Why running an employee survey in 2020 will help your business grow

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Details: Category: Blog; 03 August 2020

3 years ago

All these aspects have a major impact on overall employee satisfaction, one of the most important performance levers of any organisation, as we will outline later. How relevant different "impact categories" such as financial, developmental, emotional, or others are for each individual varies depending on an employee's personality or goals. Nevertheless, knowing how and where to invest resources in order to keep employee satisfaction high is vitally essential, not only to boost organisational performance, but by implication to avoid employee turnover and retain top talent. Due to fast-paced work environments, obstacles, and resistance to change, jobs are ultimately minimised, and this may lead to substantial and frequent staff fluctuation. Thus, organisational structures and dynamics are heavily disturbed and costs and resources are invested inefficiently as well. As a result, organisations prefer to hire the right people in the first place and invest in them to ensure survival and growth. Happier employees make for more productive organisations Retaining high quality employees is, in fact, the core task of every organisation that is working towards the goal of long-term business success since employees are the foundation of added value in organisations. Employees will, in most cases, only leave a job if they are unhappy with their situation in an organisation. Therefore, leadership needs to ensure employee satisfaction to foster engagement and identification with an organisation. If there is substantial employee dissatisfaction with the work conditions, the consequence will be either employee resignation or feelings of inner submission, each of which will result in productivity and performance deterioration. Why is this? Negative emotions, if not recognized and addressed, may overshadow the ability to focus on professional tasks and lead to general incapacity. A high employee satisfaction rate consistently equates to employees accomplishing more and improvement in performance. I.e., happy employees = increased organizational productivity and performance. How to determine employee satisfaction In order to build employee satisfaction, organisations need to identify any potential negative emotions that might be floating about in order to act upon these and improve work conditions, as well as avoid employee turnover. This can be achieved one-on-one with a coaching approach. However, it will cost much more time to hold individual meetings throughout the organisation and doesn’t ensure anonymity for employees. The latter may lead to dishonesty in responses on attitudes to avoid negative consequences. A more quantitative and anonymous approach is an employee satisfaction survey. It’s easily and quickly set up and distributed among organisational members, also easily flexibly evaluated. Furthermore, the same survey can be conducted on a frequent basis to receive comparative values over time and determine the impact of certain actions aimed at increasing employee satisfaction. Asking the right questions in employee satisfaction surveys There are three overarching and intertwined factors that could potentially impact employee dissatisfaction which need to be covered in an employee survey. Job: Aspects such as low perceived meaning, tasks being too challenging, unpleasant work conditions, insufficient development and promotion possibilities, and high stress due to workload can easily lead to staff dissatisfaction with their jobs and role within the organisation. For example: 82.39% of employees say a lack of progression would influence the decision to leave their jobs. (CareerAddict.com) Employees said the three most contributing factors to quitting their jobs were a lack of career advancement opportunities, low pay, and the absence of a salary pay raise. (CareerAddict.com) Of those who had already quit their jobs, 35% would consider returning if they were offered a better salary or a higher position. (CareerAddict.com) Environment: Circumstances related to employees’ teams, departments or general environment such as low collegial appreciation and respect, slim contribution opportunities and poor communication can make people feel uncomfortable and can have a negative effect on job performance and interaction with coworkers. 83% of people feel their relationships with coworkers are excellent, very good or good. (Cigna) 33% of executives say, "Improving our employees’ loyalty and faith in the company is a top priority." (The Predictive Index) 67% of employees are as productive as they can be in their office environment. (Olivet University) Management: Supervisors who do not lead in a performance-driven and emotionally intelligent way can put immense pressure and stress on employees and create a negative work environment. They may also make employees feel undervalued and intimidated. 9% of employees said their company/manager is awesome at acting on feedback, 24% said pretty good, 44% said okay, and 23% said horrible. (Achievers) 41% of employed Americans want a work environment where employees are encouraged to have a work-life balance. (Cigna) 56% of workers said their employer or manager generally determines their work schedules. (TSheets) If viewed correctly and addressed appropriately, any staff dissatisfaction that may arise can be used as an opportunity to demonstrate an organisation’s willingness to put the effort in and change, as well as improve existing conditions and processes, rather than to consider them a threat or a weakness. This strengthens the bond between organisations and their employees to ensure long-term staff retention and loyalty. LimeSurvey offers an employee satisfaction survey template which will be available for "LimeSurvey Cloud" (Basic, Expert, Enterprise) and as "ComfortUpdate" for the community edition (3 Months, 6 Months, 12 Months) subscriptions and covers all the above mentioned variables/items to measure employee satisfaction effectively. If you have questions or suggestions, simply contact our support and we will answer you as soon as possible.

