Employee Satisfaction

Over the past year, I have run into many new Cvent Web Surveys clients with the same issues or problems with their employee satisfaction surveys.  Most of the clients have the same story: in the past, using a different online survey solution, they released an employee satisfaction survey and were not able to follow up in a timely manner. 

The workplace employee surveys were conducted in a number of different fashions: paper-based, with different online survey tools, and even website survey forms.  All of these previous methods had one tragic flaw: reporting.  The survey administrators waited untill the survey was closed to run survey reports or review the paper surveys.  The problem inherit in this approach is time.  They would wait weeks before pulling reporting and discovering an employee had a problem in the workplace or in the case of paper based methods, sometimes months before they scanned the surveys.

When they finally discovered a problem that needed attention they would act, but what they discovered was:

Both of these resolutions are horrible.  If the employee solves the problem themselves they feel the organization is powerless and does not care about their situation.  If they quit, we all know that it costs 10 times more to train a new employee than to retain the old one.

A simple solution to these problems is a feature that Cvent's online survey solution embodies: Triggered Email Alerts.  Most other survey tools out there do not contain this feature.

The beauty of this feature is the survey administrator can have an email alert sent to whomever they designate; Human Resource Manager, Employee Liaison, etc...  In this manner as soon as an employee answers the appropriate question and then clicks finish on the survey an email is sent to the designated person, who in turn can then immediately follow up with the employee and solve the problem.  Thus, boosting employee retention rates, making them feel like a needed part of the organization, instilling employee loyalty, and finally creating a better work environment.

The triggered email alert feature in Cvent's survey solution solved these client's employee retention nightmares and resulted in a better workplace and a more cost effective future.

Rarely are we asked the question, What is a survey? Typically questions follow the path of, Why do I need a survey program? What am I going to get out of conducting online web surveys to collect customer feedback? Or How do I get started measuring employee satisfaction with online questionnaire templates?

However, sometimes it's good to define market research and what it means, and answer the rarely asked question, What is a survey?

Market Research Definition (mahr-kit-ree-surch)
The gathering and studying of data relating to consumer preferences, purchasing power, etc., especially prior to introducing a product on the market.

Survey Definition (ser-vey)
Collect quantitative information about items in a population. Surveys of human populations and institutions are common in political polling and government, health, social science and marketing research.

Chances are though, you're still wondering about those other questions. These posts may help you answer those ever burning questions about why you should create and design surveys.

Cvent offers a variety of Pre-Designed Survey Templates you can choose from for your first online web survey. These internet survey templates contain default questions, email, welcome and thank you text which you can utilize when designing a questionnaire. You can also choose from over 50 different graphical templates to suit the look and feel of your survey forms. Here’s a list of the different pre-created survey templates that you can use to build the base of your survey:


Besides this vast list of pre-designed questionnaires and graphical survey templates, Cvent also offers you a Question Library, which is filled with Customer Service, Demographics, Event, HR/Training, Marketing/Sales questions that you can utilize in your survey.

So! Go ahead and Sign up for an online web survey free trial account now and enjoy these á-la-carte features absolutely free.

I probably don't need to explain why creating employee surveys should be part of every HR department, but coming up with the correct employee evaluation template or employee job satisfaction survey questions isn't as as obvious as know you should do them. I recently came across a few sample workplace survey questions I thought may help when you start writing employee questionnaires:

One thing you should notice in the example employee satisfaction questions are they are different survey question types. A general online survey best practice to remember when crafting employee survey questions is to vary the question type. It helps keep the respondent engaged and lowers survey abandonment rate.

Here at Cvent, we get asked for survey templates all the time. That's why we've created a bank of survey questions and pre-created questionnaires for all clients to utilize within their account. But it never seems to be enough. Sample employee motivation surveys, employee evaluation survey examples, sample employee questionnaire, employee satisfaction survey templates, the list goes on, and on, and on...

While this post may not give you all the answers or the complete employee survey template you're looking for, it definitely is a start. Below are some sample survey questions for employee questionnaires.


While not all of these questions are necessary (or appropriate) in any given employee engagement survey or job satisfaction questionnaire, you should see how some of them will fit into your next employee satisfaction survey template.

There are several things to remember when creating an employee survey. Obviously, you must ensure no one outside the company can view or take the survey. This is simple enough to do by setting the survey settings in the employee survey software to only those on a targeted list. This will guarantee that your data is not compromised by pranksters, former employees or anyone outside the company.

