Employee Attitude Surveys

Keep in touch with your staff’s opinions and perceptions

National Australia Bank, Qantas, The Commonwealth Bank, and the ATO are just some Australian companies who are pooling the results of employee attitude surveys. These companies are receiving valuable information, allowing them to gain knowledge of issues such as morale, training and pay.

The surveys can uncover interesting results that can assist management. Areas the surveys can focus on are:

• Employees’ Satisfaction in their roles. Whether this has increased or declined can be compared with other results over time.
• Loyalty to the company, feelings of Job Security and the effectiveness of Internal Communication.
• Opinions regarding access to training, better use of skills and abilities, and improved working conditions.

Why are organisations showing a growing interest in their employees’ perceptions?

The reason is that there can be considerable costs involved when it comes to poor morale and job satisfaction.

One Australian Company in the footwear industry found this out the hard way. This was a company with 500 employees, which had a labour turnover of more than 100% a year and monthly absenteeism rate of 4.5%. It was estimated that absenteeism cost the organisation approximately $700,000 a year and each new recruit cost $1945. The total cost? More than $1.5 Million per annum! What had gone wrong?

Part of it can be explained by the strong alienation that workers felt towards management. Opposing perceptions and a number of negative attitudes had developed over the years between management and employees because of poor communication between the two parties. The situation eventually became so entrenched and unsalvageable that there was no way out of the situation than to close the plant and source the shoes from overseas.

 Source: ‘Management’ Robbins 1997

This case is a very extreme situation. However, the surveys are an effective management tool; they assist in ensuring your employees are satisfied, and hence productive. You will see trends and areas that require reinforcement or restructuring by monitoring results and changes over time (e.g. every 6 months) of what your workforce has to say. Your steps in showing them that you take notice will also work favourably and you may be surprised by the outcome.