However, in order to achieve the above objectives through investigation, it must be based on "the investigation has obtained the real thoughts of employees". So how can we ensure that the survey can get the real thoughts of employees?
To solve this problem, we may first need to understand why employees do not reflect their true opinions.
Four mentalities that hinder employees from providing true opinions
Put yourself in the other's shoes and think about the mentality of the employees who participated in the survey. You may have several ideas:
First, it's totally irrelevant. Think that the company is only doing this as a formality, and may even think that it is the department in charge of the investigation (often HR) to show what it is doing, then cooperate with it by itself. This mentality is often just to fill in the questionnaire casually, and will not seriously reflect the opinions. Therefore, information may be neutral, neither too negative nor too positive. For example, those who fill in the questionnaire of "generally satisfied" or "relatively satisfied" may be filled out by people with this mentality.
Second, a skeptical attitude. I don't think the company's investigation will be as good as advertised. If negative opinions are provided, especially for the opinions of immediate superiors, some problems may arise in the future. At this time, employees will have scruples and may only blindly fill in positive information.
Third, the attitude of disbelief. I feel that it is useless to provide advice and the company will not improve. If employees with this mentality may avoid taking part in the survey, if there is no mandatory regulation or pressure from others to urge them to fill in, these people should be the main contributors who have not withdrawn the questionnaire.
Fourth, the attitude of the gossip. I think this is an opportunity to reflect to the company, but it may be for some personal purposes or reasons. Employees with this mentality will actively participate in the survey, but may be very concerned about the confidentiality of personal information. There may be fewer employees with this mentality, which is not obvious in the questionnaire survey stage. However, if the survey is accompanied by some interviews, employees with this mentality are often people who ask for private chat.
An analysis of the causes of four kinds of mentality
The reason why employees have these mentalities is actually related to the information transmitted by the enterprise for a long time and the atmosphere that employees feel.
For the first attitude, many employees feel that it is none of their business, because the enterprise did not fully communicate with employees when doing investigations or implementing other measures, and did not let employees understand the purpose of the enterprise to do these things and its relationship with themselves.
For suspicious employees, the reason may be more complicated: if the enterprise does not enjoy information in time, or violates some promises, it may affect employees' trust in the enterprise. On the other hand, employees themselves may not have a good trust experience in their personal past experiences, or they may be suspicious.
For employees who don't believe it, it is often possible to give some sincere feedback, and the result is gone, and no action has been taken to make any improvement.
For employees who have the mentality of "gossiping", it is often possible that enterprises collected too few employees' opinions in the past, employees lacked channels for bottom-up communication with enterprises, and lacked a benign two-way communication and understanding and experience training. Therefore, it is easy to misunderstand the true meaning of employee opinion survey.
In view of all kinds of mentality that prevents employees from providing real ideas, we need to pay attention to details in the design, arrangement and feedback of results, eliminate employees' concerns and reduce negative thoughts.
Do a good job of publicity before the investigation.
The significance of pre-survey publicity lies in: on the one hand, helping employees understand the purpose and significance of the survey, and letting employees realize the relationship between the survey and themselves, as well as the benefits to themselves, their departments and the whole enterprise. Employees may be willing to participate in research and express their true feelings instead of dealing with things; On the other hand, employees will also feel respected because they have fully enjoyed the company's information, and feel that as a member of the company, the company is willing to listen to my opinions, which enhances employees' sense of belonging to the company.
Ensure that the questionnaire is effective and reasonable.
Whether the questionnaire is designed by the enterprise itself or completed by a third-party consulting company, it is the key to ensure that the questionnaire can collect the opinions of employees reasonably and effectively. A more reliable questionnaire should have the following characteristics:
First, the dimensions involved in the questionnaire are several aspects of the survey. A questionnaire can't cover everything, but it should cover all aspects that the survey expects to know. Generally speaking, the basic satisfaction survey will include: management style, corporate culture atmosphere, corporate communication mechanism, incentive mechanism such as salary and welfare, and physical working environment (such as office conditions, etc.). ), the cooperative relationship between colleagues, etc. And some surveys will include employees' personal dedication, emotion, turnover intention and other factors.
