- MedMan Ways
Gauging Employee Satisfaction Using Surveys
Annual employee satisfaction surveys are the best way to measure, assess and gain insight into the health of the organization’s unspoken culture. However, this only holds true if you consistently act on the feedback that you receive. If an employer responds to feedback they receive from surveys, even just the act of sending out the survey will help remind the employees that you want to create a better workplace for them. Using employee surveys will help you collect data that you can use to measure how committed, motivated, and aligned your employees feel in their role in the practice, and give you areas you can focus your improvement efforts on.
As an employer you may choose to develop your own surveys that will produce the information you are looking for, but there are also several companies that specialize in employee engagement that can be hired to do regular assessments. Many HR consulting firms also offer these services. However, a basic, inexpensive employee satisfaction survey can be easily created internally.
It is best to use a variety of question types to ensure you have a good understanding for how your employees feel about their jobs. Use Likert scale questions that will help you predict and prevent potential turnover. For example, you can use the Gallup 12 Employee Engagement questions. Figuring out if your employees are trending towards feelings that could lead to turnover is a great way to know if you need to change something before you start losing valuable employees. Consider asking questions regarding your company’s values and purpose and if your employees feel like the company is being true to them. For example: “Do you believe our practice is achieving our goal of…?” or “Do you believe we are carrying out our cause of…?”. You should also give employees the opportunity to give their own feedback and suggestions using open ended questions such as: “What are three things our practice is doing well/not doing well?”
We recommend conducting these surveys annually to not overwhelm your employees, but you may encounter special circumstances where you would like to do them more often. You should try not to send out surveys during busy times of the year or around holidays so that they won’t be a nuisance for your employees.
