You know you want to enjoy the undeniable benefits of employee engagement and satisfaction. You’ve already determined that before you can improve, you have to establish a baseline then measure progress.
So where do you go from here? Can you use some of the great tech that’s available these days and survey your own employees? Or is it mission critical to work with a provider? Read on to review the top considerations when making this important choice.
Employee Anonymity
Anonymity matters because it’s the only way your respondents can be forthright in their answers to your questions. The only way to ensure employee anonymity and the confidentiality of their response data is to work with an outside vendor. The measurement of employee attitudes should, therefore, always be conducted by a reputable third-party research firm, preferably one that specializes in employee engagement research.
Try this on: imagine Employee Emily walking into CEO Sarah’s office and saying, “I don’t like my colleagues, you don’t pay me enough and I don’t plan on staying long.” Emily probably wouldn’t be prepared to tell her CEO these things unless the next line of her monologue were “and I quit,” for fear that Sarah’s response would be “and you’re fired.”
This is, however, exactly the kind of information your organization needs to make improvements over time.
Ultimately a subjective experience, the feeling of anonymity is what makes respondents uninhibited in their survey responses. Even if you know which questions to ask and how to generate actionable reporting, your ability to trust your reports hinges entirely on the validity of that response data. If you hope to take action as a result of your reports, hire an outside firm.
Actionable Data Reports
If the word ‘improvement’ is anywhere in your employee survey goals, you’ll need actionable data reports. In addition to anonymity, question design, survey methodology, and accuracy of reporting are all essential parts of the generation of actionable reporting. Professional research firms know how to get you data you can act on.
Experience and Advice
Last year, we administered our engagement survey to more than 6,000 employers, collecting feedback from more than 1,000,000 of their employees. Doing a huge volume of this work means we’ve made the process simple, so you don’t have to work out the kinks. It also means we can share with you stories of what we’ve seen other employers – of a similar size, in the same industry – do to be successful.
Additionally, employers and their leadership teams trust us to provide meaningful insights that help them improve their organizations. We sometimes tell hard truths that can be easier to hear and understand, when they’re backed by data and delivered by an impartial third party.
Benchmark Against Your Peers
Firms that specialize in employee research are the best because they not only know what to ask your employees, but they can offer you benchmarking data reports to give you a sense of how you measure up to the marketplace.
