What is an Employee Feedback Survey?

Often an essential component of organizational training and development, Employee Feedback surveys provide a picture of your organization's needs. These surveys can be used to solicit employee opinions on a variety of issues such as the company's success in communicating its mission to employees, or local issues such as quality of the working environment.

These surveys often contain a series of multiple choice items grouped along one or more dimensions of the organization.

The types of items included in these surveys may concern areas such as:

Creativity
Innovation
Satisfaction
Senior Management
Interpersonal Relations
Functional Expertise
Compensation
Benefits
Customer Service
Communication
Obtaining Results
Analytical Thinking
Mentoring
Strategic Planning
Teamwork
Adaptability
Staff Development
Leadership

The results of this type of feedback process provide an understanding of how the employee perceives the organization along different dimensions. This process is often used by Human Resources Departments.

This feedback:

is essential to facilitating development and organizational change
allows the organization to focus on needs and leverage its strengths
informs the organization on which actions will create problems for the employees
provides management with employee feedback (both positive and negative) on the internal health of the organization
measures the impact of current programs, policies and procedures
can be used to motivate employees and improve job satisfaction

The purpose of this document is to provide a guide to assist those who are conducting an employee survey.

Chapter Highlights

Uses
Benefits
How it is conducted
Requirements
Benefits of using the Internet
Demos
Item Bank
Web Resources
Related Pages

Principle of Employee Feedback Surveys: Provides an understanding of how the employee perceives the organization and work groups.

Employee Feedback Survey: Uses

Uses for Employee Feedback Surveys include:

Focusing of Employee Development Programs
Enhancing Management/Employee Relations
Training Needs Assessment
Evaluation of Training
Organizational Climate Survey
Customer Satisfaction Survey

This process can also be a motivator of performance since it shows the employee that their opinions and views are considered important.

Benefits

Provides a direct means of assessing employee opinions that would otherwise be unreported.

How Employee Feedback Surveys are conducted

Checklist of what to do when conducting an employee survey.

Strongly agree | agree | (neither agree nor disagree) | disagree | strongly disagree.
Excellent | good | fair | poor
All of the time | most of the time | some of the time | hardly ever | never
To a very great extent | to a great extent | to some extent | to a very little extent | to no extent at all
Very satisfied | satisfied | (neither satisfied nor dissatisfied) | dissatisfied | very dissatisfied

poor question wording or sequencing, as well as errors in layout
problems caused by the length of the questionnaire or the respondents' inability or unwillingness to answer the questions
additional questions or response categories that can be pre-coded on the questionnaire
non-response problems
any negative repercussions the survey may have on employees

Develop questionnaire A questionnaire used for Employee Feedback Surveys typically contains items that are rated on a 5 point scale. These items may be developed to measure different dimensions of the organization (e.g., communication, teamwork, leadership, initiative, management, compensation, ...). Questionnaires also typically include one or more open-ended questions to solicit written feedback.

Questionnaires typically include from 50 to 100 items. When estimating the amount of time to complete the questionnaire you should estimate about 1 minute per questionnaire item.

If using a printed questionnaire form, you should consider using forms that can be scanned into a computer.

It should be noted that the design of a questionnaire is usually an iterative process -- questions are formulated, tested, reformulated, tested, and so on.

Questionnaire Review Examine and critique of an existing survey. The review is conducted to improve the quality of the survey, and to increase the likelihood the customer receives actionable information. Critiques are also performed to increase the probability of high response rates.

Instrument Pre-Test Conduct an instrument pre-test, which is an examination of the data collection instrument by potential respondents. It can be completed for paper-based, as well as electronic and phone based data capture. This may include a series of telephone interviews or focus groups designed to gather feedback on the content, clarity, readability, relevance, length, and comprehensiveness of the item set, as well as the overall experience of completing the instrument.

Pre-testing can show:

Ensure confidentiality of participants Steps must be taken to ensure the confidentiality of the feedback results. For example, the feedback ratings from several employees should be combined (averaged) to mask the identity of an individual employee. Comments or written answers to questions may be summarized in the results to mask the identity of the author. The confidentiality helps ensure that the results are genuine.

Administer the questionnaire Distribute questionnaire forms (if using printed copies) with instructions. May want to prepare answers to common questions if other employees will be assisting in the administration. If possible, post the questions and answers to your website for easy access.

Administer it to everyone? Or, just a sample?

Advantages of it to everyone:
All employees are given the opportunity to express their opinions
Advantages of it only to a sample:
Reduced time to collect and process the data
Less data to collect

Needs Analysis Why is the survey being conducted?
Meetings are held to determine the goals and objectives, as well as the content of the project. Whether
implemented through individual interview or focus group this needs
analysis will ensure that the critical information is gathered in the manner that best fits the customer need and will assist in determining the best method of collecting the data.

Focus Groups Structured meetings to gather qualitative
information relevant to the survey development.

Survey Design Develop survey instrument by synthesizing
the information gathered from needs analysis, focus groups and other
documents available.

Determine the rating scale to be used:

Analyze the data Basic data analysis would include averages of ratings. More complicated analyses may include item-analysis and/or factor-analysis. Types of analyses include: Performance Dimension Summary; Summary-Performance vs. Expected; Individual Item Ratings; Item Ratings-Performance vs. Expected (normed); Highest- or Lowest-Rated Items (shows individual's strengths and weaknesses); Group & Organizational Ranking, and Recommendations for Development.

You may want to analyze the data by organizational division or department to assess group and organizational strengths and weaknesses. This can be used to support or promote training and organizational development.

Written Interpretive Reports Examine data through written interpretive reports, which summarize the results of your study.

Presentation of Survey Results The analysis of data in report format, or on a variety of other media, such as CD-ROM, diskette, or Internet.

Develop and Distribute Results Feedback results should be shared with the employees.

You may want to provide individual review sessions or group workshops conducted by a facilitator to help individuals review and understand the results and develop appropriate goals and objectives.

Requirements?

An Employee Opinion Survey process requires a coordinated effort to collect hundreds, or even thousands, of pieces of data. In addition, the validity of the results is enhanced by ensuring confidentiality of the participants.

The survey administration may require time (to complete the questionnaires) and computer resources to analyze the data.

Benefits of using Internet

Fortunately, there are many software companies that offer tools to assist you in conducting this type of feedback process. Some links to these companies can be found at the HR-Software network.

Web Access Are your employees scattered throughout the globe? Or, across different states? No problem, just use the Internet as the medium through which your feedback process is conducted.
Confidentiality Although the data is collected by a third-party, the confidentiality is enhanced in that fewer internal employees have access to view the data.
Simplified Data Analysis Spending time entering data into a spreadsheet or database for analysis? Use web based tools to collect, store, and analyze data.

Demos

Request a customized free online demo from HR-Survey.com

Item Selector

If you are interested in developing an employee opinion survey, this would be a good place to get started. Click the link below to access our Item Selector program. This will display a form containing a list of items. Just select the items you want included on your questionnaire and follow the instructions on the form.

Item Selector

Item Bank

Access an item bank containing over 1,600 items.

Item Bank