Business panel: I’ve been asked to complete a work survey – why?

FEEDBACK is a critical and fundamental part of the employee engagement strategy at many companies. While feedback regularly comes from daily interactions and appraisals Running a survey can be a helpful way for a business to understand what people like and do not like about working for the organisation.

However, key to a successful survey is listening to the feedback and acting on it. Indeed, the one sure way to alienate employees is to ask them what they think and then ignore what they have to say.

At Estera, we regularly run an employee engagement survey across all our 11 jurisdictions. so that we gather feedback on a global scale. This means that we can identify issues that are common across our offices as well as those that are specific to each location – giving us a true understanding of expectations and of cultural differences. It is very much a ‘think global, act local’ approach..

Importantly, our surveys are anonymous – giving our people the opportunity to be frank in their feedback.

Based solely on the feedback we receive, we make changes at group level and have local committees in each jurisdiction to implement changes.Just some of these have included:

. The introduction of quarterly employee updates in response to requests for more face-to-face communication and knowledge sharing

. Increased internet speed and two screens for all desks in response to demands for improvements in IT systems

. Enhancement to and transparent communication of our performance management and bonus scheme

. Improvements to work-life balance

According to a 2018 Gallup study of US employees, ‘business units in the top quartile of engagement realise substantially better customer engagement, higher productivity, better retention, fewer accidents, and 21% higher profitability’. The value of employee feedback is plain to see.