The people who make up the workforce need to be front and center in all efforts to attract, train, retain, and reward personnel. The best way to get this kind of feedback from workers is through questionnaires.

However, if you want to do staff surveys properly, it will take months of preparation, meticulous execution, and diligent follow-up. The effects on morale might be disastrous if the results are misinterpreted or no action is taken in response to the input.

Checklist and employee survey template 

Management may learn a lot about their employees' perspectives and sentiments and then utilize that data to make the workplace better if they take the time to plan and run a survey.

When businesses value their workers' opinions and act on them, they see increases in employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity, as well as decreases in absenteeism and absent-mindedness.

The very act of completing a survey can demonstrate to workers that their feedback is being taken seriously. To top it all off, managers can improve their management skills by learning more about the problems facing their own departments or business divisions.

Conducting a survey might erroneously boost expectations among employees, leading to an employee relations disaster; on the other hand, if the senior management team is not fully dedicated and ready to actually listen to and, most importantly, act on what employees are saying.

Types of employee survey:

• Employee satisfaction survey
• Employee engagement survey
• Organizational culture survey
• Business process feedback survey
• 360° feedback survey
• Employee experience survey

How to manage employee surveys? 

Address the hybrid work policy issues

Your company-wide policy will mandate regular office hours and the option to work from home on specific days. The decision-making process should be decentralized to the team level, such that it varies across the organization.

Your policy will allow for some leeway between manager and employee in making decisions across teams. It will take more time and effort to put into effect a policy that is more specific. On the contrary, our findings imply that more granular policies determined at the team or individual level may be the most successful at empowering people and increasing productivity.

Legal issues

The most serious legal risk for businesses is that their survey supplier, a third party, may have distributed pirated or otherwise fraudulent versions of the survey. Measurement inaccuracies and sloppiness are common in surveys of this type. The opposite is true; they can give rise to dangerous falsehoods.

Dissemination of information among workers

Managers and supervisors should be briefed in advance on the purpose of the employee survey, the expected timetable for disclosing the results, the plans for following up on the results, and the types of questions workers might have.

One possible strategy for preemptively briefing managers on this material is to provide them with a questions-and-answers booklet.

Technology

Electronic surveys are widely used by businesses today due to their many advantages over paper surveys. Employees who do not have access to a computer at work should be provided with a printed version of the survey or given time to complete the survey online.

Having the option to fill out the survey on the go, by phone or tablet, could also be convenient.

Surveys are a crucial tool for gathering feedback and data, but traditional paper-based surveys can be time-consuming and expensive to administer. Fortunately, there are now a number of different ways to use technology to create and distribute surveys. 

Online platforms like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms make it easy to create digital surveys that can be widely distributed via email or social media. And there are even apps like AgilityPortal intranet has a module for preparing Survey that allow users to collect survey responses form employees, and members of the public, using a public survey available out side a private portal. 

By taking advantage of these new technologies, businesses and organizations can save time and money while still getting the vital information they need.

A few others:

• Branded Surveys
• AgilityPortal
• Swagbucks. 
• LifePoints
• Survey Junkie
• InboxDollars
• National Consumer Panel (Nielson)
• MyPoints
• Pinecone Research

Interpreting the results

Even upbeat survey results should be treated with skepticism. Depending on the context, a manager's positive score could indicate that they are doing a good job or that they are not keeping staff accountable, for example, in a certain department or business unit.

Companies should compare their performance to that of other businesses or to national averages for their employee population as a whole.

Acting on surveys

To process survey results and take appropriate action, many businesses form interdisciplinary groups. Each team should have a senior-level champion whose job is to oversee the team's progress and provide assistance without micromanaging the members.

A month after the survey results are made public, the company should have such teams in place to show employees that they are taking their feedback seriously.

What to do after the surveys?

Organizations can learn a lot from employee surveys, but sometimes it's helpful to go a step further and have strategic talks with select employees to go further into important topics.

These exchanges aren't about sharing facts and figures but rather having a meaningful discourse that has a positive impact on morale and productivity. It's important for workers to know that their bosses value and respect their input.

The design of surveys for hybrid work policy

Before conducting a new employee survey, companies should examine past surveys and their outcomes (if any) and ask questions like, "What's the driving factor for the survey?"

Employers should conduct surveys on a regular basis and should develop surveys in a way that will provide information that will assist management in zeroing in on specific issues.

Sample questionnaire assessing employees' preferences for hybrid work policy

You can easily collect information from your staff with this simple survey template, which includes both open-ended and closed questions.

The first component of the questionnaire concerns the participants' thoughts and feelings about the position itself. Your hybrid work policy can be improved with the information you gather from this survey, which can also help you address any employee issues.

The second part of the survey asks participants whether or not they feel they have the resources necessary to effectively conduct remote work.

• How much time do you spend working from home versus in the office?
• Do you have access to all the necessary digital resources to carry out your duties in any location?
• What other kind of electronic assistance do you believe you'll need?
• Wherever you may be, do you have access to everything you need to successfully do your work?
• If you need more equipment, what would it be?
• How satisfied are you with the frequency with which you participate in meetings (whether virtual or otherwise)?
• Are you cut off from the rest of the company?
• In what ways might we strengthen our relationships with one another?
• What do you think about having coffee breaks with your coworkers in a virtual setting?
• Is there anything about hybrid scheduling or job that worries you?
• Do you worry that not being in the office every day will prevent you from getting ahead in your career?
• Give us your thoughts on how we may enhance our current hybrid work environment.