Your organization’s culture is not something that you can develop by sending out a memo. Often it is formed over the course of years of interactions between the various employees that make up the organization.
Company culture can often be an advantage that gives your business tremendous leverage over the competition. It can also be a disadvantage that holds your business back. How can you determine what your employees feel about the culture of your organization?
By implementing an employee feedback survey, you can not only determine your organization’s culture, but develop specific action plans for improvement.
One of the biggest contributors to the culture of your organization is your work environment. While a negative work environment can be sensed and exhibited in the form of reduced sales, employee turnover, and increased customer complaints; it takes a formalized employee feedback survey to identify the major contributors to a negative work environment.
The same could also be said for a positive work environment. In a survey, the employees of your company have the opportunity to answer pointed questions about how they feel about the workplace. By analyzing these responses and comparing them across departments of the organization, you can determine exactly what the culture of your organization is.
One of the reasons why an employee feedback survey is so important in assessing culture is because the feelings of your employees will often go unreported. Employees tend to do one of two things: they either keep their opinions to themselves, or they complain to other employees who are at their level but rarely to those who have the authority to actually change things for the better. An employee feedback survey allows employees to express those bottled up feelings through a vehicle that will get results.
Several key elements are required if an employee feedback is going to be effective in accessing the culture of the organization. First, the company leadership needs to be committed to acting upon the information that is obtained and communicate that before the survey. It is pointless to go through the trouble of producing a study only to do nothing about what is learned and discovered from it.
Secondly, a survey should have a system where the employees can submit their responses anonymously. If not, many employees will tend to hold back on how they actually feel because of fear that their career prospects will be negatively affected if they provide honest and candid feedback.
Finally, if the survey is going to have credibility with the employees it is important that both the good and the bad results get communicated to them as well as action steps that the company leadership plans on implementing to make positive changes to the culture of the organization. By communicating both the positive and the negative it shows that the company leadership is truly concerned and committed to providing the best work environment possible for the employees of the organization.
By using an employee feedback survey, you can accurately determine the culture of your organization. The information you receive from the survey allows you to see what changes in culture need to be made and to build on the cultural aspects that are working well.
What is the one compelling reason for you to use anonymous employee feedback? Share with us in the review.
