Are you looking for ways to increase profits, decrease costs, and improve morale in these uncertain times? Your best resource for fine tuning your business lies right within your business--your employees!
When I was consulting with various groups of Collision Repair centers, it was not uncommon for me to perform an employee survey in order to understand (from their perspective) the conditions of the business, their opinions of management, other employees, and how their job could be improved. With every business case review I conducted, I was able to get a pretty good understanding of the operations within a day of review and observations. However, every time I conducted an employee survey I learned something new, confirmed my observations and discovered a new element of the business.
Surveying your employees is relatively easy, especially with today's technology. You can remain totally anonymous (which I highly recommend). The most difficult part of conducting a survey is determining which questions to ask. In order to uncover the best questions, you need a firm understanding of what it is you are looking to find out.
Some ideas you can survey your employees about include:
1: Confirmation of marketing ideas or "your brand image"
2: Cost cutting ideas within each department (even provide a dollar incentive to the winner)
3: Ways to improve process flow and operations
4: Perceptions of managers and management
Getting your employees' input is a great source of information and it also creates an atmosphere that demonstrates you care.
Check out some of the online survey sources available to you, they are easy to administer and provide you with automatic results, graphs and details. Constant Contact and Icontact are a couple of my favorites. You can also use the traditional paper method, however I really believe keeping the information administered from a third party is best; you will get more depth and honesty from the employee if they believe the information is not management administered.
Try a survey of your employees today! You will be happy with the results.
- Alan
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