Dramatic changes in society and the world of work have led to a seismic shift in workplace expectations. This, or perhaps the slow evolution in the generations that lead the workforce – more millennials and Gen Z employees than ever before – perfectly demonstrates why understanding employee satisfaction is a continuous process. Let’s talk about it!
For example, employee well-being is a top priority. People want to work for organizations that care about them and support flexible work arrangements. Remote or hybrid jobs get hundreds of applicants compared to in-office ones.
As a leader or HR professional, you are doing your best to keep up with those expectations. Enter employee satisfaction, which measures how satisfied employees are with their jobs and organization. But what are the best ways to understand employee satisfaction these days?
Annual surveys will only take you so far. If you gauge job satisfaction levels once a year, you miss out on the opportunity to come up with new employee engagement ideas and retain top talent. By the time you analyze the survey results, your best workers may be long gone.
The way you ask questions also matters. There are better approaches to get valuable insights than polling people on their overall degree of contentment. From pulse surveys to “stay interviews,” here’s your complete guide to effectively measuring employee satisfaction and building a satisfied workforce.
Employee Surveys Done Right
When done right, employee surveys can be eye-opening, even equipping you with information that leads to initiatives that transform company culture for the better. And you know what comes with that? A boost in employee satisfaction. Here are some insights and tips to lay the foundation for successful feedback gathering.
Different Types of Employee Surveys That Measure Job Satisfaction
Employee surveys come in different shapes and forms – and different types of employee surveys can help support your efforts to understand employee satisfaction.
Employee engagement surveys
To gain a deep understanding of how employees feel about their role and company, consider an engagement survey. It’s really quite simple: the in-depth questionnaire usually includes questions that touch upon both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the employee experience.
Pulse surveys
For quick real-time feedback, pulse surveys are your best bet. A pulse survey is a short, targeted set of questions around a specific area of focus – say, employee satisfaction levels around workplace well-being. The idea is to send it out on a regular basis to track employee sentiment over time.
Onboarding surveys
Onboarding surveys, which are sent to new employees, can help you be a fly on the wall on new team members’ initial experiences with the workplace.
Not only can this help optimize your onboarding process for greater employee satisfaction, but it also allows you to catch blind spots early before they become bigger issues later.
Exit surveys
How do your departing employees feel about their experience with your organization? People tend to be more candid when they are leaving, and these surveys can also help uncover reasons for turnover and opportunities for improvement.
How Frequently Do I Send Out Employee Surveys?
If you’re wondering how often to send out employee surveys, aim for a balanced approach: Quarterly pulse surveys can help you monitor trends and pivot accordingly, while an annual employee engagement survey is great for gaining a deeper understanding of the way people feel.
When dealing with organizational change or addressing areas of improvement on the employee satisfaction front, it might be worth sending out brief, pop-up pulse surveys on a weekly or monthly basis, as these are times when the employee experience is likely to evolve quickly.
Onboarding surveys should be sent soon enough after a hire starts to capture their perspective as a new team member – think, 30 to 90 days after their start date. As for exit surveys, conduct them right before an employee departs to get fresh, candid feedback.
Whenever you are on the fence about deploying a survey, reflect on the last time you sent one and why. Being intentional is key, as there is such a thing as survey fatigue.
If you can’t remember when you last gathered employee feedback, you probably don’t lean on surveys enough. If you can’t remember why you want to send a survey, that’s probably your cue to take a step back.
Crafting Good Questions to Measure Employee Satisfaction
There’s simply no way around it when your mission is understanding employee satisfaction: The quality of the data you garner is dependent on the quality of questions you ask.
Crafting good questions is crucial. Here’s where to start:
- Use both open- and close-ended questions to capture hard metrics and nuanced perspectives.
- Adapt questions to the survey type and objective. For instance, ask new employees about their satisfaction in regards to the recruiting and hiring process or departing team members about their reasons for leaving.
- If you’re running a pulse survey, ask one or two impactful questions related to a single topic. When deploying an employee engagement survey, tailor the questions to overarching organizational goals.
Here’s an example. If growing your customer base is a big objective for the year, you may want to ask employees how satisfied they are with the resources at their disposal to reach that goal – and if they feel supported enough.
Anonymous vs. Identified Feedback: What to Know
Think about the pros and cons of asking for anonymous versus identified feedback. Both methods can be useful for measuring and tracking employee satisfaction, but how do you decide which is appropriate?
Anonymous surveys are best when diving into sensitive topics, while feedback that includes identifiable data like role and department can offer more detailed information.
With anonymous surveys, team members feel comfortable sharing their unfiltered opinions, so you’ll get a more transparent assessment of what’s really going on.
That said, you won’t be able to reach out to team members for further clarification or get your hands on any demographic data.
With identified surveys, you can break up your data in different ways and analyze trends with more precision. They also give you the opportunity to follow up with respondents to ask for more details or more concretely act on specific pieces of feedback.
But on the flipside, employees may not be as honest in answering the questions.
Leveraging Tech Can Make a Difference
Understanding employee satisfaction is multi-faceted. With the guiding principles above, you can gain a more holistic understanding of where your team and organization stand in terms of employee experience. But relying on the right technology when deploying surveys can also make or break your efforts.
With Applauz, you can seamlessly integrate pulse surveys into your tactics, which will help you gain a complete picture of employee satisfaction beyond traditional annual surveys.