Second, the topic of the questionnaire. Generally, each dimension contains no less than 3 questions, otherwise it is too biased. 30~50 questions are suitable for the whole questionnaire. Too little information is not enough, and too much will cause employee burnout and affect the quality of answer results.
Thirdly, if you use the questionnaire of the third-party consulting company, you should pay attention to the personalized adjustment of the wording, which should conform to the culture, style and communication habits of the enterprise. In addition, the words in the questionnaire should not be ambiguous, and employees' understanding of the problem should not be inconsistent; In the design of the topic, we should include several open questions to give employees more opportunities to express their ideas.
Do a good job of confidentiality during the investigation.
Usually, we make employees feel that the information they fill in is confidential in the following ways:
First, take an anonymous way, or let employees fill it out by themselves in the form of online reporting;
Second, give employees a written promise of confidentiality;
Third, entrust a third-party consulting company to conduct research. In the process of investigation, it is limited to the direct contact between the consulting company and employees, and HR and other related personnel of the company do not participate. Moreover, employees' opinions and information are only stored in the consulting company, and the results are processed by the consulting company and presented to the company's final integration report.
Do a good job in the feedback of research results
The failure to give feedback to employees after the investigation is completed may be a very important reason for employees' negative mentality. We have interviewed many employees of enterprises and heard many employees complain that the company conducts employee satisfaction survey every year, and we have carefully filled it out, but there is no sound behind, and we have not seen any measures or actions taken by the company. In fact, we all know that enterprises and employees always have some concerns when sharing information. They are worried that employees will have negative thoughts or emotions when they know the results, and there is no good way to resolve employees' emotions at the moment. So they tend to cover up the problem, simply ignore it and don't communicate. The impact of this is that employees feel that what the company wants to do has nothing to do with them, or they don't trust the company, and the satisfaction survey makes employees more dissatisfied.
In fact, from another perspective, the company's research was originally for a good purpose, hoping to understand employees' ideas and make some improvements to make employees happy at work. Therefore, whether the research results are good or bad, it is not a bad thing. The key lies in the perspective of sharing and interpreting research results between enterprises and employees. If an enterprise can truthfully share information with employees, on the one hand, employees can feel that they are regarded as part of the family, and they feel respected and valued. On the other hand, employees can cooperate with the company to improve and promote the sustainable development of the enterprise.
Do a good job of investigation and follow-up action plan
Obtaining the survey results is only the first step of the long March, and the formulation and implementation of the follow-up action plan is very important. As a consulting company, many times customers come to us for employee satisfaction surveys, and we will definitely ask customers if they have any plans to do some follow-up work. Sometimes customers may just want to investigate first, and won't think too much for the time being. But usually we remind our customers that we would rather not do it if we just investigate for the sake of investigation. Because just like not sharing the results with employees after investigation, if employees feedback information but fail to see the company take some actions, it will dampen the enthusiasm of employees to make suggestions to the company and damage their trust in the company. In some employee surveys and interviews, employees often mention that "it is useless to reflect opinions to the company" because "it is always gone" or "nothing has changed".
Of course, whether an enterprise takes action is influenced by many factors. It is not that employees have opinions on welfare, which means that the company should increase welfare. It's just that companies need to respond to employees' opinions. If some improvements are to be made, what is the plan? About time can be shared with employees in time. If specific measures are not taken for the time being, it will at least help employees know that the management has received everyone's opinions and explain and explain the management's ideas.
For the management problems reflected in the survey, enterprises should not take actions to improve them. They need to prioritize, take into account operability and enterprise status, and improve step by step. It is also very important that the company needs to inform employees that we can't solve all the problems at once and where we will start to improve. In this way, employees will understand the company's actions and changes, and will also cooperate with the company's work well.
To sum up, from the publicity in the early stage of the survey to the formulation of the final action plan, doing every link well is the guarantee for the success of the employee satisfaction survey. The survey of employee satisfaction is not done overnight. Once it is completed, everything will be fine. On the contrary, it should work in cycles. Through the closed loop of "investigation-making and implementing the action plan-investigation", on the one hand, the implementation effect of the action plan is tested, on the other hand, the management of the company is re-examined, the gaps are filled, and the sustained and healthy development and progress of the enterprise are promoted.