Employee opinion surveys

Could you win an 'Employer of Choice' competition?
– Monitor employee opinion and you can.

In these times of ever-increasing competition for employees, the need to achieve optimum levels of high quality recruitment and retention of key people has become a top priority for the HR Function.

This need has led many practitioners to focus on becoming 'Employers of Choice', or 'great places to work'. Public competitions have become popular as a vehicle for assessing employee engagement and satisfaction and comparing standards. Many organisations take part without really knowing how well they will compare, however, and most discover that they still have a long way to go before they can succeed in creating a fully engaged workforce.

Edgecumbe Research – a specialist consultancy with over 25 years experience of measuring employees' perceptions, has been researching the question of just how good an employer has to be and has come up with some interesting conclusions.

What standards apply?

Edgecumbe Research has carried out almost two hundred employee surveys in recent years and we've recorded the average scores for a very large number of normative items as well as both the upper quartile and highest score achieved for every item each year since 2002.

To see how standards have improved we've taken a close look at some key questions which measure both employee engagement and satisfaction we have discovered how standards have risen over that time. Our data show that  the most successful businesses have worked hard to changed the workplace to make it more enjoyable, rewarding and engaging, somewhere people want to be.

Vital ingredients

All 'Employers of Choice' create an environment in which employees feel valued and respected. Among other things they make sure that people achieve a good work/life balance, feel fairly paid for what they do and are given opportunities to grow. People in these organisations tend to be enthusiastic members of effective and well managed teams working towards well communicated and shared visions of the future. 

Each organisation is different, of course, and any winning company will excel in other ways too. But we wanted to find out whether there have been any noticeable trends. Take the following eight aspects of working life and some typical questionnaire items which have been used as measures in a high proportion of surveys we have carried out:

Eight key areas for measuring employee engagement and satisfaction
Wellbeing	I am able to achieve a good balance between my home / work life
Fair deal	I am paid fairly for what I do
Personal growth	I will be given any help I need to develop myself for a career with my company
My team	In my area we work well as a team
My manager	My line manager usually praises me when I do a good job
Leadership	Senior management has communicated a clear vision of my company in the longer term
Customer Orientation	The service we give to customers is improving
My Company	I am proud to work for my company

Key areas	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Wellbeing	80	76	88	90	93
Fair deal	65	85	84	68	81
Personal growth	68	90	57	66	84
My team	87	-	-	92	84
My manager	86	96	-	82	86
Leadership	77	85	81	95	88
Customer Orientation	77	96	-	66	96
My Company	85	99	94	77	93

The overall picture – standards are rising, but the best are getting much better

These figures show – in the organisations we have worked in at least – that HR has been making good progress in creating and developing a more engaged workforce.  Employees are becoming more positive. If we combine the scores for these items we can see a steady and consistent improvement and this seems to be a general trend – in other words the gap between the average (or general norm) is much closer to the upper  quartile score than it used to be. In 2006 for example the overall gap was only 6% compared with 9% four years earlier.

Having a look at the individual highest recorded scores by the best companies, one can see the gradual increase in the scores on most of the key areas.  The highest score for the aspect of wellbeing has increased by 13% from 80% in 2002 to 93% in 2006. The trend for the aspect of fair deal has been somewhat interesting as it started off with 65% in 2002, and then increased in the following years by almost 20%, with a slightly lower score of 68% in 2005 but then increasing again in 2006 to 81%. Personal growth had a similar trend, starting with a score of 68% in 2002, and with a final score of 84% in 2006. My team has had a highest recorded score 87% in 2002, and peaked in 2005 with 92%, but then in 2006 the highest score was 84%, which overall is only 3% lower than in 2002. My manager has had its highest recorded score of 96% in 2003 but has been constant in the other years, with a score of 86%. The score for Leadership has increased tremendously from 77% in 2002 to 95% in 2005, however in 2006 it was 88% which is still an 11% increase since 2002. Customer orientation has attained an impressive 96% in 2003 and 2006, and this is 19% higher than the score in 2002. The highest recorded average scores were for the aspect of My company, where the score increased by 8% from 85% in 2002 to 93% in 2006. Overall, throughout the years there has been an increase in the highest recorded scores by the best companies.

It's at the top of the league where the most dramatic change has taken place. The winning (best companies) scores today tend to be significantly higher than the upper quartile than they were a few years ago, and the gap between these is widening.

Why might this be so?

As scores keep rising, so does the expectation of employees, thus placing a significant amount of pressure on HR Director to achieve the 'Employer of choice status'. Market pressures provide one explanation: everyone has to work harder to attract and retain the best staff. Hence the trend is to improved standards. It's also the case that many of the companies in our study carry out surveys on a regular, usually annual, basis. They use the results as a means of benchmarking, measuring and monitoring their performance as employers – and they act on those results. It is extremely rare for us to report worsening scores because these organisations and their HR Teams consciously use their survey data to optimise employees' experience. That is why they become great workplace, employers of choice.

How well might your business compare with the 'Employer of Choice'? What standards will you have to achieve to be ranked with the winners of these contests? The first step is to check your people's perceptions – find out how they feel about yours as a company to work in. Then benchmark your scores against other companies'.  The figures above will give you a good starting point.

Edgecumbe Research can help you to prepare your organisation compete with the best companies, by working with you to measure the current levels of satisfaction and engagement in your organisation and critically by enabling you to compare your results with a large group of other organisations. Then you can pinpoint where improvements are needed . Within a year or two you will be well on the road to achieving the 'Employer of Choice' status.