Q. How do you communicate survey results to employees and show them you listened to their comments?
What I plan to do is put together a PowerPoint presentation and go through it with everybody during our weekly safety meeting.
The (previous) survey, we sat down with everybody and went through all of the results. It was the recognition that they didn’t feel. It was an area that we saw that could use improvement. That was when we created the quarterly recognition program.
When it came to recognition ideas, all kinds of things were tossed around, but it was important to keep the focus on recognition as opposed to monetary-type awards.
One of the things we’ve done is we have come up with a quarterly recognition program for safety compliance. If you’re from Ohio, you know what the buckeye stickers mean on a football helmet — we’re doing the same thing. Construction workers love stickers for their hard hats, so we came up with that program where we’re recognizing people for meeting all of our safety criteria on a quarterly basis. We also do a Technician of the Quarter award where I accept nominations from all of the management, and then we pick one candidate on a quarterly basis.
I came up with the idea of the stickers, along with a set of criteria each field employee had to meet in order to qualify, and I presented it to the team. It was very well received, and we voted unanimously to implement it.
Q. Why is it important to do employee surveys?
It’s important if you care about what’s going on. Turnover costs a business a lot of money, not only the cost of recruiting and advertising for a position but the time it takes to interview and research the candidates and do background checks on them.
If you’ve got somebody who’s not happy out there, they can really do some damage, either by hurting your reputation by the things they say to your customers or the quality of work they’re doing that isn’t good.
How to reach: Echo 24 Inc., (740) 964-7081 or www.echo24.com
