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Use Morale Surveys to Uncover Problems

03/05/07

Morale surveys are an excellent way to identify hidden problems that may be increasing employee turnover, decreasing productivity, and damaging your company’s reputation. These suggestions can help you get maximum benefit from them.

Pre-Survey Considerations
Before you create questions for your survey, ponder the following points well:

Survey every level and position. If you don’t, you’ll lower the morale of those whom you overlooked. If it’s not practical to include everyone, poll a representative sample of each group and explain why you’ve done so.

Use a graduated opinion scale, such as 1 (strongly disagree) through 5 (strongly agree). That makes it easy to tabulate answers. If you use mark-sensing forms, the replies can be summarized by computer.

Although the survey should be strictly anonymous, ask employees to provide their job titles and departments. They may be reluctant to reveal this information, but you’ll need it in order to pinpoint morale problems that only affect certain positions or areas.

Plan to conduct the survey on company time. Since you’re asking for the information, it’s only fair that you should pay for it. Employees will object to filling out the form when they’re off the clock. (If you require employees to fill out the survey, you must pay them for their time.)

Choose an impartial or non-threatening administrator. Larger companies often hire a consulting firm to run the survey and process results. In smaller firms, the head of human resources or employee relations is a logical choice. (For obvious reasons, surveys should never be distributed or collected by employees’ immediate supervisors.)

What to Ask
Poll employees’ feelings about all the areas or issues that might harbor problems. These include, for example:

  • Working environment (climate controls, lighting, ventilation, furniture and equipment, and physical layout).
  • Training (relevance, frequency, and relationship to on-the-job responsibilities).
  • Lunch and break periods (length and scheduling).
  • Pay scales (relationship to job responsibilities; parity with peers, coworkers in other departments, and competing firms).
  • Fringe benefits (range of choices, length of service required to qualify, and parity with competitors).
  • Communication (timeliness, value, and accuracy of information received from supervisors, higher management, and other departments).
  • Relationships with coworkers and supervisors.
  • Degree of challenge, career growth, and satisfaction derived from assignments.
  • Opportunities for advancement.

    Provide space for open-ended comments. No matter how many questions you ask, they still might overlook some things that employees are upset about.

    Relay the Results
    Report results ASAP. Fast feedback implies you were eager to summarize and share their replies. The longer the delay, the less you seem to care.

    Failing to report results at all—which is unthinkable, but some companies have done it—suggests that morale is a disaster and/or management can’t handle criticism. Sweeping results under the rug makes you a hypocrite and will probably cause more ill will than if you hadn’t done the survey at all.

    Report what people told you, warts and all. Morale surveys create a moral contract between workers and management. Their part of the deal is to level with you. Yours is to report, honestly, what they said. A simple way to do this is to reprint the original questions with employees’ responses filled in. You could also attach a cross-section of written comments.

    And don’t forget to emphasize the positive information that comes to light. Make sure the managers, departments, and company activities that employees praise get the recognition they deserve.

    Finally, tell workers what you will do, what you might do (pending further review), and what you cannot do to improve the problems or conditions they mentioned. Explain your reasons in each case.

    All in all, giving prompt, forthright feedback and backing up words with actions confirms your sincerity and builds mutual respect. Your efforts to do right by employees can inspire them to do right by you.

    When that happens, everybody wins.