Nicholas
Wright explains how to get the best out of staff surveys
Nicholas
Wright leads internal communication practice at PR agency Fishburn Hedges. He
has worked as a consultant and held similar internal communication posts at
Boots and Lloyds TSB.
How
do you determine the content of a survey?
One
method I’ve used has been a core questionnaire (put together with input from
all the businesses) and then a short set of ‘bolt-on’ questions for each
business.
How
are companies running surveys?
Many
companies are exploring online polling – ask the ‘big’ question at the
beginning of the week; get responses with say a 48-hour deadline, and, with
appropriate software, turn it into results and e-mail a follow-up questionnaire
to the employee audience by the end of the week. Motorola created a ’60-second
survey’. Conducted every other week, and limited to six multiple choice
questions with an opportunity for extra comment, results can be viewed
immediately by users.
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What
constitutes a successful survey for you?
That
it is both global and local, trend-based, action orientated and linked to other
research. The holy grail for employee research is to link it consistently with
external customer research – in this way you can establish whether the more satisfied
employees are delivering greater customer satisfaction.
