These days, almost every organization requires its employees give feedback, and that’s a good thing! The feedback of your own employees is worth gold if you want to move ahead as an organization. Employees can look at the organization and know exactly what can be improved, more efficient or more customer-oriented. Nevertheless, we keep hearing that organizations are looking for a ’employee satisfaction survey’. Does measuring satisfaction still make sense? Or is this now hopelessly outdated?
Is employee satisfaction still a viable topic?
Lots of coffee
In the past, many organizations performed the traditional employee satisfaction survey. As described by its name, employee satisfaction was measured across a variety of aspects. At the time, management figured, “If an employee is satisfied, then our results will be satisfactory.” Simple enough. But from this perspective, the tendency was to pamper employees as much as possible. Because a satisfied employee can indeed be very happy, and therefore function well in their job. But a satisfied employee can also be extremely passive, take a lot of coffee breaks and add little to the organizational result. That’s why we take our employees surveys a lot further – employees are asked for feedback to build a better organization. We ask questions on a variety of themes, for example, on workload, leadership style and customer focus. Also, their engagement and commitment are closely monitored.
Hygiene factor
So that leads us with the question. At this day and age, what are we to do with the employee satisfaction survey? Does it have a benefit for the organization? Well, yes and no. At present, employee satisfaction has become a hygiene factor. If you have high employee satisfaction then you have the foundation employee engagement, customer focus and innovation. If your employees are dissatisfied with something, this can have a negative impact on their employee experience. It impacts whether they go to work full of energy, if they work well with colleagues, their ability to be inspired and innovative. A little dissatisfaction is not a bad thing, it can also be a drive to make improvements. But if dissatisfaction is a common theme, that can be a problem.
How to gather feedback from your employees
The definitive checklist for creating your employee engagement survey.
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Because of this, we do suggest keeping an eye on employee satisfaction. By doing so you’ll prevent dissatisfaction from having a negative impact on employee engagement and experience. The best time to get feedback, is right now. Make use of the insights and techniques of now, and use it as the basis for your planning for next year. Ask your employees for feedback, and get insight into all the topics that are important for your organization. By doing so, you’ll get the insights necessary to build a successful organization.