You must also guarantee anonymity for your employees. This is generally a standard practice but cannot be emphasized enough when you create employee questionnaires. Employees are going to be more skittish than the average survey respondent because they may be concerned about repercussions if they admit dissatisfaction in the survey. So, you cannot express anonymity enough.

When creating a workplace employee survey, include both quantitative and qualitative questions. Provide an open-ended comment space for them to write down any concerns they felt were not covered in the survey. This is a great opportunity for employers to find out things that bother or impress employees. Employers should also share all survey results with employees once the online questionnaire is closed. It could negatively impact employee morale if the results are perceived to be kept secret. Also consider creating action items immediately, if they make sense for the company. For example, if employees express a desire for more training opportunities, look into them and offer a few on-site training classes if feasible.

You should think about employee workplace surveys as employee morale surveys.

This Friday we are will be celebrating our blogs' first birthday. I can hardly believe it's been almost a year of sharing our Web Survey Best Practices with you. Each day this week we will be counting down our top favorite posts. You might have already guessed, today's theme is employee surveys.

• HR Survey Tips: Weed Out Unqualified Job Candidates: In this post, we talked about how pre employment assessments can be a big time saver for HR. It can be a real struggle for hiring managers to identify the best candidates. It's no secret that asking pre-interview questions or providing job applicants with a pre-interview questionnaire can save you from having to speak with people who are not a fit from the start.

• Employee Surveys Can Help Cut Costs: This post highlights how staff opinion surveys can help you identify areas to cut costs. You may find that the best cost cutting ideas come from the trenches and not senior management. All you need to do is ask.

• Employee Satisfaction Surveys Boost Productivity: This post is about employee morale and satisfaction surveys. Research has shown that motivated and satisfied employees tend to contribute more in terms of organizational productivity and maintaining a commitment to customer satisfaction. So how do you make sure your employees are, and remain, motivated and satisfied?

• When other companies come calling, will your employees remain loyal? This post talks about how you may have high employee retention rates now, but that doesn't mean you have satisfied employees. When the economy picks up again, organizations will begin to grow their workforce and skilled professionals will be in high demand. If your business fails to take care of their employees now, they may not keep those employees once hiring starts again.

• Employee Surveys Can Improve Customer Experience: This is my favorite post on the list, probably because my precondition to focus on the importance of creating a positive customer experience. One of the best ways to measure client satisfaction and experiences is to measure employee loyalty using employee satisfaction surveys.

Employee surveys don't always need to be measuring employee satisfaction or gauging employee commitment and loyalty. Sometimes, you may want to conduct an employee information survey to just update employee contact records. Employee surveys don't always need to be about discovering ways to improve a process or increase employee retention or satisfaction rates.

You can also create employee recognition surveys to identify employees who deserve extra recognition at your next company event. It may be a matter of some employees consistently going beyond the "call of duty" to help co-workers, but it's not something management sees. Like with a 360 degree feedback survey, colleagues and peers can have a different view of someone's work ethic and tasks they complete than management.

A common myth in the workplace is that employees don't need recognition, or shouldn't be recognized for "just doing their jobs." But if you were to do a quick opinion poll, you'd find that's not always the case. Instead, having employee recognition programs can serve to reinforce the good work employees are doing, and simultaneously increase employee satisfaction, productivity and loyalty. Those are all things organizations strive to promote within their employees. Employees want to know they've done a good job and their work, effort and time mean something to the organization.

How do you get started with an employee recognition survey? First, choose an online poll survey software for employee surveys (I would recommend Cvent Web Surveys Software). Then begin designing survey questions to fit your survey goal: identifying employees who deserve extra recognition. Example employee survey questions might include asking who they would like to nominate for an employee recognition reward, and why that employee deserves to be recognized.

In a recent survey of senior executives from some of the nation’s largest companies, more than 30% indicated increasing staff would be a top priority in the upcoming year as the recession tapers off and our economy starts to recover.

As executives begin to emerge from a defensive, survival mode and look to expand their business, it’s important that they don’t overlook their organization’s lifeblood and most valuable asset, their existing employees. While it is true that bringing new talent into an organization is exciting and reinvigorating, the collective knowledge and insight of your current workforce is invaluable and protecting this resource must remain at the forefront of every executive’s mind.

