What is better for your company: happy staff or short-term profits?

In the traditional growth chart of a company, financials are always at the top and key performing indicators (KPIs) are stacked up on top of everything else for an individual working there.

What many in business forget that along with KPIs go employee satisfaction surveys (ESS’). If employees don’t understand the company’s objectives, don’t have the correct skills to achieve it, are not motivated enough or are just a sad lot due to various reasons, it’s highly unlikely that the targets that the company places at the top of the pyramid will be achieved.

Just as KPIs are integral to an employee’s performance so should be the ESS’. According to The Thought Factory, an events and promotions company, ESS’ are essential for performance management, in which an employer can recover information about the health of an organisation and ways to improve it.

According to the company’s findings, ESS’ are a way to get real feedback from people. “Make critical organisational improvements by surveying your employees to measure feedback on factors such as training, policies, processes, work conditions and their managers. Since satisfaction surveys are anonymous, employees are inclined to be honest and will therefore guide you to make improvements,” it says.

Secondly, it helps in retention of people working in a company. “Ensuring the satisfaction of employees is essential to maintaining a healthy organization. Through ESS predict your organisational behaviour and reduce the employee attrition rate,” suggest the findings of The Thought Factory.

Thirdly, it keeps employee morale high. “Having happy and motivated employees is a key ingredient and directly related to an organisations success. Surveys allow you to monitor your employee’s morale and take corrective measures proactively before reaching low employee morale.”

Team building is also something than can be attributed to such surveys. “Enhance the productivity of your workforce and create a sense of belonging in the organisation by making every employee’s opinion count,” recommends The Thought Factory to client companies.

Lastly, it leads to better communication between the team, managers and eventually the management.

“Surveying employees is one form of communication between employees and managers which may strengthen the employee and managerial relation, which eventually will result in collective focus on achieving the organisational goal,” it says.