Uses of Survey Information for Job Satisfaction

Once job satisfaction information has been collected and tabulated, the big question remaining is: What does all this mean in terms of the organization and these employees? Although gathering this information is chiefly a matter of technique, analysis, and use of the resulting data require skilled management judgment.

It is the final important step in a job satisfaction survey. When appropriate action is taken, results can be excellent. An organization can make various uses of survey information.

Various uses of survey information

Communicating the results

The first step in using job satisfaction importation is to communicate it to all managers also that they can understand it and prepare to use it. Managers will e the ones to make any changes suggested by the data, and they will want to see the evidence in order to make their own judgments.

So, just as a lagging baseball team makes every effort to pass other teams in its league, co-managers whose departments do not show high job satisfaction will be spurred to improve their employee’s attitudes by the time the next study is made.

For example, do those who say their supervisor is a good manager say also that they take more pride in their organization as a place in focus to work? Ultimately, all the questions and job satisfaction categories can be compared with one another in search of meaningful relationships.

Wherever their prediction misses its remark, they are forced to ask themselves why they misjudged this condition. Consider the case of a department head who predicted his employees would report dissatisfaction with grievance handling.

They did report dissatisfaction, which forced him to ask: “If I knew about this condition before the survey-and apparently I did why didn’t I do something about it?

Employee comments

As mentioned earlier, employee comments are very useful. This information often makes a greater impression on management than scores, statistics, and charts do.

Some comments are about very minor conditions, but these conditions do annoy someone and are therefore worthy of management’s sincere attention.

It is a mistake to correct only the big problems shown in, a survey while ignoring many minor conditions that will add up to big problems.

In a marketing department survey, the comments of field sales representatives showed negative attitudes toward the sales paperwork require of them. Although the subject appeared to be minor, management redesigned the paperwork and it was reduced by about 30 percent.

The results were more sales call each arid percent higher unit sales with the same sales force. This change helped the salespeople earn more commissions and helped management reduce its costs, so both parties benefited.

Committee work follow-up

One way to get managers to introduce change in their department following a survey is to set up working committees (task forces) whose responsibility is to review the survey data and develop plans for corrective action.

In one company the president appointed a special executive committee to follow up a survey and recommend changes.

Then the general manager appointed supervisory committees in each department to discuss how the survey applied to local departmental problems.

The supervisory committees worked out their own solutions on departmental matters, but if their proposed action affected other departments, it had to be forwarded to the executive committee for approval.

The human resource director chaired each committee, which usually met monthly. At each meeting, a separate part of the survey was discussed in some depth.

Meetings continued for more than a year, ensuring an extended follow-up of the information uncovered by the survey.

This long-run approach kept executives thinking about the survey and allowed time for the information to sink in.

The long-run approach to using job sanitation is important. Too many employers make the mistake of giving a survey immense publicity and interest for a few weeks and then forgetting about it until another survey is run.

They shoot the works, giving their surveys all the fanfare of a Mardi Gras celebration but when Mardi Gras has passed, they return to their old way of living.

uses of survey information
uses of survey information

Feedback to employees

When Directive action is taken as the result of a survey, details of what was learned and what was done should be shared with employees as soon as possible.

Only in this way will the people who participated feel that management listened to them and took action on the basis of their idea. Providing feedback also assures employees that their ideal really was wanted and is:

  1. Make the reward system closely tied to an individual or team performance.
  2. Set challenging goals with employees so that those with achievement drives can experience the opportunity for satisfaction through their accomplishments.
  3. Define dear role expectations so that employees struggling with ambiguity can overcome that concern.
  4. Refrain from attacking the employee’s attitude. Use active listening skills instead, because an underfunded attitude is more receptive to change.
  5. Provide frequent feedback to satisfy the need for information about performance levels.
  6. Exhibit a caring, considerate orientation by showing concern for employee feelings.
  7. Provide opportunities for employees to participate in decision-making.

Show appreciation for appropriate effect and citizenship behaviors wanted still.

In fact, good publicity to managers and employees is essential from start to finish in a job satisfaction study in order to explain what the study intends to accomplish, to report the information gathered, and to announce what corrective action has been taken.

This type of publicity is the essence of effective feedback.

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