Monday 3 February 2014

Personnel satisfaction survey

You need to know if your personnel is satisfied. Either because some are claiming salary raises, or because you are losing people, or because you need to let them know there will be no raise, or because it is said that only satisfied people produce satisfied clients...

Avoid the extensive collection of 60 questions applied every 2 years: use a more practical method, one which provides guidance for simple, necessary and effective actions with more frequent measurements, and which will be part of your routine.

Here comes the question... after all, what does it really mean to be satisfied? The most practical thing is to define satisfaction as the difference between what the person expects (or aspires to have, who knows) and what he or she perceives (feels, receives, believes) to have. It’s about this. It is as simple as that: satisfaction = expectation – perception. And it varies to the extent that expectations evolve (they talked about a raise, didn't they?), or perceptions alter (oh, now I understand how benefits work!)

If it is so, then I just need to seek to know what a person perceives, the things he or she values.

The survey takes 1 minute, I recommend to repeat it every 3 months, and to take the most important actions in the first week after the survey. I've been doing it for more than 20 years. It works. It makes me take important actions, solving problems I didn't even know existed; and it is easy to keep it inn operation, with quarterly control items, on my results chart.


 The image above shows how it works.

Every three months ask supervisors to apply the survey to their subordinates. It is common for all to be in the same room, answer the survey and hand the form in with their names on it; no one keeps any copy or notes on how they responded the survey.

Before handing out the first questionnaire, on a separate copy of the form the supervisor must write down how he or she thinks the subordinate will answer it.

In all surveys the previous one will be used as reference. In the initial survey, the previous one will be his pre-assessment.

The most important actions are originated when dealing with anomalies (strong changes between one survey and the other). In the example above, the biggest difference appeared in the leadership item.




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