MarketTools Blog

Not sure what to give your employees this year? Here’s a gift that keeps on giving: providing a confidential forum for employee feedback. I know, it’s not exactly the jelly of the month club, but its effects will last longer and certainly leave a better taste in their mouth.

Giving employees the opportunity to provide feedback through confidential surveys increases employee engagement and can make an immediate impact on morale – even before results are analyzed and action plans are put in place. Just letting them know you care enough to listen goes a long way in showing your appreciation. And as fans of the service-profit chain will note, employee loyalty is a key element in fostering customer loyalty .

The process for designing an effective employee feedback program is similar to that of your customer feedback program, but with some key differences in focus. Over the next few weeks we’ll provide best practices for conducting a successful employee feedback program, covering the following topics:

• Setting the Stage for Your Employee Feedback Program
• Employee Feedback Survey Design
• Analysis of Employee Feedback Results and Reporting
• Action Planning

Part 1: Setting the Stage for Your Employee Feedback Program

Gaining Commitment and Understanding Scope and Objectives
Employee satisfaction surveys are almost always driven out of the company’s Human Resources department, but it’s crucial for HR to gain the commitment from the entire management team to support the program. Before beginning an employee survey program, the team must first ensure there is agreement on the following:

-  Scope and objectives of the employee survey
-  What will be measured in the survey
-  Commitment to support and/or lead the follow-up phase
-  Commitment to acting on the results (most important!)

Timing it Right
The timing of your employee survey is crucial. Be sure to allocate enough time to run the survey, analyze the results, formulate recommendations, and generate at least a top-line report with action plans prior to any strategic planning or planned employee events. The survey should also be timed for a period that is not consumed by other HR events, such as performance evaluations or during intensive times such as end of quarter, end of year, etc. To keep momentum high, the deployment period should be limited to two weeks and the survey deadline be communicated to employees. The period can always be extended if the targeted response rate has not been reached.

Communication, Communication, Communication
Conducting an employee satisfaction survey is a significant event within an organization, with an excellent opportunity to generate excitement regarding management’s openness to employee feedback and camaraderie within work groups. Communication is crucial to fostering excitement and encouraging all employees to participate in the survey and follow-up action planning.

Some communication tips:

• Consider incentives or contests between workgroups with prizes for those with the highest response rate.
• Pre-survey communications should set the stage, build momentum, set expectations, and provide specific information about the survey process (when and how the survey will be conducted, what to look for, etc.).
• Pre-survey communications should initially come from the CEO, with follow-up by HR.
• Be sure to set expectations on how survey data will be used – for example, it’s important to get a sense of employee perceptions around pay level and how it impacts their job satisfaction, even if pay increases may not be implemented during difficult economic times.
• Create momentum with continual progress reports and due date reminders. The communications should be consistent in its timing (e.g., every other day) and upbeat to create excitement.

The response rate for an employee satisfaction survey should be at least 80%. Anything less signifies a lack of employee engagement and may reflect an employee attitude that nothing will change as a result of the survey program. It may also reflect a concern for confidentiality, which we address below.

Making it Safe to be Honest: Ensure Confidentiality
Ensuring confidentiality is crucial for obtaining frank and honest feedback from employees. It is important to minimize information that has the potential to identify an employee and to eliminate identifying information after the employee submits the survey, including name and email address. These measures should be communicated to employees and they should be cautioned to not self-identify themselves through their open-ended comments.

In addition, managers need to be assured that the results for their organization will not be shared with other teams. In the MarketTools CustomerSat platform, this is accomplished via security roles that designate that each manager only has access to the results of their own organization’s reports. All communications should include a specific reference to how management confidentiality will be ensured.

This is only the beginning! In our next post, we’ll cover question design for employee satisfaction surveys, then follow with the best ways to analyze the survey results.