Introduction
Managers in the modern organizations have come to the realization that the use of surveys in evaluating employee satisfaction, performance, development, and improvement is inevitable (Nankervis, Compton, Baird, & Coffey, 2011). Based on this, surveys are often employed whenever feedback is needed from employees regarding their happiness, the strengths of the firm, weaknesses of the organization, and the best ways to improve.
Therefore, surveys play a critical role in revealing the exact position of the company from the employee perspective. Employee surveys are questionnaires that are designed and are distributed to organizational workers to enquire about certain information, especially data related to performance and satisfaction. They should always be designed carefully in order to capture the specific information that will be of help to the employer.
Surveys do not have specific answers since their major aim is to capture employee opinions and views. This article investigates the feasibility and the value of employee survey. In this regard, the paper analyzes the achievements of an employee survey in the organization, as well as its application. The use of the instrument is often associated with certain challenges. This article looks at some of these challenges, including the costs, risks and the difficulties of administering the instrument.
Studies show that challenges faced when administering an employee survey are manageable. This paper will summarize some of the ways through which the challenges can be mitigated. Even though employee survey has a number of challenges, it also has some potential benefits when delivered in most desirable way.
The article will analyze the potential benefits of employee survey as well. Finally, the paper will assess the effectiveness of the survey administration, particularly in matters related to ethics and professionalism.
Achievements of the Employee Survey
The use of a survey has a number of achievements, but if only administered in the best way. The instrument is considered a standardized tool that is employed in collecting critical information from organizational workers with the sole purpose of improving performance. One of the achievements of the survey is its ability to offer information that permits the management to focus its energies on improving a number of programs and processes in the organization.
The results of the survey are usually taken through a rigorous data analysis process, which enables feedback to employees. Through the tool, the organization avoids unnecessary conflicts that might impede productivity and development of employees (Mitra, Gupta, & Shaw, 2010). For instance, the organization might drop one of the programs after engaging employees in an extensive interview using surveys.
If the organization implements the program without consulting employees, the results might affect the performance of entire firm. In fact, some workers might decide to quit the organization, citing dissatisfaction as one of the major reasons. The organization is advised to post the results of the findings on the company website to allow review. This would be considered one of the ways of ensuring feedback and effective communication with workers.
For the organization to achieve the desired results through surveys, a clear method of questionnaire administration should be followed. Scholars suggest that two major survey administration practices exist, which include communicating the purpose and the significance of the survey, as well as reminding employees the process.
For ethical reasons, the firm should at all times inform various stakeholders the major aims of the survey, the main purpose, the procedure to be followed in administering it, and the reason why each employee should participate in the exercise. Based on this, the organization is advised to employ a number of media channels I disseminating information, such as the use of bulletin boards, short email messages, and employee meetings.
The concerned unit should pass information in advance to give workers amicable time to prepare for the survey. In conducting surveys, many organizational members are often reluctant to take part in the exercise since they fear victimization. Some managers might develop the habit of criticizing employees for their views.
In this regard, the management is advised to communicate with employees informing them that the management is simply concerned with the summary of the results and no employee will be accused of giving a divergent view.
To achieve the desired results, the fielding of the survey is critical. This implies that all steps of survey administration should be followed. The sample should be drawn and the survey needs to be assembled in time before proceeding to collect data. Supplying questionnaires using emails is recommended since it is considered cheap and reliable. The response rate should be checked on weekly basis to ensure that employees are taking part in the exercise.
Some groups might not engage in the survey owing to a number of reasons. In this case, they should be reminded quite often. If the response rate is poor, data collection phase should be extended to allow many employees to participate in the exercise. Studies show that response rates tend to increase after the fourth and the fifth weeks, but only if the management keeps on reminding participants.
Finally, the management should explore some of the ways of improving participation in order to achieve the desired goals. After the survey, the management should always establish the number of employees who never participated in the exercise, as well as some of the reasons that made the not participate in the survey.
This will definitely improve future response rates. Employees have a tendency of thinking that the results of the survey would not be used to bring any form of change hence they do not see any need of participating. Others simply think that the study is not important in any way while some believe the results of the survey will never be communicated to them.
Challenges Encountered when Conducting Employee Surveys
Gunningham and Sinclair (2011) refer to employee survey as an attitude or opinion survey since its major aim is to facilitate upward communication, even though an effective structure is needed to make this happen. In this regard, the survey questions must be prepared carefully and some of the mechanisms of response processing must be set up in advance.
Some surveys might perhaps be highly structured while others are often narrowly targeted meaning that their aim is to address a single issue. Challenges faced when collecting information using surveys depend on the scope and the range of the survey. Research shows that the broader the range of the survey, the greater the hazards.
Collecting opinions of employees on job satisfaction and general performance of the organization is beneficial in the sense that pertinent information is provided regarding the working conditions, compensation, remuneration, relations, communication, and administration. All these come with a number of risks that the organization must be prepared to tackle. The system employed in administering a survey is one of the challenges that affect the achievements of employee survey.
Some organizations choose to design questions that aim at collecting information related to payment, satisfaction, and communication at the same time. One of the methods of administering such a survey is assembling employees and requesting them to fill the questions. Alternately, questionnaires can be distributed to individual employees. The two methods have challenges that must be addressed to ensure that the intended results are achieved.
Since some employees might be opposed to the survey, they might decline to respond to the online questionnaire. This would affect the response rate, which has a direct impact to the outcome of the survey. Based on this, the organization is advised to assemble employees when it comes to filling the questions.
