If you read nothing else, read this…
- Surveys can provide valuable insight into what employees think of benefits packages.
- Employers need to set clear objectives of what they want survey results to achieve.
- Staff need to be kept up to date with results of surveys.
Gathering employees’ views on benefits can offer valuable information that can be used to tailor a benefits package and, in turn, improve employee engagement, as well as better staff retention and motivation levels.
What, who and how to survey
Surveys give a rough indication of how employees feel and what they broadly value. However, Linda Holbeche, co-director of research-based development consultancy The Holbeche Partnership, says: “Employers conducting them need to dig deeper, and use surveys to ask questions to segmented staff about what ongoing changes they would find useful.”
Segmenting a workforce for a survey can be carried out by employees’ age, job role, gender, salary or location, in order to keep answers as clear as possible, and to figure out where trends may lay in similar groups of staff.
Holbeche also believes that separating employees before, during and after surveys is key to their success. “Employees are best segmented by what they view as important and what they believe needs to change,” she says. ”High-flying staff integral to the business, in the engine room of the workplace if you like, need to be surveyed carefully.”
Data collection and protection
The Data Protection Act (DPA) outlines that employees must know how an employer will use its data and that it can only be utilised for the purposes for which it was obtained. It also specifies that information should be adequate, up to date, relevant and not excessive. This means that if data collected is no longer required or relevant, it should be securely destroyed. There must also be adequate security in place to protect employees’ data.
Nicholas Tucker, senior benefit consultant at JLT Employee Benefits, believes that anonymity is essential to getting employees engaged with a survey. “A motivated workforce has a vast impact on an organisation’s success, and surveys can be key in discovering what employees want from their boss on an anonymous basis,” he says.
However, it can be useful to identify where there may be specific concerns in an organisation, and complete anonymity will not do this. Holbeche says: “Although anonymity is great for engagement, [employers] can only protect employees’ voices up to a point, so something like department coding can help [an employer] find clusters of poor practice or similar views in areas of the business.”
Clear objectives
Surveys also need to have set clear objectives in order to be applicable to workers, and to provide results from which the employer can take further actions. Tucker says: “The most common staff surveys tend to be engagement, benefits and reward focused. These can have very sophisticated weighted measurements behind them, or can simply highlight the types of benefits employees prefer.”
Staff need to be kept in the know of any follow-up actions once a workplace survey has been completed. Sue Weir, chief executive of healthcare benefits provider Medicash, says: “The timescale of consequential changes implemented needs to be made clear. It is best to highlight that timescale to employees when the survey takes place, so staff are far more likely to be engaged in future surveys.”
Staff incentives
Employees engage or disengage with surveys for different reasons, so employers could explore ways to incentivise staff to participate. Holbeche explains: ”Lots of organisations incentivise surveys with a competitive aspect, or prize giving, as well as electing survey champions in each department for employers to rely on.
“Multiple reminder emails from HR to complete a survey is not an effective way to get workers involved. [Employers] need to make them relevant and personal.”
Tucker adds: “Prize draws for completion are an easy way to increase responses.”
Evolution of surveys
Employee surveys can be conducted through social media to engage staff, but allow them to answer their questions in their own time. Online surveys also allow employers to keep track of answers in a more efficient manner. Surveys such as this can be conducted through organisations’ internal media sites or intranets, or social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
Although surveys can be productive in gauging employees’ views, their value may be diminishing and other methods may yield better results. For instance, data monitoring and profiling using employees’ personal data could help employers improve wellbeing and boost motivation, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PWC’s) The future of work: A journey to 2022 report, published in August 2014. For example, such data can be used to create a proactive health strategy to help reduce sickness absence levels.
Ultimately, the results from a staff survey can inform an employer of the benefits that are valued by its workforce, and also which benefits are taken up. As Holbeche says: “Employers can use what is going on in the business to start two-way conversations with employees with prompts to feed into changes and improvements. They also need to show genuine commitment to changes suggested by keeping staff up to date.”