As one of Cvent Web Survey’s whitepapers on employee satisfaction mentions, 21% of individuals are eager to change careers, while only 20% feel very passionate about their jobs. This should be a very sobering fact for business executives with the economy picking up pace, workers will become particularly empowered to look for a new career path if they do not feel a strong commitment to their employer. Couple that with the prevailing statistic that it costs 10 times more to hire and train a new employee than it does to retain one and executives should begin to see the value in periodically checking the pulse of the workforce through internal surveys, specifically employee engagement surveys and employee commitment surveys.

When the economy picks up again, organizations will begin to grow their workforce and skilled professionals will be in high demand. If your business fails to take care of their employees now, they may not  keep those employees once hiring starts again. As the Reuters article points out after polling 150 survey respondents by telephone, recognizing employees does not always need to be monetary. Tracking employee satisfaction and engagement can help identify ways to keep employees feeling valued.

Cvent’s Web Survey application is uniquely suited to reinforce a connection between employee and employer through employee surveys. Using our advanced survey question logic in combination with the ability to create custom contact fields, survey creators can ensure their employees only see questions that pertain to their specific job responsibilities.  For example, your finance department won’t see a question asking them, “How satisfied are you with the leads generated from marketing?” because that does not’t apply to their daily responsibilities. The robust capabilities of our online survey technology ensures your efforts to improve employee loyalty and engagement don’t backfire and end up alienating your employees!

When creating online surveys, survey writers have the option to select whether the survey should collect respondent information or will be an anonymous survey. This is an extremely helpful feature if you conduct surveys, which at times, require absolute anonymity.

Collect Respondent Contact Information Survey: If during the survey creation wizard a survey designer selects this option, all survey respondents will be required to enter their contact information, such as name, email address, phone number etc. Setting up which contact fields you need collected for your survey takes place when you're designing your survey.

If you need a contact field that doesn't come standard in the survey application, simply create a custom contact field. We typically see custom contact fields created for pieces of information such as employee ID, account name, membership number, etc.

In a survey with identified survey respondents, all respondents must verify their name and email before starting the electronic survey online. This ensures their responses are correctly matched to their contact record in your address book. If the contact is not in your address book their information will be added automatically. An additional plus for the Cvent Contact Database is that even if they do exist in your address book, if they update their information while completing a survey, it will be automatically updated for you.

Anonymous Survey: In an anonymous survey, respondents can begin the web survey without entering their name or email address. No contact information will be added to or updated in your address book - because it's not being collected. As you would expect, the identities of your survey sample are kept anonymous and no survey responses are matched to contacts.

How do you know which type of survey is correct for your survey research project? Here's a few tips:

Why should you conduct 360 degree feedback surveys when you can't always determine whose feedback is accurate? If you're using another data collection tool, conducting anonymous surveys can be difficult for technical reasons. But you don't need to give up on collecting employee feedback, instead use employee assessments similar to 360 surveys.

360 surveys allows employees to see that their opinions matter, no matter what their title says.  Collecting employee feedback through 360 degree surveys shows your organization takes this feedback seriously as a measure of employees' satisfaction and effectiveness.

The survey questions you ask should get specific, if possible. 360 feedback surveys ideally will have most or all questions be the same for all survey respondents. This helps ensure survey data accuracy. When it comes to designing 360 degree feedback performance surveys in 360 survey software think accuracy!

Sometimes a goal of employee feedback programs are to improve employee performance. Following the simple survey questionnaire tips and best practices we've shared before will help you collect the data you need to make tweaks to processes - or invent new programs - to improve employee satisfaction and productivity.

What are some of these human resource survey best practice tips?

• Collect anonymous survey responses. Make sure you select an online data collection tool with the option to collect contact information or collect anonymous surveys.

• Don't ask too many personal questions. If you're conducting an anonymous employee feedback forms, employees shouldn't feel like their responses could be tracked back to them. Asking what department they're in is one thing, but asking what department, what age group they fall into and their gender may be pushing it too far - besides, do you really need any demographic information?

• Ask questions about a third party. Asking questions in the third person can sometimes make the employee completing the web survey feel less threatened. Do your co-workers You may feel like your questions are fair and unbiased, but employees may think you have a hidden motive.