From leveraging real-time feedback on critical business decisions to uncovering the sneaky causes of employee retention issues, managers can rely on a responsive feedback loop to address employee satisfaction challenges before they snowball.
Plus, employees can earn gamified rewards for answering questions, which encourages participation. They can provide timely feedback without friction in a couple of clicks and contribute to driving cultural improvement.
Beyond Surveys: Modern Employee Satisfaction Measurement Methods
Surveys aren’t the only way to understand employee satisfaction. For best results, combine them with alternative methods such as regular one-on-one feedback meetings and “stay interviews.” Here are a few approaches to try.
One-on-one feedback sessions
One-on-one meetings between managers and employees are crucial. In those touchpoints, team members can discuss their thoughts and concerns. Here we’re mostly talking about formal feedback sessions, but it’s equally important for leaders to always be listening for clues.
But these conversations are also a great opportunity to understand individual contentment levels and ask employees for feedback. They encourage dialogue, build trust and capture insights in a way that surveys can’t replicate.
Stay interviews
Have you heard of “stay interviews”? They are inspired by exit interviews, but with employees who are still employed. The goal is to unpack why people stay and what could eventually drive them to leave.
Unlike exit interviews, these feedback sessions offer proactive insights and help retain top talent before dissatisfaction arises.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is a scoring system based on a single yet impactful metric: How likely people are to recommend their organization as a great place to work. It’s typically measured with a single question on a scale of 1 to 10.
It’s particularly beneficial because it provides a simple, quantifiable indicator of overall employee sentiment that can be tracked over time.
Team activity metrics
The way team members interact also offers a window into employee satisfaction. Do people speak up in meetings? Is the environment highly collaborative? Is there a sense of community and social life at work?
Team activity can be observed, but it can also be assessed through activity on project management platforms and communication channels as well as participation in certain types of work events. High engagement in team activities is usually a good sign for employee satisfaction.
Recognition patterns
If you use an employee recognition platform like Applauz, you can track analytics around recognition patterns, from the number of peer shoutouts to the amount of rewards accumulated. This is important because employee recognition programs have a direct impact on employee engagement.
Even though they are slightly different concepts, employee engagement and satisfaction are interrelated.
Engagement involves a desire to perform.
Satisfaction is about contentment more than employee performance.
But one could say satisfaction leads to engagement, and engaged employees are more likely to be satisfied.
Trends in recognition patterns can therefore give you a glimpse into employee satisfaction levels.
Real-time Feedback Mechanisms for Workplace Satisfaction
Now that you have a comprehensive toolkit to understand employee satisfaction, implement real-time feedback mechanisms to track it on a regular basis.
You can still aim to run an annual survey, but integrating ongoing feedback systems around employee satisfaction is necessary. It’s the only way to keep track of employee sentiment and adjust course before dissatisfaction seeps in. Here are a few simple processes you can rely on.
Digital suggestion boxes
A digital suggestion box is a straightforward way to solicit opinions from employees. It’s non-intrusive, can be anonymous, and fosters open communication.
Peer recognition data
Tracking peer recognition data through platforms like Applauz can help you gauge the “temperature” of employee satisfaction on a regular basis. High levels of appreciation tend to signal a positive work environment and better satisfaction – the opposite is also true.
Social recognition patterns
Analyzing how often people recognize each other in social settings is another interesting way to track satisfaction. If team members don’t openly share appreciation during meetings and interactions, it’s a red flag.
Informal check-ins
Casual conversations between managers and employees do more than build trust: They give team members the opportunity to share their feelings and concerns.
Analyzing Data to Improve Employee Satisfaction
Gathering the right type of data and knowing how to analyze it is also critical. Focus on metrics that provide you with actionable insights you can use immediately.
Key metrics to track include turnover rates, absenteeism rates, eNPS scores, recognition frequency and engagement metrics such as participation in surveys or team activities.
Not only does tracking these metrics allow you to spot trends, but it also helps you measure the ROI of HR activities. Let’s say that you implement a new benefits package, competitive compensation and professional development initiatives.
Measuring eNPS scores and sending a pulse survey every three months can help you determine the impact of those choices.
Implementation Guide: Turning Insights Into a Satisfied Workforce
Ready to turn employee satisfaction insights into concrete HR strategies? Your exact plan of actions should be based on your unique culture and needs, but this brief step-by-step rollout plan can inspire you:
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Analyze Data and Identify Areas of Focus
What is your starting point? Review current data and identify pressing areas of focus to improve employee satisfaction.
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Set Clear, Measurable Goals
Set objectives such as improving eNPS by 10% or reducing turnover by 15% within six months. Tracking KPIs will help you succeed!
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Engage Stakeholders
You’ll need buy-in from leaders and managers. Involve them early on in the process and ask for their help to determine whether your strategies are practical across all levels of the organization.
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Implement Initiatives Gradually
Don’t spend all your budget on a strategy before testing out ideas. Roll out employee satisfaction strategies in phases before scaling. Use data to guide decisions.
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Monitor Progress
Collect employee feedback regularly to evaluate the impact of your strategies. Adjust and optimize accordingly to address unforeseen challenges or simply refine your methods.
Applauz can help you leverage pulse surveys and integrate them into your systems without heavy lifting, leaving you with more time, money and energy to spend on other facets of the employee experience.
The information above equips you to be at the forefront of best practices when it comes to understanding, improving and maintaining employee satisfaction.
The future of satisfaction measurement is all about comprehensive, ongoing feedback – and Applauz can help you turn it into a reality.