Employee Morale Snapshot Surveys
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Sat, Feb 06, 2010
Some organizations, including the University of Minnesota, conduct employee satisfaction surveys every other year. Yes, every 730 days management makes certain to ask if employees are satisfied.
Of course, most organizations, such as Butler America, are twice as interested. They measure employee satisfaction annually.
Don't get me wrong. Annual or biennial in-depth employee-satisfaction research is vital to organizations that wish to become and remain preferred employers. And asking every employee to complete 60 to 100 questions, a la the Employee Loyalty Benchmark from Walker Information, is not something you want to do too frequently. But you should certainly supplement that detailed research with satisfaction snapshots.
To do this, conduct a monthly or quarterly pulse survey. If your organization has 2000 or more employees, use a random sample of employees rather than attempting a census (yes, it's a good idea, even if Scott Adams pokes fun of it in Dilbert). Ask 10 or 15 high-priority questions that will help you track morale and other HR KPIs (key performance indicators). In fact, after you decide on the key initiatives that will address the issues identified by the most recent major survey, modify the snapshot survey to include questions about those issues. Also make certain to collect open-ended responses, in order to discover new employee concerns.
At the least, this snapshot survey will give you a scorecard to see how you are doing on your key HR initiatives and to keep tabs on overall employee morale. Most likely, it will also alert you to problems sooner, helping you to keep your organization on track to being a preferred employer.
Employee engagement should never be a once-a-year concern.