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My current employer believes that surveying workers on what makes them happy at work is a good idea.

I think the information is out there already from dozens of HR websites. Plus, when they tell you what you have to choose from, then it doesn't tell them about me, it tells them how I rank their choices.

The things they want ranked include:

Good wages * Interesting work * Help with personal problems * Good working conditions * Personal loyalty by employer to employees * Full appreciation of work done * Tactful disciplining * Promotion and growth * Feeling of being “in on things

We are suppose to put them in order of importance; some things I find important are not on the list...

Do you think surveys like these show that the employer values, and listens to, their employees? Is it a good first step? Redundant?

I never know when I am being hyper-critical vs. logical....

I feel if an employer truly values you, he will sit down with you and have a face to face conversation with you as one person to another.

Surveys are so impersonal.

IMO

I think so too - a survey can be impersonal, but also a way to see a bigger picture, whereas talking one on one can be more skewed.

Is the survey confidential? do you need to put your name on it? I don't really see it as a big deal, but if they want your name on it, IMO that is a tad nosy and don't think people will fill it out honestly for fear of reprisals. You never know.

Im not taking our survey this year.

I was really pushing everyone to paricipate last year but it took them 7 months to compile the results and address the issues. Even then they didnt seem to grasp the notion that we were talking about them.

Mngmt. thought everything was cool so we must be talking about corporate.



Screw it, I have my mngr. trained anyway.

My last employer did a one-on-one with each employee on each shift. Don't know what they did with any data they collected from these meets. Whenever they made changes, things seemed to just get worse for most of us.

Surveys ae useful, especially if they are anonymous. Teachers were scared to write down what they thought, during the restructuring process. When we turned in our surveys, they wanted a handwritten evaluation also, which we refused. First thing a teacher learns is everyone's handwriting, we knew the administration would know ours. The completed blank survey survived, went to the school board and union, and they paid attention to it this year. Like finally!

!ronic;793897 wrote: My current employer believes that surveying workers on what makes them happy at work is a good idea.

I think the information is out there already from dozens of HR websites. Plus, when they tell you what you have to choose from, then it doesn't tell them about me, it tells them how I rank their choices.

The things they want ranked include:

Good wages * Interesting work * Help with personal problems * Good working conditions * Personal loyalty by employer to employees * Full appreciation of work done * Tactful disciplining * Promotion and growth * Feeling of being “in on things

We are suppose to put them in order of importance; some things I find important are not on the list...

Do you think surveys like these show that the employer values, and listens to, their employees? Is it a good first step? Redundant?

I never know when I am being hyper-critical vs. logical....


Ask your employer what they are going to do with the results, will they raise wages if the "good wages" question bombs...not likely. Is someone who is unhappy going to get a promotion, if you are "out" will you suddenly become "in."

In other words take it from a corporate HR officer with 46 years expereince, the employee survey tells you nothing you don't already know or should. :-5

On the other hand, it's not a bad way to kill 30 minutes on the job.:wah::wah:

I used to work for a big retail company and was so miserable it was untrue, I hated the back biting and the brown nosing... so I left the next company I worked for went bankrupt ( the boss forgot to tell us the bank was foreclosing when he recruited us!)

Now I work part time mornings as a home carer and evenings as a cleaner.

Its great.. the boss pops into see us now and then and once a year we have a 30 minute 1 to 1 chat about how we feel and if we are happy with the company.

The team I work with is great we are able to say what we think share our ups and down times and give each other support when needed.

Forget the surveys. employees are people, employers should remember that.

I used to work in Human Resources for a manufacturing plant. I brought up the idea to distribute employee satisfaction surveys many times to my superiors. This was triggered by a Violence in the Workplace project that I completed (which also included surveys). In this position I realized that LISTENING and AVAILABILITY are the only way that positive changes can occur to turn around a toxic workplace. No matter how high up you are in the company, you have to remember where you started, unlike many of the managers I've dealt with. Surveys are only useful if the people evaluating them put themselves in the workers position and actually do something positive with the results. Even if its as small as posting the results, showing appreciation of employee participation or offering incentives.

I am no longer with this company for 'lack of morale' reasons.

Thanks for letting me vent...

I'm not sure wether it shows that the employer values employees, but i'm sure it is better than the employer just do nothing..

perhaps, it is, like what you said, a good first step.

I think that it depends on the size of the company and how many locations it has. It is a good way of getting an idea of how things are going in a business.

We recently had a survey and it was kind of funny.

The results for salary satisfaction came in very low, and the company response was that ‘the opinion was in line with results from other companies; therefore it is OK’….. on to the next topic..

We took a teacher survey at the end of the year. I sat on the group that woukld analyze it, and the guidance counselors insisted on some questions the teachers didn't tell the entire truth (about discipline problems). They do not know how to graph the data, so I said I would-but that the confidence level would start at 10+% because of their assumptions teachers would not truthful. That makes it a pretty invalid survey to begin with, but they want to present it at the beginning of the school year. I really don't think the counselors understand the survey was not a good one, and the data is not very valid.

I work for a large, US owned retailer. (No, it's not Wal-Mart.)

We used to fill out thorough, confidential surveys each October. That stopped after our current manager, a petty tyrant/school yard bully type of individual, took over our store two years ago. He singlehandedly destroyed morale there, and I heard that the survey results four months into his reign were dismal. I know I didn't hold back, and my assessment was damning in the extreme.

What was the result? Absolutely nothing, except the survey hasn't been held since.

Big corporations do not give a damn about their employees. All they care about is profit, at any cost.