Keeping up with today's life in the fast lane

Nowadays, all organisational operations proceed at ever-increasing speed due to increasing digitisation and technological advancements. This also applies strongly to all human resources-concerned and people management-related activities, i.e., application procedures, employee development, staff compensation, leadership quality and so on.

All these aspects have a major impact on overall employee satisfaction, one of the most important performance levers of any organisation, as we will outline later. How relevant different "impact categories" such as financial, developmental, emotional, or others are for each individual varies depending on an employee's personality or goals.

Nevertheless, knowing how and where to invest resources in order to keep employee satisfaction high is vitally essential, not only to boost organisational performance, but by implication to avoid employee turnover and retain top talent.

Due to fast-paced work environments, obstacles, and resistance to change, jobs are ultimately minimised, and this may lead to substantial and frequent staff fluctuation. Thus, organisational structures and dynamics are heavily disturbed and costs and resources are invested inefficiently as well.

As a result, organisations prefer to hire the right people in the first place and invest in them to ensure survival and growth.

Happier employees make for more productive organisations

Retaining high quality employees is, in fact, the core task of every organisation that is working towards the goal of long-term business success since employees are the foundation of added value in organisations. Employees will, in most cases, only leave a job if they are unhappy with their situation in an organisation.

Therefore, leadership needs to ensure employee satisfaction to foster engagement and identification with an organisation. If there is substantial employee dissatisfaction with the work conditions, the consequence will be either employee resignation or feelings of inner submission, each of which will result in productivity and performance deterioration.

Why is this? Negative emotions, if not recognized and addressed, may overshadow the ability to focus on professional tasks and lead to general incapacity.

A high employee satisfaction rate consistently equates to employees accomplishing more and improvement in performance. I.e., happy employees = increased organizational productivity and performance.

company business woman

How to determine employee satisfaction

In order to build employee satisfaction, organisations need to identify any potential negative emotions that might be floating about in order to act upon these and improve work conditions, as well as avoid employee turnover.

This can be achieved one-on-one with a coaching approach. However, it will cost much more time to hold individual meetings throughout the organisation and doesn’t ensure anonymity for employees. The latter may lead to dishonesty in responses on attitudes to avoid negative consequences.

A more quantitative and anonymous approach is an employee satisfaction survey. It’s easily and quickly set up and distributed among organisational members, also easily flexibly evaluated.

Furthermore, the same survey can be conducted on a frequent basis to receive comparative values over time and determine the impact of certain actions aimed at increasing employee satisfaction.

Asking the right questions in employee satisfaction surveys

There are three overarching and intertwined factors that could potentially impact employee dissatisfaction which need to be covered in an employee survey.

Job: Aspects such as low perceived meaning, tasks being too challenging, unpleasant work conditions, insufficient development and promotion possibilities, and high stress due to workload can easily lead to staff dissatisfaction with their jobs and role within the organisation. For example:

82.39% of employees say a lack of progression would influence the decision to leave their jobs. (CareerAddict.com)
Employees said the three most contributing factors to quitting their jobs were a lack of career advancement opportunities, low pay, and the absence of a salary pay raise. (CareerAddict.com)
Of those who had already quit their jobs, 35% would consider returning if they were offered a better salary or a higher position. (CareerAddict.com)

Environment: Circumstances related to employees’ teams, departments or general environment such as low collegial appreciation and respect, slim contribution opportunities and poor communication can make people feel uncomfortable and can have a negative effect on job performance and interaction with coworkers.

83% of people feel their relationships with coworkers are excellent, very good or good. (Cigna)
33% of executives say, "Improving our employees’ loyalty and faith in the company is a top priority." (The Predictive Index)
67% of employees are as productive as they can be in their office environment. (Olivet University)

Management: Supervisors who do not lead in a performance-driven and emotionally intelligent way can put immense pressure and stress on employees and create a negative work environment. They may also make employees feel undervalued and intimidated.

9% of employees said their company/manager is awesome at acting on feedback, 24% said pretty good, 44% said okay, and 23% said horrible. (Achievers)
41% of employed Americans want a work environment where employees are encouraged to have a work-life balance. (Cigna)
56% of workers said their employer or manager generally determines their work schedules. (TSheets)

If viewed correctly and addressed appropriately, any staff dissatisfaction that may arise can be used as an opportunity to demonstrate an organisation’s willingness to put the effort in and change, as well as improve existing conditions and processes, rather than to consider them a threat or a weakness. This strengthens the bond between organisations and their employees to ensure long-term staff retention and loyalty.

