Employee Research
Companies and organizations serve multiple markets. One of those markets is the organization’s employees.
These employees have needs, perceptions, biases, hopes, and dreams. The better a company understands its employees at different levels and different locations and different functions, the better the organization can communicate with and influence those employees. A better understanding of its employees allows a company to do a better job of retaining its employees, a better job in attracting new employees, and a better job in influencing and motivating its employees.
The same types of research techniques and analytics used to sell products and services can be applied to influencing the attitudes and motivations of a company’s employees, to persuading employees to accept new policies and new plans, to encouraging employees to stay with the company, and even to biasing employees to work harder.
Decision Analyst offers a portfolio of research services to help companies reduce attrition, improve recruiting, improve communications, and encourage employee acceptance of new policies and new plans.
Employee Satisfaction Research
Satisfied employees tend to do higher-quality work than the dissatisfied, tend to stay with a company longer, tend to take better care of customers, and tend to be more productive.
Analytical Satisfaction Research is diagnostic and prescriptive. It’s point-in time-research, usually a combination of qualitative research (focus groups, depth interviews) and survey-based research. The survey questionnaire is long and complex. The main purpose is to analyze current levels of employee satisfaction and develop remedies or prescriptions for improving employee satisfaction in the future. This type of analytical research is typically repeated every three to five years.
Employee Satisfaction Tracking Research should be short and sweet—with laser focus: its purpose is to measure employee satisfaction and track it over time, typically with annual surveys conducted at the same time each year, with the same questionnaire, following the exact same survey procedures. The shorter the survey, the better. More employees will fill out a short survey, and the results will be more accurate, compared to a longer survey. A tracking survey serves as a “leading indicator.” If Employee Satisfaction is trending down, then additional research can be conducted to understand the reasons before a crisis develops.
Employee Retention
Retaining experienced, high-performance employees is one of the keys to strategic success, no matter the industry or type of organization.
All of these benefits are well documented. There are two major types of Employee Satisfaction Research that Decision Analyst recommends: Analytical Satisfaction Research, and Employee Satisfaction Tracking research.
Most companies and organizations operate smoothly and efficiently because of the thousands of little systems, procedures, and workarounds its employees develop over time through on-the-job experiences. Few of these spontaneous systems and procedures are documented or written down anywhere. When an experienced employee leaves, productivity declines and a few things begin to break. When many experienced employees leave, productivity declines greatly and almost everything starts to break. So, keeping experienced employees contributes to the productivity of an organization and to the quality of the products or services delivered by the organization. Hence, senior executives in most companies are keen to minimize employee turnover.
- Secondary research on general and industry employment trends.
- Employee database analytics to explore who’s leaving and who’s staying, and determine the predictor variables.
- Qualitative research (focus groups, depth interviews, ethnography) to understand employee’s needs, perceptions, and hopes at a deep level, and identify the major factors related to retention.
- Employee surveys to precisely measure employee awareness levels, preferences, needs, and hopes.
- Conjoint and choice modeling experiments to optimize benefits packages (health benefits, vacation and days-off benefits, etc.)
- Employee separation surveys to track the real reasons employees leave.
Employee Research Services
Decision Analyst has over 45 years of experience in helping companies do the research and analytics that lead to improved employee retention. If you would like more information on Employee Satisfaction Research, please contact Bonnie Janzen, President, by email at bjanzen@decisionanalyst.com, or Felicia Rogers, Executive Vice President, by email at frogers@decisionanalyst.com. Both can be reached by calling 1-800-ANALYSIS (262-5974) or 1-817-640-6166.