Employee–Consumer
Work your way back to the
beginning
Employee satisfaction surveys are hot. Many Fortune 500 companies now conduct them. But both research and my own discussions with management
suggest that employee surveys often fail
to deliver on their promise.
Conducting an employee survey isn’t
easy. Many companies perform these surveys by throwing questions together haphazardly and hoping something great will
happen. Often, this approach not only fails
to work but can alienate employees.
Before constructing an employee sur-
vey, company leaders should be clear on
its purpose and committed to acting on
its results. Management often fails to ap-
preciate how the information in an em-
ployee survey links to profit. Because an
employee survey is an investment in time
and money, it requires a return-on-invest-
ment analysis to measure its success.
The missing link
If HR is to become a strategic partner,
the data it collects must influence the
company’s business planning cycle. To
do this, HR/benefits professionals need to
relate what they’ve learned from employee
satisfaction surveys to profit drivers like
organizational commitment, job satisfaction, morale, productivity, absenteeism
(SEE SurvEyS on pagE 16)
