over the last 25 years, one-on-one interviews with more than 1 million employees and managers in 24 different sectors in 82 countries of the world, surveys and research on hundreds of thousands of companies have been conducted to determine the connection between employees’ opinions and the company’s performance; It shows that a workplace derives its strength from the happiness and loyalty of its employees, and that companies that provide this have a serious competitive advantage in terms of productivity, customer happiness, profitability and employee loyalty.

It is clear that progress is at a higher level in companies with happy employees. It is extremely difficult for companies to achieve this satisfaction without cooperating with their employees. Therefore, efforts to increase employee satisfaction provide benefits for companies in the medium and long term.