Top 5 Mistakes Companies Make When Measuring Employee Satisfaction

In the corporate world, understanding your employees isn’t just beneficial; it’s a significant determinant of productivity, morale, and long-term success. However, gauging employee satisfaction isn’t always straightforward. Companies often stumble, inadvertently creating more issues and dissatisfaction. But fear not! We’re here to discuss, in a friendly, clear-cut manner, the top pitfalls companies face and how to gracefully avoid them.

Quick takeaways you’ll get from this article:

1. Neglecting the follow-up actions on feedback received
2. Using one-dimensional survey methods
3. Overlooking the importance of anonymity

Mistake 1: Ignoring Action on Feedback

One of the gravest mistakes made by companies is asking for employee feedback and doing nothing about it. It’s like collecting valuable treasure and then casually tossing it aside or leaving it in your basement or attic. This neglect can result in cynicism, decreased engagement, and a feeling of unimportance among employees — both those being surveyed and HR leaders who may be motivated to help improve the lives of their people.

What to do instead:

• Acknowledge the feedback received.
• Communicate the steps being taken towards change and timelines associated with these steps if possible.
• Involve employees in solution-building where possible so they have agency in the process to improve their experiences.

Mistake 2: One-Size-Fits-All Surveys

Many companies fall into the trap of using generic surveys to measure satisfaction. While standardized surveys are easy, they don’t consider individual roles, experiences, or departments. This approach leads to irrelevant questions, poor response rates, and ultimately, ineffective data. In some cases, surveys like eNPS surveys that are one-size-fits-all are good to have as benchmarks and company wide measures — but you may uncover certain themes that are specific to regions, business units, departments, or employees in a specific segment. To that end, follow up surveys that really focus in on the issues can be helpful to more specific audiences.

How to avoid this:

• Customize surveys to fit different departments or job roles.
• Regularly update the survey parameters to match company growth and change.
• Encourage open-ended responses for personal insights.

Mistake 3: Thinking Anonymity Isn’t a Priority

When employees fear their feedback might be traced back to them, they either sugarcoat their responses or avoid participating entirely. The result? You’re operating on a distorted version of reality, where everything seems rosier than it is. This may be good for back-patting, but it won’t solve anything and could even make matters worse.

The solution is simple:

• Guarantee anonymity to encourage honesty.
• Use external platforms for conducting surveys to ensure impartiality.
• Communicate the importance of honest feedback and the safety in providing it.

Mistake 4: Infrequent Assessments

Some companies treat employee satisfaction surveys as a rare event, often because they dread the logistical nightmare and the deluge of data it involves. However, infrequent assessments fail to capture the evolving challenges employees face. A large employee engagement survey may only make sense to run once or twice a year, but an eNPS survey can be setup to run on a recurring monthly or quarterly basis to better assess how your changes are trickling through the employee environment. You can look for third party solutions to help analyze all the written feedback, but you’ll at a minimum get a numerical value moving on a regular basis to measure.

Here’s how to change that:

• Implement regular (quarterly or bi-annual) satisfaction/eNPS surveys.
• Introduce pulse surveys for real-time feedback on recent changes or events which can be shorter and run off-set from normal annual/biannual surveys.
• Use technology to simplify the survey process and data analysis.

Mistake 5: Lack of Holistic Understanding

Focusing solely on numbers? That’s not advisable. Qualitative insights often provide the context behind the scores and percentages. Companies not investing time to understand the “why” behind the feedback fail to grasp employee sentiment. It will be harder to actually improve your scores if you don’t understand why the ratings are what they are.

To gain a holistic understanding:

• Incorporate face-to-face meetings or virtual calls to discuss survey results.
• Create a safe space for employees to share stories behind their feedback.
• Use empathy mapping or sentiment analysis to dive deeper into employee experiences.

Ready to revolutionize your approach to employee feedback?

Here’s an actionable takeaway to start right away: Schedule a meeting with your team leads to plan a comprehensive, customized, and regular employee satisfaction survey cycle. Discuss the importance of anonymity and how you can implement it, ensuring your team members feel safe and heard.

Then, sign up for Peoplelytics and harness the power of effective employee surveys to boost satisfaction, engagement, and retention. Your path to a thriving work culture begins here!