LimeSurvey offers an employee satisfaction survey template which will be available for "LimeSurvey Cloud" (Basic, Expert, Enterprise) and as "ComfortUpdate" for the community edition (3 Months, 6 Months, 12 Months) subscriptions and covers all the above mentioned variables/items to measure employee satisfaction effectively.

If you have questions or suggestions, simply contact our support and we will answer you as soon as possible.

Employee trainings are programmes with a short-term learning goal to impart new knowledge and skills to staff to enable an immediate impact of the learning efforts. Employee developments are programmes with a long-term learning goal to promote employee growth and performance in future endeavours. The importance of employee training and development Training and developing employees is extremely important for organisations to remain competitive, i.e. to outperform competitor organisations with the help of highly skilled, productive staff. Furthermore, staff is supposed to be retained to avoid losing key employees and consequently valuable knowledge to competitor organisations. In recent decades, the organisational landscape has changed fundamentally due to technology and digitisation. This radical change will continue to shape the business context in the future. Training and development programmes will help keep employees up to date. The importance of training and development programmes manifests itself on two levels, the organizational and the employee level. Importance of training and development on the organizational level: Retaining high-performing key employees by presenting the prospect of promotions as a result of their skill advancement through training programmes Increasing profits and business growth by outperforming competition due to higher talent and productivity of staff Improving internal exchange of newly acquired knowledge due to spill-over effects in employee interaction Importance of training and development on the employee level: Increasing employee satisfaction and motivation by acquiring new knowledge and skills that are beneficial personally and professionally Increasing employee engagement and empowerment which drives better staff dynamics in terms of cooperation and productivity in their jobs Better organisational reputation in the eyes of employees for enabling personal development which in turn leads to better employer reviews and word-of-mouth recommendation If an organisation is able to master its training and development routine, it's looking at a win-win-situation that doesn’t merely improve the organisation's status quo, but also benefits staff. Microlearning as a means to sustainable development Microlearning is an approach that covers micro units, i.e. small amounts, of learning content, usually over a short-term period with regard to knowledge acquisition. This learning approach has been increasingly deployed by organisations as a reaction to a natural paradigmatic shift in learning and attention habits of human beings in a digitised world. Due to stronger mechanisation within the past decades, people have handed off a large amount of tasks to computers as these can handle repetitive tasks with more speed and efficiency. Furthermore, smartphone and tablet devices have made instant access to digital content on virtually any topic at any time of the day possible at the fingertips of the people. Peoples’ neurological systems have adapted to this easily accessible overload of information by an enhancement of the short-term memory and learning at the expense of long-term learning areas of the brain. Effectively, the effort to acquire and retain knowledge long-term exceeds the capabilities necessary to do so in the first place. Microlearning methods counteract this trend by offering short and highly specialised learning topics across all modern devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. This way, employees can learn flexibly whenever and wherever they want as well as more effectively by concentrating on a distinct and concise piece of content each time. Step-by-step guide to creating effective training programmes In order to develop training programmes that will lead to sustainable learning, videos, animations, quizzes or games can be used to trigger emotions in employees such as excitement, curiosity and ambition. In addition, getting employees to actively engage with the training content is important to improve the learning experience. In general, sustainable learning will work better if the motivation to acquire new knowledge and skills is intrinsically based as opposed to being extrinsically led by incentives and perks. Moreover, in order to determine the effectiveness of training and development programmes, accurate performance measurement needs to be ensured, i.e. evaluating the progress of training completion by employees. Software solutions for training and development courses Today’s organisational digital infrastructures make it easier than ever to create and conduct employee training and development programmes and courses with the help of e-learning platforms. Many platforms offer ready-to-use learning units and solutions within paid memberships and subscriptions. The advantage of these offers is the fast accessibility and applicability within an organisation when getting training and development programmes off the ground. Disadvantages of this approach are the large costs involved in such memberships, which often make it difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises to afford. Using an online survey software tool such as LimeSurvey is a great alternative to set up and conduct training programmes as it offers flexible implementation of different media formats like videos and animations, images and texts as well as quizzes and tests. This applies to users with our without coding knowledge. Especially small and medium-sized organisations can benefit from the entirety of free features in LimeSurvey without the need for spending big budgets. Furthermore, its open source nature facilitates the setup and customisation of the training programme and its measurement tracking.

