I Can’t Get No Employee Satisfaction
I’m not happy. The printer has still not been fixed and now my chair is broken. The problem with the company is that it is going to the dogs. My boss is okay but has no clue what is going on.
There was a new person that started last month, no one bothered to introduce them and they were given a job that they had no clue how to do; why didn’t they ask me to look after him? For a start I could have let them know them a new set of plans have been released so even if they did know what they were doing the drawings they are using are out of date anyway. I don’t know why I bother sometimes.
Some of us went out for a drink after work last night. I don’t know anyone who is happy and the lady in the Accounts department has told me that she has just about had enough and is going to ask for an immediate pay rise and if she doesn’t get it she will be off.
The management here just don’t have a clue, we are haemorrhaging money through our inefficiencies and they think that sending out memo’s telling us that they are introducing new procedures for claiming expenses is going to make a difference – whoopee do.
I think I’ll ask for a pay rise, if Sally from Accounts can get one I can.
And on it goes.
When a company loses touch with their employees these are the sort of thoughts that start to play on the minds of individuals; the lack of appreciation, a broken chair, the blaming of ‘management’, even questioning the futility of what they are doing. Minor problems fester and a sceptical and critical state of mind develops. Can you be sure that it isn’t going on right now in your organisation?
Social events outside the office become nothing more than a forum for complaints and negativity grows among people who feel powerless to effect change. Dissatisfaction will often synthesise into a demand for an increase in remuneration, as though like a cheap fix more money will momentarily lessen the pain.
If ignored by management the concerns of this employee will inevitable find empathy with their colleagues own individual concerns, where the only common demand might well be a demand for an increase in remuneration, more paid holidays and a reduction in working hours, all of which will not fix the broken chair, ensure that new personnel are in future properly introduced, trained and managed nor help management identify areas of inefficiency.
Organisations have a habit of compartmentalising people, physically through offices, cubicles and workstations also in terms of responsibility. With effective and strong management to support this structure it can be productive, but as an organisation grows, and weak or inappropriate management infiltrates the management chain, it is perhaps inevitable that cracks will begin to appear.
Looking at an organization from the top down all the corporate garden can appear to be in full bloom as middle management either disguise or are just unaware of festering problems.
A very skewed view can be the result of relying on a limited number of indicators, just as a one eyed person finds judging distance difficult. By establishing procedures that sample the mood from different perspectives throughout the organisation good management will be able to form a rounded picture.
The benefits of establishing good, frequent and extensive communication channels are both direct and indirect.
Greater respect will be given to a senior management team that is known to have their ear to the ground and where they keep the middle management honest by knowing that middle managers can no longer shrug away the senior manager’s searching inquiry “How is everything going?” question with a non-committal “Fine”; It is my experience that if someone replies with “fine” you need to dig deeper and ask if they really know what is going on.
Most principals of an organisation will not have the luxury of spending time walking the floor and discussing the issues of individuals but through online employee satisfaction questionnaires they can achieve the same benefits and almost become omnipresent.
Online surveys are the perfect mechanism for establishing effective communications between the employer and employee. Using a survey hosting service they can now be created and published with speed and ease.
Surveys can be deployed in seconds by utilising the Internet and intranet, they can be completed easily by employees and the results analyzed in real-time exposing the ‘problems’ and giving early warning towards common themes of dissatisfaction.
Online employee satisfaction surveys have the ability to get to the heart of an organisation, confirm not only that the engine room is working but that there is sufficient coal in the bunker.
There are considerable benefits to conducting online surveys, real issues can be identified and employees feel that they have a forum to express their concerns.
Although online surveys will not on their own resolve problems they do help identify the concerns of the employees and that in turn gives senior management the opportunity to fix the problems that need fixing, if people then do decide to leave the organisation they will hopefully be doing so for the right and not wrong reasons.
The grass may always appear greener on the other side but the drivers that cause good people to leave a company is rarely just a monetary concern (although this can often cited as the reason) but more often to do with one or more of the following:-
- the working environment;
- a lack of accomplishment
- insufficient training and feedback;
- lack of a career path;
- over worked;
- lack of trust and respect with the senior management.
A well planned employer/employee communications programme that can identify the individual and common concerns of employees will give senior management the opportunity to address root problems and not just the symptoms of employee dissatisfaction, allowing them to demonstrate to their employees that they are not viewed simply as interchangeable parts that can be used for any job at hand.
Each individual organisation needs to customised their own employee survey so that it is relevant for them. I invite you to put yourself in the place of an employee and complete the short sample employee survey, then view the results of the satisfaction survey and just think of the benefits to management being able to measure so easily the heart beat of the organization.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.