It may not seem like it, but employee satisfaction and engagement are crucial factors in employee retention. There are a multitude of reasons, but it’s undeniable that without dedicated strategies to improve engagement and satisfaction for your employees, you may find employee churn increasing. It why it’s important to leverage engagement and employee satisfaction survey data–along with feedback from employee retention surveys–to improve employee experience (EX).
If you’re looking for benefits like increased job commitment, lower turnover rates, higher productivity, and positive work environment to name a few, then this is the guide for you. We’ll take a deep dive into why employee satisfaction surveys can make a different in EX, what sort of questions you should ask, and other important factors that improve employee retention.
All about employee retention
Employee retention refers to an organization’s efforts to keep its employees engaged, satisfied, and motivated to stay with a company. You can already see why employee satisfaction surveys play such an important role along with engagement. In theory, employee retention is the practice of preventing or reducing employee turnover, which is when employees voluntarily leave their jobs or are separated from their organization for various reasons.
What are the 3 R’s of employee retention?
The “3 R’s of Retention” is a concept that highlights three key elements or strategies to improve employee retention within an organization. These three R’s are often used as a framework for understanding and addressing the factors that influence employee turnover and retention. The 3 R’s are:
- Recruitment: the first “R” focusses on the initial stages of employe lifecycle, which is the recruitment and the selection process. It emphasizes the importance of hiring the right employees who are a good fit for the organization and the specific role.
- Retention: The second “R” centers on retaining the employees once they are onboarded. It involved creating a work environment and culture that motivates and engages employees, making them want to stay with the organization for the long term.
- Replacement: The third “R” acknowledges that not all employees will stay with the company indefinitely, and some turnover is inevitable. Therefore, it emphasizes the importance of having contingency plans in place for when employees do leave. An employee exit survey can be used to gather feedback from former employees to make changes to EX where appropriate.
What is the employee retention survey?
An employee retention survey–sometimes referred to as a staff retention survey in healthcare–is a structured questionnaire or assessment tool used by to gather employee feedback regarding various aspects of their job, work environment, and overall satisfaction with the company. The primary purpose of such a survey is to assess the factors that influence employee retention and identify areas where improvements can be made to retain valuable talent within the organization.
What is the best way to measure employee retention?
The best way to measure employee retention is by monitoring important EX metrics with a powerful experience management solution. Measuring employee retention involves tracking the rate at which employees stay with your organization over a specific period of time. There are several ways, but important employee retention metrics to track are:
- Employee retention rate: This is the most straightforward and widely used metric for measuring retention. It calculates the percentage of employees who remain with the company over a given period. A high retention rate indicates that the organization is successful in keeping employees.
- Turnover rate: The turnover rate is the opposite of the retention rate. It calculates the percentage of employees who left the organization during a specific period. A lower turnover rate is desirable, as it indicates fewer employees are leaving.
- Average tenure: This metric calculates the average length of time employees stay with the company. It provides insight into whether employees tend to stay for the long term or leave relatively quickly.
- Feedback data: Regularly collecting employee feedback from surveys, like exit interview or employee satisfaction surveys, can help identify factors influencing retention. Monitoring these changes in survey responses over time can also provide insights.
How do you ask about employee retention?
The easiest way is to ask, over course, with surveys! Asking about employee retention typically involves conducting surveys or having discussions with employees to gather feedback on their intentions to stay with the organization and the factors that influence their decision to remain or leave. Here are some strategies and examples questions you can use when asking about employee retention:
- Employee retention surveys:
- Create a structures survey with a mix of multi-choice questions and open-ended questions.
- Ensure anonymity to encourage honest responses.
- Example questions:
- One a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your current role at the company?
- What factors make you want to stay with the organization?
- Are there any specific aspects of your job that you find challenging or dissatisfying?
- Employee satisfaction surveys:
- Clearly define your objectives so you can get the data you need
- Ensure anonymity to encourage honest responses and open communication.
- Example questions:
- Do you feel you have a healthy work-life balance?
- Are you satisfied with your compensation package, including salary and benefits?
- How would you rate your relationship with your immediate supervisor?
- Employee engagement surveys:
- Incorporate questions that relate to job satisfaction, commitment, and intentions to stay in your regular employee engagement surveys
- Example questions:
- How likely are you to remain with the company in the next 12 months?
- Do you feel your contributions are recognized and appreciated at work?
Why do employee satisfaction surveys matter for employee retention?
Employee churn attacks a company’s profitability ruthlessly, leaving no prisoners. It’s arguably one of the most disruptive influences on business equilibrium. Around the world, senior management agrees that the following elements to the heart and soul of employee retention:
- Job satisfaction
- The use of a well-structured job satisfaction survey
- Understanding of employee satisfaction survey questions
A satisfied employee may not be an engaged employee
An employee who defines job satisfaction as doing the least amount of work for a regular paycheck is not engaged. Conversely, an employee aiming to take on more responsibility and develop skills inside a business is engaged, but may not be satisfied.
It’s doubtful if any engaged employee looking for ongoing upward mobility is ever 100% job satisfied. However, some job contentment is worth sacrificing if job actualization energizes employee motivation and boosts productivity. An employee satisfaction survey (or job satisfaction survey as it’s often called) should provide insight into the balance between job involvement and happiness in the workplace. Why?
- It’s a well-documented fact that replacing an employee costs, on average, $15,000.
- Companies should aim to make employees brand ambassadors, spreading the good word about their employee experience (EX).
- Leaving the business with positive EX generally creates a desire to work for the same employer again.
- On the other side of the coin, employees with frustrations, anger, and general discontent are brand detractors. As such, they can create significant harm. Bad news travels further and faster than new.
- If employees hang in with their jobs, suppressing dissatisfaction, their negative vibes wash over others – thus eroding peer morale and spurring others to leave.
