Employee Satisfaction Survey

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Are you investing in employee morale? In a recession, it's not unusual for employees to question their job stability. Fears of job loss causes concern about finances, which can drain employees' energy. When employee morale is low, just about any excuses is good enough to just stay home. Organizations need to invest in their employees.

A good way to keep tabs on employee moral is with employee satisfaction surveys. With the help of employee feedback, employers can identify possible causes for low morale and take steps to boost satisfaction.

We've mentioned before that employee satisfaction is linked to customer satisfaction. In a down economy, organizations need productive, efficient teamwork and happy representatives who want to help customers. Even little things such as personally greeting employees or thanking them for their hard work can boost morale.

What has your organization done to improve employee satisfaction based on feedback from employee questionnaires?

If you've never conducted a survey before, you're likely looking for some sample survey questions to get started. Cvent offers a wealth of survey templates to jumpstart any survey project, whether it's a customer feedback, market research or employee satisfaction survey.

All our sample surveys follow our own advice: keep it simple and easy to understand. If you want to customize questions to fit organizational and survey goals, we encourage you to do that. All of our web survey templates are a great resource for examples of survey questions.

Take a peek at a couple of customer satisfaction survey questions in our customer satisfaction survey template:





To learn more about Cvent's survey templates, sign up for one of our free webinars.

If you've never conducted a survey before, you're likely looking for some sample survey questions to get started. Cvent offers a wealth of survey templates to jumpstart any survey project, whether it's a customer feedback, market research or employee satisfaction survey.

All our sample surveys follow our own advice: keep it simple and easy to understand. If you want to customize questions to fit organizational and survey goals, we encourage you to do that. All of our web survey templates are a great resource for examples of survey questions.

Take a peek at a couple of customer satisfaction survey questions in our customer satisfaction survey template:




Customer Satisfaction Sample Question

To learn more about Cvent's survey templates, sign up for one of our free webinars.

If you run web surveys and use email marketing to solicit responses, you may encounter deliverability issues. The common myth surrounding "Undeliverable" is that ISPs and organizations block messaging at the server level. We're not suggesting ISPs and organizations aren’t the cause for some of your undeliverables, but they can’t shoulder all the blame.

There are some things marketers should be doing to boost deliverability, especially when your customer research, training evaluation or employee satisfaction surveys rely on it. Here are a couple quick tips to improve email deliverability:

• Clean your lists. Following best practices to increase open rates and survey responses through email marketing doesn't matter if you ignore bounce backs. Using a web based survey company such as Cvent helps keep contact lists clean by automatically cleansing your database. It marks undeliverables so that those contacts never receive another email. Beyond that, you should have a monitored email address for bounce backs.

• Monitor results in real time. As a best practice, we suggest testing any survey before launching it to your entire list. This should include message testing to a segment of the list you plan to use. If you have the wrong messaging go out to your contacts, you're going to be hurt by spam complaints. Monitoring results in real time helps you identify and fix small problems before they ruin the integrity of your entire set of contacts.

If your clients are unsatisfied, do you know why? Customer retention should be a huge focus for any organization, if for no other reason than that acquiring new customers is five times more expensive than keeping a current customer.

As many HR executives and relationship managers know, employee satisfaction has a direct link to customer satisfaction. An employee who is satisfied with his or her job and work environment is more likely to work to keep customers satisfied. So, when it comes to increasing customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, take care of your biggest asset: your employees.

Consider conducting an employee satisfaction survey. Just the act of running a survey has been shown to boost employee satisfaction. It lets employees know that management is listening and considering their concerns.

If they have valid concerns about overtime expectations or incentive plans or a range of other issues, just running an employee survey won’t solve those issues. It will, however, allow you to to identify issues affecting various parts of the organization and take steps to improve the culture and environment.

Unlike what some organizations have come to believe, each department does not live in a vacuum. If your marketing department is unhappy, it will affect your sales and client services teams. If your technology department is unhappy, it will affect your accounting and marketing departments. If your customer service employees are unhappy, look out! You may have a hard time renewing current customers and winning new clients.

Instincts tell us that poor customer satisfaction is linked to problems with your product offering or customer service, but it could have wider implications. Before investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in R&D to improve your offering, consider implementing a survey program to help identify the true cause of your customer retention problems.

A successful company is only as good as its employees. After all, the efficiency of your entire team—from sales to marketing to technology to human resources—determines your organization's profits and growth. Isn't it, then, more important than ever to make sure your team is productive and happy overall?

Research has shown that motivated and satisfied employees tend to contribute more in terms of organizational productivity and maintaining a commitment to customer satisfaction—both essential characteristics of an organization that will successfully weather the economic storm. So then how do you make sure your employees are, and remain, motivated and satisfied?

Employee satisfaction surveys are great tools for boosting morale within an organization. In fact, it's generally seen that companies that encourage or engage their employees to provide ideas and suggestions have higher employee retention rates and job satisfaction. Give your employees a chance to share insights and suggestions, and you'll have invaluable information that can be acted upon to increase workplace satisfaction and improve business processes.

Employee feedback and satisfaction are critical to the success of any organization. To read more about how to successfully implement a survey program that will positively impact your culture and bottom line profits, read Cvent's new white paper on employee satisfaction.

Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. When creating questions for your survey, it’s important to mask any biases you may have. Asking loaded or leading questions can destroy your survey data and the accuracy of your results, so eliminating or rewording any such questions is an important step in your survey design process.

How to you spot a leading question? Often times they are easy to identify because they point towards a specific answer. Consider these customer survey questions:

LEADING: Most Americans prefer to purchase products manufactured in the United States. Do you prefer to purchase products manufactured in the United States?

BETTER OPTION: Where do you prefer products you purchase to be manufactured?
The leading question uses a generalized statement at the beginning that implies your respondent is un-American if he or she disagrees.

The better option is an open-ended statement, allowing respondents to enter or select a country. This also gives your respondents an opportunity to say the origin of their purchases doesn’t matter.

Here is a similar example of employee satisfaction survey questions:

LEADING: People working at ABC Corp love their jobs. How do you feel about your job here at ABC Corp?

BETTER OPTION: On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied, how satisfied are you with your position at ABC Corp?

Again, the leading question pressures the survey participant to say they, too, love their job. You likely won't get an honest response—or accurate data—with this.

The better option is written in a neutral manner, giving respondents the opportunity to respond with their sincere feedback.

By asking leading questions, surveyors are not getting the most out of their survey programs. The objective of any survey is to get honest results on how respondents feel about the survey topic. Don't let leading questions deter you from this goal.