Workplace culture is a huge factor when it comes to employee retention. Between four generations of employees, it can be hard to create a positive workplace culture.
A study by EY revealed that 92% of employees felt affected by workplace culture.
When you look at all the other factors of staying with a company, such as compensation, benefits, and flexibility, it’s incredible that company culture outweighs all that.
Understanding your company’s culture is hard to see from an outside perspective. That’s why company culture surveys are so important. You’ll be able to receive feedback from employees working in the field and test what changes can create a more positive environment for your employees.
3 key takeaways you need to know
- Company Culture Surveys are vital for understanding employee perspectives and improving employee experience.
- Effective survey implementation and employee engagement are crucial for gathering meaningful feedback.
- Transforming survey results into actionable insights is key to making informed organizational decisions.
What is a Company Culture Survey and Why Should I Use One?
Company culture surveys are another important and underutilized tool by the HR department, and business owners in general. If you want to scale your business, developing a positive culture is a must.
Much like other employee surveys, company culture surveys gauge how employees feel about your company’s values and mission. These surveys provide authentic feedback from your employees so you have a starting point for change.
Another great benefit to company culture surveys is the ability to compare feedback and insights from other surveys to see trends within the company
Benefits of Company Culture Surveys
You want to know what your employees are saying about your company behind your back, don’t you? Well, company culture surveys are a great way to find out!
These anonymous surveys will help you understand from an employee’s perspective, how they view the company’s culture. Knowing this information will help you determine if the culture is toxic to employees, if it’s a positive work environment and employees love working there, or if it’s mediocre. These surveys will help you see where the issues are so you can stop them in their tracks.
Company culture surveys are useful for all company sizes, whether you’re a start-up company with 5 employees, or a large corporation growing fast. Employers want to maintain their employee’s performance and motivation no matter how small the company is.
How Often Should I Send Company Culture Surveys?
It’s recommended to send them once or twice a year to employees. Sending them too often will cause survey fatigue and they become disengaged.
Crafting an Effective Company Culture Survey
There are 3 key components to a company culture survey
- Make sure employee feedback is anonymous to ensure quality feedback.
- Provide enough time for employees to write a well-thought-out response.
- Create clear, concise, and unbiased questions.
To design the perfect company culture survey, you need to keep a few topics in mind that represent a solid company culture, these include:
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Management Feedback
It’s important to use open-ended and closed-ended questions to keep employees engaged and thinking.
Options like:
- True or false questions
- Thumbs up/thumbs down questions
- Scales
- Multiple choice questions
- Long-form answer boxes
Will allow you to narrow down what feedback you need most.
10 Questions Your Culture Survey Should Include
- Overall, how satisfied are you in your current role?
- How do you feel about the level of transparency and openness in the company?
- Do you feel there is a good level of trust and honesty within the company?
- How do you feel about the level of inclusivity and diversity in the company?
- Do you feel like the company recognizes and rewards your hard work?
- Do the company’s policies and practices relate to its mission?
- How do you feel about the communication between peers and leaders?
- Do you feel comfortable voicing your thoughts and ideas with peers and leaders?
- Do you feel like you are included in the company’s decision-making processes?
- Is there anything else you would like to tell us related to this survey?
Incorporating the Feedback into Decision-Making
Communicating the results with your employees is as important as asking them for feedback. Once you gather all the data, let them know what you noticed overall and how you plan to incorporate changes for a more positive company culture.
Keeping employees in the loop creates transparency and loyalty to the organization. It helps employees feel like their thoughts and opinions matter to your organization and will encourage them to engage in more surveys in the future.
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Organizing the Feedback
Once you receive the feedback, you’ll need to know what to do with it.
Gather all the data to look at the overall picture that needs to be changed.
This may take time, you can try setting up focus groups with employees and leaders to understand what the true problem is.
Look to see what can change now. Some examples include:
- Let employees flex their time in the darker months if they feel unsafe walking home after work.
- Providing remote employees with a more efficient work setup, such as high-speed internet to increase productivity.
- Adding an onsite cafe for employees to engage with each other on breaks.
Figure out what feedback you can change and cannot change
Some feedback you receive from employees is not possible to change, such as how fast-paced the organization moves or how quickly it’s growing and evolving. However, you can provide support to employees who are having a difficult time with it.
Communicate the plans with your employees.
Again, including your employees in the plans with an estimated timeline will ensure they will adhere to the changes.
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Let’s Recap
Some change is inevitable, and employees will need to adapt to it, yet, there are also changes that you can control to have a better outcome with your employees.
To see how well the culture of your company is doing, you will need to engage in company culture surveys, at least twice a year, to see what’s going well and what’s not.
But you can’t ask employees any questions on a company culture survey, they need to have a goal in mind. Company culture surveys should include questions about
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Diversity and inclusion
- Management feedback
Thankfully, you don’t have to think of the questions on your own. Peoplelytics has crafted over 50 surveys with you in mind. Take the guesswork out of what to ask your employees. All you have to do is encourage them to take the anonymous company culture survey, give them a deadline, and then watch the results come through.
Once all feedback is received, you’ll be able to start making changes big and small to your company.