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3 years ago

How and When to Use 7 of the Most Popular Chart Types for Your Survey

Does it matter what chart type you choose? Regardless of whether you are running a survey for private, educationa ...

Take a look at the following assortment of the most popular and widely used chart types to get a good idea for evaluating and reporting on your own survey data. When to Use a Pie Chart single choice questions mask questions (e.g. Gender, Yes/No) Pie charts are best used when you are presenting a share of something, ideally items explaining a single variable to benefit readibility and assessment. Logically, all shares in a pie chart should thereby add up to 100%. For example, when you have binary survey responses, e.g., yes/no question types, or questions with only a few answer options/categories. Overloading a pie chart with too many categories, i.e., 6 or more, makes it hard to identify labels as well as shares and should be avoided. When it comes to data types, nominal data such as demographics, i.e., data without an order or ranking, as well as ordinal data such as likert scale ratings, i.e., data with an order or ranking, can be visualised using pie charts. Nominal data can be arranged clockwise from largest to smallest share and ordinal data can be arranged clockwise according to ranking or rating scale. In order to increase distinction between shares in a pie chart, strong colour contrasts or colour shades can help to achieve this. Pie charts are a nice and visually appealing solution if you are trying to show general trends rather than specific accurate data. General Tip: Avoid including "Other" as an option choice, as an answer as different responses will not be displayed in a pie chart, but will be shown as "Other". When to Use a Donut Chart single choice questions mast questions (e.g. Gender, Yes/No) Donut charts work similarly to pie charts. Donut charts have a circular cutout in the middle whereas the shares within pie charts completely fill out the middle. Despite these seemingly small differences, the way these chart types are viewed and interpreted from a psychological standpoint vary substantially. Shares of a pie chart all run to the middle and focus a viewer's attention to the centre where all pieces are processed as by the size of their areas. Shares of a donut chart however focus the viewer's attention to the length of each piece, thereby demonstrating a more linear approach of processing results. The latter way of interpreting data is naturally easier for people. Apart from that, donut charts can be used in the same way as pie charts, i.e., assessing shares of a whole. When to Use a Bar Chart single choice questions multiple choice questions arrays mask questions (e.g. Gender, Yes/No) There are several different ways to visualise data with bar charts. Most commonly used are the vertical and the horizontal bar charts. Both vertical and horizontal bar charts are composed of columns which are either aligned vertically or horizontally to the x-axis respectively. Furthermore, they are suitable to visualise nominal and ordinal data. The vertical bar chart is helpful when displaying percentages or means of only a few categories. Otherwise, too many categories would increase the width of the entire chart across a screen and make it hard to read or even display. Rule of thumb here is to reduce categories included in a vertical bar chart to only about a handful. Compared to pie charts, bar charts facilitate direct comparison between categories, especially when ordinal data is arranged from largest to smallest column or vice versa. Furthermore, bar charts can easily display negative values which is impossible with pie charts and makes the former superior and more flexible in most cases. The horizontal bar chart comes in handy where the vertical bar chart falls short. If you have more than a handful of categories, select the horizontal bar chart as it extends vertically and improves readibility. Stacked and grouped bar charts are great solutions when displaying subcategories, i.e., break down categories for a more detailed view of your data. The only difference between stacked and grouped bar charts is the way subcategories are displayed, namely subcategories in the same bar versus in different bars. General Tip: Make sure to display your bar labels horizontally, otherwise viewers have to tilt their heads to read them. Also, don't include the answer option "Other" for the same reason disclosed for pie charts. When to Use a Line Chart Single choice questions Multiple choice questions Arrays Mask questions (e.g. Gender, Yes/No) Line charts consist of data values that correspond to individual answer options and are best used to display trends, comparisons or peaks over time, therefore are great when running surveys repeatedly. General Tip: Reduce the number of labels on the x-axis to a maximum such as 5 to ensure readibility; however, make sure to have enough data points to enable proper extraction of trends. Also, adjust the relative height of the y-axis to match your highest value point within the line chart to improve the visual appeal of the chart. Furthermore, do not include the answer option "Other" for the same reason disclosed for pie charts. Chart Types in LimeSurvey In LimeSurvey, for each question that is created in a survey a chart type can be predefined in the statistics options of the respective question. If not changed, it will be set to bar chart by default. Not to worry though, in the statistics overview after collecting survey responses, you can simply and flexibly switch back and forth between all available chart types. Besides bar, pie, donut and line chart, LimeSurvey offers a few more chart types that are not as mainstream: radar (spider) chart and polar chart. Radar charts are a great way of visualising multivariate data, i.e., data with multiple variables, on two dimensions while the variables are represented by axes starting from the same point. Thus, radar charts are beneficial when other chart types such as bar charts become rather cluttered with an increasing number of variables. Polar charts are essentially radar charts since both display data as circular graphs and can be used nicely for visualising multivariate data. However, while radar charts connect the variable results to a "web", the polar charts display results in adverse bars within the circular diagram. General Tip: Keep the number of variables in your radar or polar chart to a maximum number of 8 to avoid chart overload and confusion. Advanced Tip: If you are dealing with large amounts of survey data in general, we recommend you consider creating pivot tables to get more efficient and structured data filtering options when generating flexible and powerful pivot charts. Conclusion Learning how to use these different chart types effectively will be of great benefit not just when presenting survey results, but also and more importantly when deriving actionable measures from these results. It is always important for you to consider that your audience may not be familiar with the survey setup, i.e., structure, variables and items in detail, which makes it essential to facilitate the readibility and interpretation of your survey results by choosing the most suitable chart to get your point across. Always remember: There is no one right chart to visualise your survey data. It ultimately comes down to weighing the pros and cons of each chart.

