Employee Survey

34.

The first lockdown sparked an avalanche of surveys. We were all suddenly keen to hear opinions.

Three years on, while we are possibly no nearer to the clarity we all desire; we are able to report trends based on frequent snapshots, such as this survey.

Not listening to the voice of employees is a recipe for disaster. The pendulum will continue to swing back and forth between employee and employer as we go through economic cycles. In the past, it was very heavily weighted towards the employer, but those times have possibly gone for good.

That the majority of respondents are reporting an annual survey of employees being conducted is positive. As one of the ‘other’ respondents mentioned, continuous feedback is also important. 12 months is a long time to wait before you get feedback, so avenues need to exist for issues to be raised at any time—those might be local office committees, formal appraisals or Q&As with senior leadership.

Once you have asked the questions or provided the avenues for feedback, where is the worth in not reporting back? Having a significant number of organisations who choose not to inform their employees of the findings of a survey seems like a missed opportunity to really show you are listening by having a 'you said, we did' report.

Unless those organisations who don't report back are 100% perfect, in which case, we salute you.