Six Reasons to Conduct an Employee Survey Now

By Donald Payne, PH.D, Director of Research, The Business Research Lab, and Ross Blake, the Employee Retention Manager.

In tough economic times businesses cannot afford luxuries such as employee satisfaction surveys, correct? Actually, there are six reasons why now of all times is an important one for conducting an employee survey in your workplace.

Reason #1: Demonstrating Concern about Employee Issues
This is precisely the time to show employees that you care about their issues as much as you care about your own. It is walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Meaningful two-way communication with employees will help you understand your employees’ point of view, clarify priorities, and nip false rumors in the bud.

Reason #2: What’s Stressing Your Workforce?
The drumbeat of bad economic news, lay-offs, plant closings, and the like, inevitably creates stress for your employees. An employee survey is your chance to find out just what stresses are afflicting your workforce — and just how stressful they are. If job security is a concern, it’s better to keep employees informed than to keep them in the dark. If your business’s prospects are not as positive as you would like, informed employees are better able to understand the situation and cope with it. And if employee concerns about job security are misplaced, you can confront that concern directly.

Reason #3: Involving Employees to Get Through the Recession
You can use the survey to involve your employees in helping to ride the recession out.
Front line employees can be a key source of suggestions for cost savings and process improvements to better serve your customers and increase efficiency and productivity at a time when those improvements are most needed. Not only does that help you get over the current bad bumps, but it also makes sure your company is ready for increased business, and prepared to recoup revenue losses as the recession eases.

Reason #4: Retaining Your Best Employees
Although voluntary turnover is not the main threat during a recession, to the extent that it occurs, the employees most likely to leave of their own accord are the best ones.
The net effect, of course, is that your employee base becomes more mediocre. An employee survey gives you the leverage you need to retain your best and brightest.

Reason #5: What’s Your Future Strategy?
You can use the slowdown to take stock of where your company is today, and what your strategy should be going into the future. Your employees’ views can help clarify opportunities and obstacles. This is not to imply that strategic business plans are to be determined by employee ballot. Ultimately, of course, senior management has the responsibility for deciding the course the organization will take. It’s an opportunity to learn useful things to help implement the chosen strategy.

Reason #6: Better on your bottom line
Finally, remember that conducting employee surveys and working to improve identified concerns or issues is far less expensive than replacing valuable employees when you need them the most.