Excellent Tool : Employee Satisfaction Survey Questionnaire

Much has been written about empowering employees—to the point of becoming a cliche—but far too many companies pay little more than lip service to the subject or else give employees more responsibility but little compensation or strategic direction from leaders. Why?

Despite all the literature and conferences on this subject, top management still has little understanding of delegation and even little desire to delegate authority/power to fully empower employees. Yet without employee empowerment they will never tap their greatest resource — the knowledge worker. The following sections will more precisely define the four fundamental elements that truly empower employees.

The fundamental elements are: 1. Vision, value, strategy sharing
2. Information flow from the source
3. Relevant training
4. Power and authority sharing

As is the case with the crucial elements leaders must establish before launching an organizational transformation, these four employee-empowering elements are intertwined in such a way that a high-level of employee involvement will not be manifested if even one of them is out of alignment or underimplemented.

Vision, Value, Strategy Sharing
Inviting employees throughout the organization to contribute during the initial stages of the transformation phase, i.e., strategic planning, is the best way to ensure that employees make future decisions that are in line with the company's strategy. If an organization is going to put decision-making power in the hands of employees, a shared strategy (with shared values that everyone can relate to and live up to) will replace the need for a detailed list of procedures for how employees or employee teams should handle every situation.

Information Flow from the Source
In order to do their job effectively, employees need access to all kinds of information. The best type of information is direct and immediate feedback from internal or external customers. Examples include information from customers in the areas of service quality, turnaround time, price, and overall satisfaction. In traditional, hierarchical organizations, information filters through several layers of middle management before it is finally delivered to the frontline employees.

In a high-involvement organization, the information flows from the source, customer, process, etc., to the frontline employees. Without access to this type of information, employees will have difficulty in better serving their customers or becoming involved in the daily problem-solving tasks that would help an organization to continually improve. As said in Chapter 1, organizations in today's business environment must respond quickly to their customers and constantly foster new ideas about products, services, and processes if they are to succeed.

Relevant Training
Organizations must provide employees with relevant training if they are to acquire decision-making responsibilities, have di¬rect customer contact, or work effectively in a team-based environment. For employees and the company to benefit from training sessions, the employee must immediately and consistently put these newly acquired skills to use. Merely having a training budget that sends the employees through the motions of learning something without real consequences is wasting the employee's time as well as the company's money.

Power and Authority Sharing
Giving up power and authority is probably the most difficult element for all levels of management to share, yet it is the most important element for empowering your employees. It is difficult because for decades the old-school, traditional organizations have rewarded and advanced those who oversee big departments and have power over a large group of people. Instead of being rewarded for business results these managers are rewarded for building large departments from which they can oversee and control the largest number of people.

To break this paradigm all levels of management must share decision-making power and authority with employees. A failure to do so undermines the entire empowerment effort. Remember, the whole point of employee involvement (or empowerment) is to create an environment where employees throughout the organization make accurate and timely decisions on a daily basis to best respond to customer needs and desires. Managers from all levels must relinquish and redistribute some power and authority if the organization as a whole is to respond quickly to customers and foster innovation.

There are countless traps along the path of mentordom. Mentoring can be a power trip for those seeking an admirer, a manifestation of greed for those who must have slaves. Mentoring can be a platform for proselytizing a cause or crusade, a strong tale told to an innocent or unknowing listener. However, the traps of power, greed, and crusading all pale when compared with the subtler 'watch out fors' listed below. There are other traps, of course, but these are the ones that most frequently raise their ugly heads to sabotage healthy relationships.

I Can Help
When is help helpful, and when is it harmful? People inclined to be charitable with their time, energy, and expertise often try to help when what the learner actually needs is to struggle and find her own way. Here's a test: If you ask the protege, 'May I help?' and she says no, how do you feel? Be honest with yourself. If you react with even a trace of rejection and self-pity, this may be your trap to avoid.

I Know Best
Some people become mentors because they enjoy being recognized as some¬one in the know. They relish the affirmations from protégées who brag to others about their helpful mentor. They especially like protégées who regularly compliment them on their contribution. This is a trap! You may get off track and end up using the protégée for your own recognition needs. The test? If your protégée comes to you and says that he has found someone else who might be more helpful as a mentor, how do you react? If you feel more than mild and momentary disappointment, beware! This may be your special trap.

