Todd Hollander Market Research

You can’t read the minds of your employees but you can do the next best thing: ask them what they’re thinking.

Most human resources professionals agree that a company can only be as good as the people it employs. For this reason, it is vitally important to conduct regular and systematic surveys to understand employee attitudes, perceptions, and needs, as well as to explore ideas about how to improve the company.

The cost of employee dissatisfaction is simply too high to ignore. It is easy to measure the hard costs of disgruntled employees, with average turnover costs at or above 150% of the employees’ yearly salary. What is harder to measure is the loss of customers, prospects, productivity, and profitability caused by a negative company climate.

A thriving corporate culture in which employees are excited about the company and their future can improve both productivity and profitability. The most effective means of achieving this climate is through a well-planned, well-executed employee survey process.

Unfortunately, not all employee surveys lead to increased satisfaction. In fact, a poorly designed or poorly executed survey can decrease employee satisfaction by further eroding confidence in the competence of company management.

The bottom line: A well-planned, well-executed employee survey process can increase retention rates and productivity while improving customer service and morale. Because of this, employee surveys should be a regular part of the HR function.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Employee Surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.