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3 years ago

Likert Scale: How to Properly Scale Your Survey Responses

What exactly is a Likert Scale? The Likert scale or Likert-type scale, named after its inventor, the American soc ...

Hence, a Likert scale is the sum of responses on several Likert options. When conducting a survey, the response on a Likert scale represents either the intensity of agreement to disagreement ("Extremely agree" vs. "Extremely disagree") with the question statement, making it a bipolar rating method, or the intensity of just an agreement or just a disagreement ("Extremely agree" vs. "Not at all agree" or "Extremely disagree" vs. "Not at all disagree") with the question statement, making it a unipolar rating method. It can be designed as an uneven-point scale, e.g., a 5-point or 7-point scale, with a neutral middle option, or as an even-point scale, e.g., a 4-point or 6-point scale, omitting a neutral option and forcing a more positive or more negative response choice. Either of these two options require full symmetry, i.e., ensuring bilateral symmetric distances from an existing or an imaginary neutral option and equal numbers of positive and negative options. How to Present Likert Scales in Online Surveys Ultimately, a Likert scale question may be arranged vertically or horizontally. However, there have been researchers investigating the possibility of something called a left-side bias when displaying a Likert scale question horizontally. Essentially, left-side bias means that when placing answer options on the left side of the Likert scale, there is a tendency among respondents to select these options, said tendency being somewhat stronger for positive options on the left side than negative options. Furthermore, there has been equivalent research showing a similar, yet even stronger selection bias for vertical Likert scales as respondents tend to skip lower displayed answer options and more often select the top options. Based on these statements, certain scale layouts appear more suitable to avoid survey bias and sloppy question answering than others. Horizontal Likert Scale: According to the Likert scale bias matrix, to keep the bias as low as possible in a horizontal order, it appears best to place negative attitude options on the left side of the scale and positive attitude options on the right side of the scale. Vertical Likert Scale: According to the Likert scale bias matrix, to keep the bias as low as possible in a vertical order, it appears best to place negative attitude options at the top of the scale and positive attitude options at the bottom of the scale. In addition, Likert scales can be modified to hold 7 or more answer options depending on the level of refinement that is required for a specific question or survey. Horizontal 7-point Likert Scale: Vertical 7-point Likert Scale: Creating Likert Scales in LimeSurvey There are several possibilities in LimeSurvey to create Likert scale questions either in a horizontal or a vertical order. To create horizontal Likert scales with text items, you may, for instance, use the array or array dual scale question types. To create vertical Likert scales with text items, you may, for instance, use the radio button list or the dropdown list question types. If you find it difficult to come up with Likert scale items, check out this marvellous overview of different Likert scale items that measure a variety of different attitudes. When to use Likert Scales? Likert scales have a variety of purposes and advantages when used in online surveys. They are ideal to capture attitudes, opinions, emotions and feedback on virtually any topic. Likert scales are thereby great to get very specific on a topic rather than getting lost in generic questions. Furthermore, Likert scales are universally applicable, easily evaluated and quickly completed by respondents, thus, avoiding survey fatigue.