Every business owner knows it’s important to give his or her employees feedback regularly. In fact, doing so can reduce turnover rates, increase engagement, improve productivity and motivate workers to do a better job. However, not all employers recognize the importance of soliciting feedback from their employees, even though the benefits of doing so are much the same.
Employee feedback surveys are probably the simplest way to get the lowdown on what your workers see as the good, bad and ugly aspects of their jobs and your workplace. But before you sit down and put one together, consider their pros and cons.
Employee Feedback Survey Pros
A good feedback survey can have a positive impact on your company’s culture. When you give your employees the opportunity to voice their concerns, you may learn about issues of which you were previously unaware. You may also discover that known issues are having a bigger impact than you thought. Regardless, you can now address the situation/s causing the problem/s and find appropriate solutions.
Feedback surveys can increase your workplace’s transparency. Studies have shown that employees are happiest when they have the opportunity to communicate openly and honestly with their managers, supervisors and other company leaders. However, many are hesitant to do so face to face. A feedback survey—especially when submitted anonymously—allows them to speak their mind without worry that their comments will have negative results.
This opportunity to communicate how they feel about their jobs is important for employment engagement. Unhappy workers are less likely to be engaged, so addressing the issues that arise and increasing the general level of satisfaction in your workplace will naturally increase engagement.
Employee Feedback Survey Cons
You have to ask the right questions if you want to get the most from your survey efforts. In addition to the standard questions you’ll find in most survey templates online, you need to include queries tailored to your particular set of employees and their workplace issues. Of course, you also need to keep it short (more on that later), so you may want to focus on one area—from managers and communication to job duties and compensation—at a time.
Depending on how you decided to conduct your survey, it may require a monetary investment. While there are low-cost options available (like SurveyMonkey) it may be worth it to work with a company that specializes in employee feedback surveys—especially if you’ve never asked your workers for feedback before.
Creating a survey takes time. So does responding to it. You don’t want your employees to have to spend too much time away from their duties answering an endless list of questions. That means you need to keep your survey short. But it also means you might have to conduct more than one to cover all the bases.
Whether you decide to use a feedback survey to get your employees’ thoughts on the workplace or use an alternate tool such as casual conversations, a suggestion box, or a group meeting, it’s essential that you show your team you’re serious about their responses. Take action on what you learn as soon as possible and make sure your employees see that you’re making changes. This will encourage them to be even more honest the next time around.