• Do something with the survey results. The importance of employee surveys is unmistakable, but if you're not going to act on the results the whole surveying exercise will be in vain. More importantly, if you don't close the feedback loop, employees won't take your next survey project seriously. When you do take action as a result of the survey report, let them know changes were made because of employee's feedback!

Is your employee survey software getting the job done? Having a survey program in place to collect employee feedback and measure employee satisfaction should be a no brainer for human resource departments. Unfortunately, a lot of departments haven't put a program in place yet, or worse, have never conducted an employee job satisfaction survey project.

You may be thinking to yourself, Why do we need to measure employee satisfaction? Our employees are generally happy. My response is, How do you know? I mean really, how can you know if your employees are actually satisfied and happy if you've never conducted a survey to ask them? No one is going to come to your office and tell you they hate working at your organization. Some HR professionals think they can measure employee satisfaction based on employee retention rates. Looking at employee retention rates isn't necessarily the best way to judge how happy your employees are. Employees who don't have high job satisfaction may stay at an organization because they're satisfied with something else, such as the work environment. Or in today's current economic environment, even the most dissatisfied employees will be reluctant to leave an organization because they think the job market looks bleak.

As you can imagine, there are many factors contributing to worker and staff satisfaction such as:


In past posts, I've recommended collecting survey responses using anonymous online employee survey questionnaires generated by an employee survey tool. By periodically conducting surveys organizations can measure employee satisfaction with management, the mission and vision, teamwork and corporate communication.

Don't forget if you use survey creation software to create employee satisfaction surveys, you should also create surveys to conduct exit interviews. After all, most of the time a satisfied employee is not going to leave an organization.

Developing the right survey questions when writing a satisfaction survey for clients can be a challenge. There are many client survey templates available that include essential customer and client satisfaction survey questions.

When you begin writing survey questions for your online survey questionnaire, be sure not to forget this important client satisfaction survey example question:


This example client satisfaction survey question also works well for other customer and consumer surveys. That may seem obvious, but it's often a forgotten question. You should also consider asking employees if they would recommend your product/service/company. It's a good employee satisfaction survey example question because no matter what else they say in the survey, if they wouldn't recommend you, then they're not as satisfied as they should be. As we've mentioned before, unsatisfied employees are not going to provide customers with great experiences either.

No matter what kind of survey questionnaire you're working on, whether it's an employee satisfaction survey, product market research, a customer service questionnaire, a job performance review template or a customer satisfaction survey, having some basic knowledge of statistics and related terms is helpful.

If you're using survey analysis tools, chances are all the statistical calculations will be done for you, you only need to select the survey analysis methods. It's still important to know what the terms mean that are describing the data. Here's a quick "crash course" in basic statistics and what the terms mean:

Mean: Typically "mean" is used as a synonym for "average." While this is not exactly accurate, it's good enough for a high level understanding. To get the population mean, or the expected value of a random variable, take the sum of the results and divide it by the number of results.

Median: Separates the top half from the bottom half of the sample. The median is the exact middle number of your responses. To figure out the median, you order the finite list of responses from the lowest value to the highest value and select the middle value. If there is not a unique middle value, take the mean on either side of where the median would be (ie. in the list a < b < c < d the median would be the mean of b and c). The reason you would use the median over the mean is if there are outliers in the population that don't matter. Outliers will skew your mean in the direction of the outlier. However, using the median prevents the average from being skewed.

Mode: The mode is the response or variable in a data set that occurs most frequently (i.e. in the list a, a, b, a, b, c, c, d the mode would be a because it occurs the most). While the mean and median might be very similar for a data set, the mode may be very different depending on the data set's distribution.

Variance: Describes how spread out the distribution of a data set is.

Standard Deviation: Describes the probability of the data set's distribution. A low standard deviation means the the data points tend to be close to, or the same as, the mean. A high standard deviation indicates the data is spread out.

According to a recent Kelly Services survey report showed 75% of respondents appreciate the opportunity smartphones and laptops give them to stay in constant contact with work. However, only a third are working longer hours. The Kelly Services workplace survey had 100,000 survey respondents from 34 countries across North America, Europe and Asia.

According to the employee survey, more than 55% of respondents claimed to be happy with their current work-life balance, while 87% say having the capability to work anywhere, anytime, creates motivation and a better work-life balance.

Interesting survey results:

• Survey respondents in North America are happier with their work-life balance than any of the other regions in the study. European respondents employee satisfaction with work-life balance is the lowest across the globe.