Even though this method is considered effective, it has some challenges as well. Holding meetings affects the productivity of the organization since many hours are spent filling the questions. Some employees might be reluctant to respond freely due to the presence of their bosses.
Literacy level is another issue that affects the validity of the survey because not all employees have similar levels of education. The survey must collect views of all employees, irrespective of age, gender, educational level, and marital status. The major problem associated with educational level of employees is interpretation of questions. There is no guarantee that employees will construe statements in the same way.
The management is advised to consider the academic levels of employees in questionnaire wording. Employee expectation is another challenge that the management has to deal with when conducting a survey on the attitudes and opinions of workers. In this regard, managers are advised to consider convincing employees that the survey is meant to bring positive change before embarking on data collection.
In many cases, Wright (2008) suggests that surveys are used for regulatory reasons, but not to address problems that employees face. An employee feels frustrated in case his or her expectations are not fulfilled after the survey. Such an employee might not participate in future surveys. In an organizational set up, it is rare for the management to believe that a problem exists. The survey is often conducted to establish whether employees are comfortable with their positions in the organization.
In some scenarios, the survey might reveal serious problems, which might force the management to bury the findings of the survey. In this case, the organization will have wasted valuable time and resources in commissioning a program that will not be used to improve performance.
Costs, Risks, and Potential Difficulties of Using a Survey
The process of designing, assembling, and disseminating the questionnaire is tiresome and extremely expensive. The organization must plan adequately for the exercise for better results to be achieved. The cost of the survey depends on the sample size, which means that the larger the sample size, the higher the cost of conducting a survey.
In most cases, the use of surveys in testing employee satisfaction is not effective because managers might decide to hide the results and apply their own solutions, which might not address the major issues facing employees. One potential risk is that the organization might perhaps proceed to draft policies based on the results, yet employees lacked truthfulness when responding to questions. This might end up straining the operation of the organization since wrong policies will be drafted.
Many employees are often reluctant to give negative answers even if they are assured that they would not be victimized. The results of the survey might not be of any help to the management meaning that resources will have been wasted on dubious projects. For this problem to be resolved, the management should be genuine and guarantee employee safety since a number of them are mindful of their positions.
Benson and Brown (2011) suggest that it is always difficult for managers to accept the fact that their leadership skills are inaccurate. This implies that they will tend to reject all results that criticize their managerial skills. Based on this, the top management should exercise impartiality and exercise professionalism by accepting criticism.
Managers should be informed that criticism helps them in developing their careers in a number of ways. If not well administered, surveys can generate a potentially antagonistic working atmosphere whereby the relationship between managers and employees is worse.
Benefits of the Survey
Through the survey, feedback and action planning is possible. The senior management should develop a tendency of sharing information with other stakeholders, particularly the union officials to prevent any discontent. In this regard, the use of intranet and email in information circulation within the organization is highly recommended.
If the information is considered sensitive as far as organizational goals and objectives are concerned, the management is advised to convene a meeting with employees to iron out some of the thorny issues. At all times, the management needs to engage the union officials in discussions to establish the major areas of improvement (Chew, & Horwitz, 2004). The survey allows the development of an action plan, which should take place at all levels.
First, the top management should design an action plan that will act as a blue print to other organizational units. In the modern organizational behavior, it is advisable to push action planning to the manager level implying that each unit manager should have a unique way of handling employee dissatisfaction using surveys. Conducting a survey before implementing a policy allows consultation with union representatives.
An organization that conducts surveys will always embrace participative leadership style, which is known for its effectiveness. Organizations have an opportunity of conducting a study using focused group discussion guide after establishing through survey that employees have issues that need to be addressed urgently.
The organization will have adequate time to plan and delve deep into the major problems that employees face in the organization. Strong policies on how to improve can be designed in case employees are engaged in the process.
Ethical and Professional Issues in Conducting Employee Surveys
Ethics and professional must always be considered when conducting employee survey. In fact, the credibility of results is influenced by ethical and professional considerations. One of the ethical issues to be considered is communication, which implies that the management must inform employees the exact date, time, and the purpose of the survey (Hmelo-Silver, 2004).
Again, the results must be communicated to employees, irrespective of the outcome. The management should not try to hide the results, even if they are implicated. Doing this would be exercising professional codes of conducts. Finally, the organization must consider cultural issues when trying to extract valuable information from employees. Each employee should be given adequate time to fill the questionnaire without harassment and intimidation.
References
Benson, J., & Brown, M. (2011). Generations at work: are there differences and do they matter? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(9), 1843-1865.
Chew, I., & Horwitz, F. (2004). Human resource management strategies in practice: Case-study findings in multinational firms. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 42(1), 32-55.
Gunningham, N., & Sinclair, D. (2011). A Cluster of Mistrust: Safety in the Mining Industry. Journal of Industrial Relations, 53(4), 450–466.
Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2004). Problem-Based Learning: What and How Do Students Learn? Educational Psychology Review, 16(3), 235-266.
Mitra, T., Gupta, N., & Shaw, J. (2010). A comparative examination of traditional and skill-based pay plans. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 26(4), 278-296.
Nankervis, A., Compton, R.L., Baird, M., & Coffey, J. (2011). Human Resource Management: Strategy and Practice. Cengage Learning: South Melbourne.
Wright, C. (2008). Reinventing Human Resource Management: Business Partners, Internal Consultants, and the Limits to Professionalization. Human Relations, 61(8), 1063-1086.