7 Reasons why surveying employees is important

Your employees form an integral part of your organisation's success. However, priorities such as project goals, timelines and deadlines often make it challenging for managers to interact with their employees. A simple solution to resolve this is to conduct surveys that will allow you to stay connected to your employees.

Employee surveys have a significant impact on an organisation's success. Collecting feedback from your employees enable employers to measure and understand their employees' motivation, attitude, and feedback. Your employees' feedback is an irreplaceable resource that helps you to understand the dynamics of the workplace and identify training requirements, as well as gauge employee engagement. Therefore, it is essential to implement surveys, as this is a valuable yet underutilised workplace tool. Regardless of how you choose to conduct your survey, you are already taking a step in the right direction to understand your employees better.

At Lesson Desk, we understand the value of employee feedback, and that's why we have just released our new Surveys feature. Our surveys enable you to let your employees know that you care about their well-being and want to listen to their concerns and work experience.

We have compiled a list of seven reasons why it is essential to survey your employees:

Measure employee engagement

One of the primary reasons for conducting an employee survey is to measure your employees' engagement levels. Employee engagement cannot be stressed enough. It contributes to achieving company success, as well as help develop employees' skills and talents toward future goals. And it's no secret that happy employees equal a prominent company.

measure employee engagement. will allow you to assess whether your employees are engaged or disengaged, and you will be able to identify the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improving engagement in your company. Once you have assessed your employees' engagement levels, you can determine how to increase engagement. Common metrics to measure employee engagement against include: recognition, development opportunities, work environment and company culture, and salary and benefits.

Regularly sending a survey to our employees is the easiest way to improve employee engagement in your company. You'll be able to make improvements immediately, leading to a more productive workforce.

Identify key improvement areas

The phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a commonly used saying that organisations tend to follow, and rightly so! If something adds value to your employees' productivity, you must stick to it. However, there are often key areas in an organisation that are not smooth-flowing, e.g. communication. It is important that these key areas are identified as soon as possible, so you can start implementing changes to improve your organisation. Making changes without identifying key improvement areas may disrupt the organisation; therefore, the survey outcomes play a significant role in finding improvements.

Surveys create a portal for feedback

Surveys enable you to collect helpful feedback regarding your company and its employees. For example, an employee survey can be used to ask employees for any ideas, suggestions or opinions; or you can ask for feedback regarding how an employee feels about their job. Contrary to popular belief, ongoing feedback is needed for employees and leaders to grow and improve in the workplace continuously. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that feedback is a two-way communication process with a culture of listening and open conversation.

It's one thing to tell your employees that you care about how they're doing. However, listening to your employees, letting them voice their doubts or concerns, and proactively acting on it to ensure improvement will show your employees that you have their best interests at heart. This will assist in establishing trust.

When your employees trust you, they're more likely to provide you with open, honest feedback, which in return could result in your company's workflow improving and productivity increasing.

Uncover employee strengths and weaknesses

For organisations to grow, employers must uncover their employees' strengths and weaknesses; this is only possible through employee engagement surveys which helps provide HR managers with valuable insights about individual employees. Through these surveys, organisations can establish their employees' strengths and weaknesses in the workplace. This newfound knowledge can then be used to provide customised training to employees to learn or improve the specific skillset required for their roles. This will allow employees' productivity to increase and their weaknesses to decrease.

Measure employee satisfaction

The words 'engaged' and 'satisfaction' are often used interchangeably. However, these words are not synonyms and are very different. When we refer to engaged employees, we mean to say employees committed to their organisation's core values and feel motivated to help their organisation succeed. But when we refer to satisfied employees, we refer to employees who feel personal gratification when doing their job. But it is important to note that employee satisfaction directly influences employee engagement.

Measuring your employees' satisfaction levels enables you to determine whether your company is lacking compared to others and understand where improvement is needed. This allows you to improve any identified issues to increase employee satisfaction.

Improve communication

Communication is key for any organisation to succeed. Employee surveys are a great way to open a two-way communication channel between employees and employers as it creates the opportunity for follow-up meetings and dialogues. To improve communication in your organisation, employees must be able to express their opinions freely. It is important to note that these follow-up meetings are not to single out specific employees but rather to dig deeper into employees' responses to understand better.

Once everyone is comfortable enough to express their thoughts, employees can share both good and bad feedback regarding your organisation, and you, in turn, can respond to them.

Increase employee loyalty

The concept of employee loyalty is constantly evolving, especially as younger individuals start entering the workforce. Research shows that these young individuals will not hesitate to accept other job offers, should the opportunity present itself; although they might not be looking for a new job, they will easily make the switch if a better opportunity comes along, proving that loyalty is not a priority. However, engaged employees are more likely to stick around and prove their loyalty to the company.

Therefore, you must regularly check how happy your employees are in the workplace. With Lesson Desk's Surveys feature, you can gain valuable insights into your employees' emotional needs, enabling you to determine whether your employees are happy.

Employees are a company's most valuable asset, and employers need to treat them as such; therefore, surveys are essential in the workplace. Conducting employee surveys gives employees a chance to share their feelings. By using the information gathered to implement positive change in your company, you can encourage and promote employee engagement which leads to greater satisfaction and overall higher morale, causing employees to feel valued and respected.