Employee surveys are the most misunderstood and misused tool in contemporary business management. Too many users confuse surveys with polling. One example is the attempt to intelligently and effectively measure employee satisfaction. Once you recognize the added business value in employee satisfaction, consider how HRIS can help determine metrics that make sense.
Do you know what you mean?
Employee satisfaction, engagement, and happiness are not the same thing. And, the research evidence bears this out. For example, a SHRM research report lists the following as the top five aspects of employment that employees rank as very important to their “satisfaction:”
- Compensation (60%)
- Job Security (59%)
- Opportunities to use skills (59%)
- Relationship with Supervisor (54%)
- Benefits (53%)
The same survey changes quickly and inexplicably transitions to list the following as the top five aspects contributing to employee “engagement:”
- Relationship with co-workers (73%)
- Opportunities to use skills (70%)
- The work itself (68%)
- Contribution of work to overall business goals (66%)
- Variety of work (65%)
If you want to add “happiness” to the mix, it’s not hard to ask employees if they are “happy.” Money, perks, and advancement can make people happy, but successful parenting, personal relationships, or even a new car also mean happiness to most people.
Without quibbling, if you do not know what you want to measure, you cannot create an effective survey. Asking the wrong, irrelevant, or misguided questions polls employees but does not survey their values.
Bring some clarity to it
A report by the respected ADP Research Institute offers working definitions:
- Employee Satisfaction: A measurement of an employee’s “happiness” with current job and conditions; it does not measure how much effort the employee is willing to expend.
- Employee Engagement: A measurement of an employee’s emotional commitment to an organization; it takes into account the amount of discretionary effort an employee expends on behalf of the organization.
The ADP findings list the following as key components of an engaging environment:
- Growth: Survey questions must measure if the employee felt a sense of growth and opportunity. Workers want the chance to learn and grow, and at the least, they want to feel their opinions count.
- Community: Employees want to feel part of something larger, a culture in which fellow workers do quality work, where they build friendships, and share accountability and recognition.
- Contributions: Workers want frequent but authentic recognition for their work. Management wants to monitor supervisory reward systems to confirm employees feel validated and personally encouraged.
- Entitlements: Management owes employees the materials and tools to perform well. Satisfied and engaged workers know what is expected of them and can see the rewards for that performance.
How can HRIS help?
Your HRIS technology is the means to complete, score, and integrate reporting on your employee satisfaction survey. Once you identify your interests and phrase questions accordingly, you can exploit your HRIS abilities to reach and engage employees, assure and confirm their participation, and tally and interpret their input.
- Communicate: Reach the total workforce with notice that aligns your survey intent with corporate mission.
- Universalize: Seek response from all layers of the organization and all functional silos.
- Track: Follow input by job classification, compensation level, and exempt/non-exempt status.
- Empower: Show employees how to respond to the survey and how they can access meaningful results.
- Analyze: Create a zero-based analytic to benchmark employee and corporate strengths and needs-to-improve.
- Report: Draw pictures of the present and the trends that define the future.
You can secure content and application advice from your HRIS vendor. You can make such performance a deal breaker when selecting your HRIS provider. And, you can share confidence in the system’s unbiased survey performance. So, if and when you approach your employee satisfaction survey, decide what you want to know, learn how to phrase the right questions, and explore how your HRIS can help.
References
ADP Research Institute. (2012). Employee Satisfaction vs. Employee Engagement: Are they the same thing? ADP, Inc. Retrieved September 8, 2015, from http://www.adp.com/~/media/RI/whitepapers/Employee%20Engagement%20vs%20Employee%20Satisfaction%20White%20Paper.ashx
Duncan, R. D. (2014, August 2). Why ‘Employee Satisfaction’ is the wrong metric. Retrieved September 8, 2015, from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2014/08/02/why-employee-satisfaction-is-the-wrong-metric/2/
Society for Human Reources Management. (2014). Employee job satisfaction and engagement: The road to economic recovery. Alexandria, VA: SHRM. Retrieved September 8, 2015, from https://www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Documents/14-0028%20JobSatEngage_Report_FULL_FNL.pdf
