High employee turnover is costly and time-consuming, especially today, where the work market has become extremely competitive. In this article, we will try to give you one high employee turnover solution that might surprise you.
Understanding and controlling employee turnover is a major HR aspect of any company. While there are many causes of employee turnover, there is always one thing that comes up in most cases – employee satisfaction. This sense of wellbeing influences greatly of your employees’ commitment, job motivation, enjoyment in going to work and being a team player
This makes employee satisfaction critical as it can impact your organization’s long-term growth. And the best way to find out if your employees are truly happy and engaged is to conduct employee satisfaction surveys on a regular basis.
Why Are Employee Satisfaction Surveys Important?
A key aspect of improving employee satisfaction and retention is ensuring your company values are attractive to both prospective and current staff.
What you need to ask yourself is “Why would people want to work for my company and be motivated to produce their best work?” True engagement comes from getting to know your employees and their real ambitions and motivations.
This is why regular surveys help management to stay up to date with employee satisfaction levels. Making small and subtle changes that are highly focused can help you make a big impact on satisfaction levels.
Let’s explore some key questions that you should be asking in order to get the most relevant feedback from your workers.
10 Questions You Should Ask In Your Employee Satisfaction Surveys
While surveys can be a good high employee turnover solution, it is important to ask the right questions. Your communication with your employees should be as honest and direct as possible.
This way, you will be able to obtain answers that reflect the actual state of your company’s employee satisfaction levels.
Employee satisfaction questions can be separated into 3 categories:
- Workplace culture
- Management
- The actual job
So let’s start crafting that survey, shall we?
1. Do you appreciate our company’s culture?
From experience, we can say that company culture is one of the most important aspects of employee satisfaction. These factors related to employee happiness are often things we can’t see: interpersonal relationships, vision, and work environment.
If your employees don’t like your vision and culture, they will be reluctant to participate in your growth the way you want them to.
2. Do you feel connected to your coworkers?
Employees spend a good deal of time around their team members, so their happiness and productivity rely heavily on whether they feel motivated by coworkers.
It’s impossible for your employees to be truly satisfied at work when they don’t have any friends at the office.
3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your work-life balance?
Without a good work-life balance, you can quickly come to face with a lot of burnouts in your workforce. Employees can become resentful towards the organization if they feel they never have enough time to spend with their family or on hobbies.
To ensure long-term satisfaction at work, it’s critical you encourage a good work-life balance for all employees.
4. How likely are you to recommend our company as a good place to work?
Your current employees are likely good judges of someone who would fit in well with your company’s culture.
Ideally, your employees want to recommend your company as a good place to work with members of their networks. If not, you’re likely losing out on some exceptional candidates, and it’s also an indicator your current employees aren’t as happy as they could be.
5. Do your managers value your feedback?
It’s disheartening to work for someone who never asks for your opinion or ideas. If your employees are never asked to provide their feedback, chances are they’re not satisfied.
Make sure your management includes employees in the thinking process in one way or another, and make them feel that their opinions are crucial to where the company is headed.
6. Do managers seem invested in company growth?
Ask this question to feel out if employees believe that management is there only to boss them around instead of motivating them.
It will help you assess employee engagement, but will also make it clear to managers that they are open to scrutiny from the rest of the workforce. Sometimes, managers can act as a protected species and could be dragging your company down if left unchecked.
7. Are tasks evenly distributed across your team?
Employees can feel wronged when they are doing all the work while other team members are slacking off. No one wants to get overworked while others aren’t doing their part and get the same paycheck.
The answers to this question will help you if you are facing poor leadership in your teams or some workers aren’t up to the task that is assigned to them.
8. Do you find your work meaningful?
This survey that 32% of people stick to their job is if they find their work meaningful, making it the #1 engagement factor with employees.
For many people, it seems that no matter the compensation or perks you offer, it can’t match the importance of their work being meaningful.
9. Do you feel you have opportunities for promotions and career development in our company?
The more your company can nurture growth, the longer your employees’ will stick around. Not to mention, it’s cheaper for you to train and develop your current employees than to hire and train new ones.
Career training and professional development are key motivators to employee retention, so it’s critical you discover whether your employees feel satisfied with their current growth opportunities.
10. Do you feel valued at your work?
Feeling valued and appreciated at work is a necessary component for low turnover rates and high employee satisfaction. In fact, 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving.
This value can be linked to different factors, like salary, leadership respect, company vision etc.
11. [BONUS] Hypothetically, if you were to quit tomorrow, what would your reason be?
This is a question that can uncover some unforeseen reasons you might have omitted in your questionnaire. This will help you fill the answers on how to reduce employee turnover.
Wrap-up
So now that we have our questions for our high employee turnover solution, let’s go through some basics on how to conduct your survey:
- Allow employee anonymity – If there’s a fear of management retaliation, your employees may avoid answering honestly.
- Don’t ask too many questions – the longer the survey, the less likely it is your employees will go through it.
- Stay consistent – you might be tempted to switch out your questions, but that will not help you determine if you managed to solve some of the previous problems.
- Find the right frequency – too few and you will not be able to tackle the problems that have built up during that time. Too many, and people will start fining them tedious and will not complete them. Try finding that sweet spot.
While it’s not a one-size-fits-all, conducting employee satisfaction surveys comes close to a universal high employee turnover solution.