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Links to ESAT Tips

Online Employee Satisfaction Surveys Lessons From the Trenches Reasons Why More than a Few Questions Must Be Asked Rewards, Recognition, Motivation and Turnover The Employee Survey Intranet Site Employee Satisfaction -- A Necessity for Keeping Customers Satisfied Why Ask Demographic Questions in an Employee Satisfaction Survey? When Not to Include Demographic Questions in an Employee Satisfaction Survey Distributing and Collecting Employee Satisfaction Questionnaires Evaluating Employee Comments You've Got Your Employee Satisfaction Survey Results. Now What Do You Do? Communicating Controversial Findings (The Water Cooler Report) The Value of Normative Data in Employee Survey Analysis

One key to a successful employee satisfaction survey process is the manner in which the questionnaires are distributed and collected. Employees must be certain that their anonymity will be maintained. Therefore, the survey must be anonymous. It is advisable to have questionnaires returned to an impartial third party to reduce fears that employees may have about their bosses trying to find out what they said.

A cover letter, from an official high in the organization, should accompany the questionnaire. The letter should stress the need for employees to express their honest opinions. The package should include a pre-addressed reply envelope. A good total response rate for an employee satisfaction survey is in the 65% to 80% range. If the response rate lags, about two weeks after the initial distribution of the questionnaires you should send a reminder card to all employees.

To gain maximum benefit from the survey, you will want to consider reporting results at the individual work unit level. However, you should take care to not report results for individual work units with such a small amount of employees that the anonymity of the participants would be put at risk. In cases of small sample sizes, you can aggregate results for work units within a hierarchy.

What you choose to do with the results can have a great impact on your success in future surveys. If management cherry-picks the results and "toots its own horn," the study will lose credibility and employees will lose interest in participating in the future. It is better to acknowledge areas needing improvement, and involve employees in the improvement process itself.

Interested in learning more about The Business Research Lab's Employee Satisfaction Survey Packages? Check out our Gold and Silver Survey Packages.