Open Employee Satisfaction Survey

We call this survey "open" because any employer can join in. 

Employee satisfaction surveys too expensive?

Not any more.

We have created a survey questionnaire which covers the core concerns every employer wants to know about. You can't change it, or add to it but you can choose from two different presentation styles.

You duplicate and distribute the questionnaires, with our FREEPOST address, to your people. They complete and return post free to us. We deliver reports (see illustration download below) showing your overall results and comparisons by gender, length of service, function (department), job type, and ethnic origin. The minimum fee is £250 plus VAT which covers up to 80 employees.

Optional at additional cost: Web based administration; Comparisons with other employers (benchmarking); Prior occasion comparisons. 

Full Details

	Free download OESS Participant employers' manual.
	Free download Outputs Illustration.

Please note that the outputs illustration is not specific to the Open Satisfaction Employee Survey. You will receive a package comprising the "Typical package" together with any extra reports you have requested, such as Benchmarking or Prior year comparisons. The document you receive will also include guidance on how to navigate the pdf document, and how to read and interpret the reports.

To find out more about the Acrobat .pdf portable document format visit the PDF page on the Adobe site. Click the "Get Acrobat" button to download the free reader now.

Register on line now as a participating employer. We will invoice you for the amount of credit you choose (minimum £250 + VAT). When payment clears, or we receive an official order, we will send the questionnaire pack. For full details, refer to the OESS manual (download using link above).

Why measure employee satisfaction?

Big companies have been running employee satisfaction surveys for years. In years gone by, they might have used other names for them like employee attitude survey but the idea was much the same - to spot problems quickly when people are feeling unloved and uncared-for so that something can be done about it to avoid all the costs and problems associated with unhappy employees:

• Employee retention
• Sickness / unauthorised absence level
• Employee performance
• Product / service quality
• Customer satisfaction
• Market share
• Profit

These days, there is convincing evidence of a link between employee engagement and coprporate performance, which means that if you can improve engagement, that will almost certainly lead to improved performance. See David Lusty's article Why Conduct an Employee Survey?

Why not just talk to people?

Any effective manager will listen well, to hear the views of the team. But if a manager asks people if there are any problems they often prefer to say nothing. They don't want to get into a confrontation, or be marked out as a troublemaker. Even if employees trust the manager to react well to constructive criticism, only the most outspoken will say anything, so the feedback is unrepresentative. Then each manager asks questions differently and interprets the responses differently so it isn't possible to make comparisons between teams reporting to different managers.

Managers must talk to their people, but this doesn't provide good information about employee satisfaction because:

• Employees are often reluctant to speak out
• Responses are not representative
• Interpretation is subjective
• You can't compare one area with another

An objective measure

You can overcome all these problems by running a survey.

• Give every employee a questionnaire to complete
• Allow employees to send completed questionnaires to a trusted external intermediary
• Promise that no individual replies will be revealed to the employer
• Provide postage free reply route (FREEPOST or business reply service)

This approach allows people to reply whilst remaining completely anonymous and they will then usually report more honestly how they feel. The external intermediary will be a professional survey bureau or consultant who should be able to present the results so you can easily see any problems the employees are reporting.

Too Costly

The problem for SMEs has been the cost of setting up a survey and the external supplier for analysing the results. These costs are the same whether there are 10,000 people being surveyed, or just 50.

You may well need to get professional help to develop the questionnaire content and design the layout of the questionnaire. You can probably handle the distribution of the questionnaires without too much trouble but to provide the independent, confidential response route which will encourage people to respond and be frank, you need an outside supplier to handle the replies. Add in the cost of analysing and presenting the results to be easy to interpret and you might not get much change out of £2,000.

With only 50 employees, say, that means £40 per employee.

A low cost option

The Quantify OESS costs UK based organisations just £1.25 for each employee who replies, plus £150 for producing a batch of reports. There is a minimum fee of £250 so with 50 employees, the OESS costs £5 a head instead of £40 a head. For overseas clients, the cost is a little more, reflecting the greater cost of international postage.

The only compromise involved is that the survey uses a one-size-fits-all questionnaire with the core questions that any employer needs to know. You can't change the questionnaire. When you register as a participating employer and pay the fee, we send you the questionnaire to duplicate and distribute. Employees return them directly to us by FREEPOST. You get regular feedback on how many replies you have had and when you are ready, you ask for reports. All communication takes place by email.

There is a web-based option if you want it, which costs only a little more. For full details email or download the OESS Participant Employer's Manual and outputs illustrations now.