Happy employees are a key element to any successful business. Happier employees are 13% more productive. Still, the benefits extend beyond just a personal feeling of zen. Happiness in the workplace can also lower voluntary turnover rates, which costs U.S. companies $1 trillion annually. In the looming "great resignation," it is even more urgent to maintain employee satisfaction.
This leads to the golden question: how can you measure your employee happiness?
Of course, there is no absolute marker or formula to do that. Instead, collect data from employees themselves to see which areas they are happy with and where they would like to see improvements within your company.
One effective way to do that is through employee feedback surveys. There are multiple ways to conduct these. Will they be anonymous or not? Are the questions lists of ideas or open suggestion boxes? Are the responses ranked or open?
The questions themselves may include questions on anything from personal career goals and work-life balance to rating company performance and internal communication. Perhaps they are bought into the vision? Or, do they participate in the employer brand? How do the benefits help them in their career path?
Of course, there are issues connected with employee surveys as well. How often should they be conducted? In what format should they be conducted? Some employees may also be less forthcoming and comfortable with providing genuine feedback when they have never filled out a survey for the company.
Your internal communications team must consider many different things. However, the biggest goal is to collect useful information.
Set Information Goals
Before conducting an employee survey, it is best to ask what kind of information is the company looking to get out of this? Goal setting is extremely important.
Conducting a survey in a struggling company will be looking at problem areas. A thriving company will instead want to look more towards optimization of certain areas and learn how to keep your employees happy.
However, the mountain of data of varying quality, created by an employee feedback survey that is specific to a certain moment in time, can be misleading. It is therefore advisable to only conduct surveys sparingly. A more effective way is to keep a constant flow of information. This can come in the form of daily newsletters or weekly announcements.
Create a Constant Communication Stream
Constant two-way communication between management and employees is a healthier and more effective way to ensure that employees feel heard. In fact, rather than sending a large annual survey every year, squeeze in smaller questions every time internal communication is sent out.
Creating those smaller messages can be time consuming and disrupt established channels. An ideal platform would channel all communication and enable HR, as well as employees, to target their communication to a specific internal audience.
A comprehensive communication system will allow employees to voice their desires, concerns, and suggestions directly. If it integrates with existing systems, it won’t even cause any disruptions to your established communication channels. It allows you to deliver relevant and helpful information to your organization whenever and wherever they need it.
