How to gauge employee satisfaction – Produce Blue Book
Personnel issues are at the forefront of business news today. Some speak of a “rush for talent”. Others deal with employee retention.
For an insight into the global scene, Gallup has published its State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report.
In some respects, the United States and Canada fare fairly well, with the “highest regional percentage of engaged employees; highest regional proportion of workers who say now is a good time to find a job; Second highest regional life rating (percentage of employees who are successful).”
North American employers will likely be less than thrilled to learn that only 33 percent of their workers consider themselves “engaged” in their jobs. (Unfortunately, the numbers for other world regions were even lower.)
Only 51 percent of North American workers said they could live “comfortably” on their current income.
Employee attitudes can be difficult to assess.
Especially with mean and incompetent managers (and we all know they exist), subordinates are likely to suppress their true feelings. Or – if they have a public interface – to take it out on the customer (the real bosses of any company). If I were a grocery retail executive, this matter would be of particular concern to me right now.
As for staff meetings, managers can forget to get the truth there if employees are (1) afraid of being fired or demoted, (2) wanting a raise, or (3) both.
How do employers know where they stand? Not many companies will be able to call Gallup to conduct a specific survey.
Similar results can be obtained by simpler methods.
employee survey
Small and medium-sized businesses may find that the easiest way to gauge employee sentiment is to conduct a survey. A simple one: printed out on a single sheet of paper (no computerized answers, as staff may rightly or wrongly think answers can be traced back to them).
Ask questions like these below.
Please rate your current satisfaction on a scale from one to five:
• Your work as a whole
• Your satisfaction with your current salary
• Your satisfaction with your benefits
• Your satisfaction with paid time off, including vacation, sick leave and maternity leave
• The performance of the manager who reports directly to you
• The performance of your company’s top management
• How you feel about your company compared to others in similar industries
• Your likelihood of quitting or moving to another job over the next year
• Your company’s commitment to environmental sustainability
• Your company’s commitment to treating employees fairly
• Your company’s commitment to racial and sexual diversity goals in the workplace
• Your company’s performance as a corporate citizen in your community, state, nation and the world
Then add a place for personal comments and recommendations.
Note that the last four questions relate to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that are so prominent in current management discourse.
Have employees send their surveys to HR and have HR compile the results. All HR has to do is count the number of responses and average them. Have Human Resources store the comments in a single computer file (to ensure anonymity regarding handwriting).
Of course, you can personalize the survey to address your own specific issues.
It’s not as scientific as a research firm like Gallup could produce, but at the cost of a few dozen printed pages and a few hours of staff time, it’s a lot cheaper.
You’ll get feedback that’s clear enough, whether you want to see it or not.