- The domino-effect of disenchanted employees may stretch to the marketplace. After all, all human resources are there to serve customers, and disgruntled employee attitudes tend to rub off on the latter with negative results.
The big question is, how can managers know whether or not the EX is moving in the right direction? How can they tell if the things they do to keep employees engaged are doing the job? The overwhelming answer to these two questions is this:
- Structure a Job satisfaction survey with professionally derived Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions.
- There’s nothing like a job satisfaction questionnaire to dig down and discover underlying currents running through the employee ranks – good and bad.
- An employee job satisfaction survey conducted regularly keeps HR’s finger on the pulse. It can reverse negativity whenever it rears its ugly head.
Regularity depends on the degree of HR disturbance one notices. Still, it should range between monthly and quarterly to ensure stability and keeping things on track. Specific surveys are telling with only an annual incidence.
Some may think it’s a real hassle to implement a customer satisfaction analysis program, but nothing is further from the truth. There are affordable software programs that enable one to integrate these surveys seamlessly into the system without disturbing the normal workflow. Digital administration with complete anonymity is as easy as 1-2-3.
Keep it simple: Let the experts help you
improve your organization’s employee satisfaction!
Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions – what are they, and how do you ask them?
Numerous employee survey templates are available from companies like SogoEX that come with sample employee survey questions and focus entirely on employee motivation. A work satisfaction survey derived from professionals’ resources in the field will elevate the standard of your employee opinion surveys – demonstrating respondent feelings and thoughts you never imagined possible. The template content follows strict rules that erase bias and one-sided viewpoints from the evaluation:
Rule # 1
Ensure that your employee satisfaction survey questions communicate with the audience so that they don’t feel or believe there’s manipulation. Avoid company buzzwords to make questions look direct, honest, and objective.
Rule # 2
Divide your questions into three groups:
- Workplace dynamics and culture
- Management interactions
- Job specifics
The following are examples of each category to give you a feel for the strategy. It will help you zone in on the employee survey templates that will work best for your business:
A. Workplace dynamics and culture
Here is a mind-blowing statistic – 93% of employees feel significant colleague-connection. In comparison, 75% of employees are experiencing burnout at work. There’s a considerable gap between vision and reality of employee satisfaction and what’s really happening.
Another cultural issue relates to adaptability as the company grows and diversifies. Therefore ask, “Are you encouraged by the company’s latest changes?
B. Management interactions
Typical questions are:
- How receptive are your managers to your feedback?
- Do you think they value your contribution?
- How communicative are your managers on the work done?
Employees are sensitive to management responses and reactions as projects and teamwork progress. Certain things are clear:
- Employees believe their working experiences close to the coalface create good ideas – helping the company significantly if accepted. When they see these adopted, it creates a sense of belonging, but motivation goes through the roof when it comes to recognition.
- Praising the employee’s performance to include family and peers as an audience may cement an unbreakable bond with the company.
- At the other end of the spectrum, it’s an alarming observation that four out of every ten employees who don’t respect their managers, interview quickly for another job.
- The reality is that slightly over 25% of employees feel genuinely valued by their supervisors or higher management. It’s a dismal metric that requires upliftment to nullify churn and promote employee retention.
Management culture is undeniably linked to employee retention
If employees sense that the supervisor’s goals are unaligned with their own, distrust builds in no time. Research indicates that management transparency is somewhat lacking, even responses directly from managers themselves. Between 22% and 39% of managers and employees combined think that there’s acceptable management openness. Keeping cards close to one’s chest is great for poker games but doesn’t gain ground in the workplace.
- Collaborative managers are appreciated far more than “bossy” bosses.
- The questions asked must penetrate these distinctions to understand if management is authoritative, collaborative, or dismissive of employees as valued organizational members.
So the questions are easy to construct?
- How transparent is management?
- Does management trust you with the responsibility you deserve?
- Do they overwork you with tasks that are understimulating?
It’s putting it all together that’s quite the challenge.
C. Job specifics
All the satisfaction questionnaires so far have been pointed at the environment around the job itself. Inspirational managers and encouraging peers can’t get you all the way to motivational satisfaction. If the corporate and management climate is pleasant, but the work tedious, unfulfilling, and dead-end, there’s bound to be HR hiccups. Satisfying work depends on the degree of latitude for self-expression, problem-solving, and the creativity it allows.
The resources provided to support the employee’s efforts individually or as a team member count a lot. Repetitive work has become a job satisfaction challenge solved by AI and robotic technology. Forward-looking companies focus on rechanneling human resources to do most of the thinking tasks.
Frequently, management and employees see the same things in a completely different light. Perception gaps result in shocks as resignations hit left right and center, and employee churn takes hold. Historically speaking, more than half the employees can’t see any clear advancement path, according to reliable HR research, but 47.7% of employees name a promotion as their top goal for 2023. The importance can’t be ignored.
How much are you doing to inject job descriptions with the power to keep employees engaged? The following questions are often revealing:
- Do you find your work meaningful?
- Do you feel your career is growing?
- Can you see yourself rising on the corporate ladder?
- Are your duties and responsibilities well defined?
- How happy are you in your work? This one may not tell you about all the causes, but it’s a barometer question taking the employee contentment temperature.
Sogolytics and your Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions
Sogolytics is in the business of giving proven strategies to improve employee satisfaction and experience that’s right for all-sized companies. They can source probes that touch employee motivation from every angle.
HR needs specialist expertise to outline a routine of sending out a satisfaction survey at least once a year. It’s one of the most penetrating insights on employee engagement and satisfaction. Sogolytics makes it look easy. You can get substantive results by asking one survey question at a time, and not bombarding employees with distracting questionnaires that look intrusive.
