why you should take the employee opinion survey seriously?

Irrespective of their sizes, organizations have been figuring ways to improve their employee engagement and retention. HR departments often struggle to get the right insights about what keeps their employees happy and satisfied at the workplace. A traditional method put to practice is ‘employee surveys’ to gauge the same. According to the 2017, Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, 22% of organizations survey employees annually or less whereas, 14% never survey their employees. This is for organizations to find out what they need to alter or improve in their work culture and policies, but what’s in it for the employees? How can you use these employee opinion surveys to your benefit as an employee? 

Here are a few things that would motivate you to take such surveys more sincerely. 

The management will know what to fix 

Honest, objective, and solution oriented feedback is can help your organization tremendously. As companies grow, so do their teams and structures. This creates several layers of hierarchy and at times, barriers in direct communication. Even in small or mid-sized organizations there could be several issues which might go amiss from the management’s eyes. These surveys are used as a tool to go beyond such barriers, and allow the employees to shed light on areas where the organization and its management has a scope of improvement. You must also consider these surveys as your medium to reach out to your seniors. Make sure that your feedback is constructive and can be implemented in a way that it serves a larger benefit for the organization.

It will help improve company processes

You serve as a member of one or more teams in your organization and chances are that you carry out several processes on a day to day basis. Do you see any glitches in the way these processes are carried out? Do you think they can be improved to increase your team’s productivity? If your answer is positive, then your feedback can be of immense value to your manager(s). Seniors often seek such inputs from their team members, and often there doesn’t seem to be a ‘right time’ for such a discussion. Use these employee surveys to share your feedback/ideas with your manager. You could make a significant impact by sharing your opinion via employee survey.

You will know if your voice matters in the organization

A survey is supposed to a two-way channel. While your organization seeks to find significant insights about what you think and feel about the workplace through a survey, you can also infer a lot about your management. You can get an idea if the employees’ voice is given relevance or not in your organization, by seeing the kind of response that these surveys get. An organization that promotes an open culture and gives importance to its employees’ voice would consider taking some practical measures as a response to its employee survey. This could be a litmus test of some of the core values of your organization. Depending on your feedback and suggestions, this could also give you an idea about your own individual voice within your team and in the organization. 

As an employee, you must understand that the whole purpose of filling an employee opinion survey is to appreciate the good, suggest the gaps, and to point out severe issues, if any, to your management. An important thing to remember while taking an employee survey is that while the responses can be kept confidential, they are not entirely anonymous. It is best to refrain from sharing information that is informal or too personal in nature. Most companies conduct these surveys through third parties, so as to collect most honest and objective responses. In any case, the ideal way is to respond with a solution-centric approach that could lead to practical implementation, when and where needed.