• 30% of respondents in North America work longer hours as a result of new technology, this is lower than Europe (33%) and Asia (41%).

• Northern America baby boomers are experiencing a better work-life balance than other generations. In Europe, Gen Y places a greater emphasis on work-life balance than other generations.

• The opportunity for telecommuting or working remotely is important when deciding where to work despite the area of the globe. It is the most important in North America (92%), followed by Asia (89%) than Europe (84%).

George Corna, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Kelly Services, concluded flexible work practices, working from home and other family-friendly arrangements have improved work-life balance and boosted organizational efficiency.

I recently finished reading Company by Max Barry. The short version of the story is someone had the idea to create a "fake" company to test out management theories. However, due to a variety of factors, worker satisfaction is practically non-existent and employee morale is in the toilet (although the group of "researchers," called Alpha, claim it makes them more productive). Barry gives a great employee satisfaction survey example of what not to do as an organization. At one point in the story, the main character initiates an employee satisfaction survey. Unfortunately, employees don't believe the survey is anonymous or Senior Management plans to make any changes based on survey results. Instead, employees believe if they answer "in correctly" they may be terminated.

If you're beginning to think about putting an HR survey program in place to conduct job satisfaction questionnaires or employee morale surveys, here's a hint: make sure employees believe the survey is anonymous and they will not be investigated as a result of their feedback. In my opinion when it comes to staff surveys, nothing is more important than preserving the survey respondent's anonymity. Barry took it to an extreme having employees look for tiny, hidden watermarks on the paper survey with markings of employee numbers.

Another important lesson for survey writers and survey project managers is if your employees do not believe the organization plans to make improvements based on feedback, your survey is probably worthless. Employees wont spend time thinking about their answers and providing constructive feedback. More likely than not, they will breeze through the questionnaire giving "correct" answers. Why bother?

While the last lesson is something that must be addressed with organizational culture and building trust between management and employees, the anonymity issue is easily solved with a web survey tool. Most online survey software has the option to build surveys that are anonymous. Take advantage of that feature when creating surveys to collect employee feedback.

When you sit down to because the survey writing and question creating, take a minute to review these tips for what types of questions to avoid.

Yesterday, Salary.com announced the findings of their recent economic impact survey, conducted across 400 of their clients. Here's a quick synopsis of some of the HR survey findings:


As an human resources exec, this survey report may seem like old news to you. However, SVP of Marketing & Strategy at Salary.com, Brent Kleiman, warns against holding off on performance rewards because they can demotivate employees.


If you're under budget constraints and can't sell management on performance based increases, what are you doing to keep employee satisfaction, morale and engagement up?

Inevitably we as people have the desire to ask questions we don't necessarily need to know. When you're working on your next employee satisfaction survey, try to avoid asking these types of questions:


Finally, and probably the most important tip, make sure you share survey findings. It doesn't matter if the findings are negative - share them. Management has the opportunity to communicate with employees what they've identified as the top priorities and what changes they plan to implement in light of survey results.

I was reading through Bruce Temkin's 6 Laws of Customer Experience (CxP) yesterday, and I was struck by how well a survey program fits in with his CxP laws. I talk about implementing online survey programs to gather customer feedback all the time, to the point that I sometimes feel like a broken record. Often though, employees are overlooked as an essential part of the customer experience especially if they aren't front-line employees. For that reason, my favorite two laws are numbers four and five:
Obviously, conducting client surveys to find their satisfaction levels is important for customer analysis, product enhancements, customer service feedback, etc., but checking in with employee's satisfaction is equally important. Here are a few of the highlights from Bruce:

Various types of employee feedback and HR surveys can include questions to evaluate how your organization is doing when it comes to fostering the correct environment for providing amazing customer experiences. A quick online survey can show management if they're doing a good job communicating organizational goals, motivating employees, boosting morale by celebrating their successes, etc. One of the best ways to measurce customer experience is to measure employee loyalty and morale using surveys.

Employees are an organization's biggest asset; but if employees aren't motivated, don't understand or are just expected to churn through tasks, they could also be your biggest liability when trying to boost customer retention. A good first step to checking in on your customer experience is to check in with your employees through some type of employee satisfaction survey.

If your organization doesn't currently conduct employee surveys or conducts paper based surveys, I'd recommend signing up for one of our online product demos or a free trial of the Cvent Web Survey software.