I Can Help You Get Ahead
Mentors can be useful in getting around organizational barriers, getting into offices otherwise closed, and getting special tips useful in climbing the ladder of success. As sometime king makers, their promises carry an 'I can get it for you wholesale' seduction. All these 'gettings' can be valuable and important. They can also add a bartering, sinister component to an otherwise promising relationship. The 'You scratch my back, and ...' approach to mentoring relationships can infuse a score-keeping dimension that is detrimental to both parties. Although reciprocity can be important, a tit-for-tat aspect can lead one person in the relationship to a score-keeping, 'You owe me one' view of the relationship.

You Need Me
When mentors feel that their proteges need them, they are laying the ground¬work for a relationship based on dependence. Although many mentor-protégée partnerships begin with some degree of dependence, the goal is to transform the relationship into one of strength and interdependence. A relationship based on dependence can ultimately become a source of resentment for the protégée, false power for the mentor.

If the protégée views the mentoring process as a chore or a necessary ritual, it is generally a dependent relationship that will not be allowed to grow up. Remember, the focus should be on helping the protégée become strong, not on helping the protégée feel better about being weak.

When you see yourself in your mind's eye doing something, do you imagine accomplishments, tributes and triumphs or flops, failures and fiascos? Visualizing can work for us or against us. It depends on what we picture-success or failure. We've all heard the saying 'Practice makes perfect'. Actually, only perfect practice makes perfect. And where is the only place we can practice perfection? In our mind's eye.

Every time we practice perfection in our mind's eye, we establish and strengthen the neural pathways in our brain. If we visualize correctly, the brain will not distinguish between a physical performance and a mental performance. This makes mental practice as good as actual physical practice!

In fact, we will improve faster with repeated mental rehearsal because we won't be imprinting our mistakes and the 'not quite perfects' that are inevitable with physical practice. The more we practice perfection through mental rehearsals, the stronger the neural pathways will become and the better we will perform when the time comes.

Sports people and athletes have been visualizing for years. In fact, one of the world's top golfers, Jack Nicklaus, puts 50 per cent of his success down to visualization.

Do you think visualizing is too hard? Here is how to do it.

Verbalize it
a) Set yourself a clear and challenging goal, the kind of goal you would like to pursue. It can be a general goal, such as projecting a positive image at a meeting, or a specific goal-for example, the exact movements of a golf swing. Be as clear as you can about what you want.

Visualize it
b) Relax. This will make your brain more receptive to establishing and strengthening the neural pathways.
c) Focus all your attention on the task at hand.
d) Imagine your goal in as much detail as you can. See in your mind's eye everything involved: the location, circumstances, other people who will be present and so on. These serve as mental cues.

Emotionalize it
e) Involve your emotions. How does achieving your goal perfectly and excellently feel? Involving your emotions strengthens the neural pathways.

Revise it
f) Visualize the same thing over and over.
g) Rehearse mentally every time you have a spare moment, at least three times a day: when you wake up, before going to sleep, and at least once more during the day.
Repeat steps b to e before the actual event.

According to Karl Pibram, a neuro-physiologist at Stanford University, mental rehearsal stimulates the neurology and results in micro muscle movements. It helps us embrace a level of performance that we may otherwise reject. It establishes in our minds what we see, hear and feel in practice and so provides a clear target at which to aim.

You can not satisfy your customers before satisfying your employees. So, employee satisfaction comes first. And customer satisfaction second. Do you agree?

thanks....

Regards
Naveen

Naveenk, hope you can deploy this excellent tool to discover the level of your employee satsifaction. Thanks.

We can not satisfy our customers unless we satisfy our employees first.

Employee satisfaction index is one of the KPIs that every HR manager should address seriously. This tool will help us in determining our satisfaction index.

Thanks Eric for the link to the website.
I am sure it will be of great benefit to students doing their projects.

Simhan
A retired academic

I would like to introduce you 5 forms of employee satisfaction at

employee satisfaction surveys

rgs