I'm looking for information on how people are handling focused employee satisfaction surveys. What are you doing? How long is the survey? Ideas for sources would be greatly appreciately.

Sue M....

By "focused" what do you mean?

Sue-

I am going to assume you mean employee engagement surveys.

The key to good employee surveys is:
1) Ask only actionable questions. These are questions the you genuinely believe you can address if the need is identified.
2) As what you want to know. Don't rely on someone elses list if questions. Creat your own based on what you want to know about your employees.
3)Keep it brief. If you ask 60 questions can you really take action on that many. Assume some action will be needed for at least half the questions. I try to keep mine under 25.
4)Follow up.

Sue, my experience with employee satisfaction survey's has been extremely negative and I caution most clients against using them. Some of my comments echo what dvshnd99 has to say:

1. Most surveys end up as a case of dog chasing it's tail. The company gets a "low" score in one area (one client of mine got a low score of "management behaves ethically") so then feels it needs to "do something" about this. Important points here:
--Just because employees are critical about something doesn't mean it matters to the business. Ergo, improving that area doesn't necessarily result in a better organization or better results.
--Some topics are almost universally issues for all companies (ie: most employees in all organizations feel that management doesn't share enough information or communicate well).

2. Don't ask unless you're willing to act on it quickly.
--some topics the company isn't willing to change.
--if you get negative feedback and then it takes a year to do anything, you've probably made things worse. That's because people usually won't give you credit for the change and you'll be perceived as "not caring."

3. There is a false assumption that happy (or high satisfied) employees work better. And data consistently shows that's not the case. There are plenty of examples of happy, satisfied workers who did a poor job and unhappy, dis-satisfied performers with low morale who did great work. Now, all things being equal, I'd rather be surrounded by people who enjoy the work environment than those who don't. But do NOT assume that more satisfied people produces better work because that's simply not the case.

Here's my advice on climate/satisfaction/morale surveys (if you must do one):
1. Keep it very, very short. Maybe 5-7 baseline questions you can compare from year to year. Than choose 3-5 questions on a specific topic that varies from year to year.
2. Never ask about a topic unless the company is prepared to spend a lot of money right away to do something about it. For instance, don't ask if people are happy/satisfied with existing training and development options unless the company is willing to plunk down a lot of resources to change it if 80% of the people say resoundingly "no--not enough resources, not enough high quality, not available quickly enough!" Don't ask about managing poor performers unless you're willing to change your performance management system in 3-4 months. I know management may want to know about some of this stuff--they want to know what people are thinking. Then hire a performance consultant to do a needs assessment. But a survey/audit puts a stake in the ground by the company that says "we care about these issues and will do something about them" so if you then don't do something visible and quick the message the employees almost universally get is: "we don't care about any of this stuff so it's a waste of your time to fill it out" which builds disrespect for the organization and cynicism about the business.
3. Remember that all you're doing is taking a vote. If 70% of the people say that your benefits plan is good, that doesn't mean it's good. You could end up experiencing high turnover when the economy turns around because your benefits plan is crap. So ask about stuff/issues where it's not about determining the truth or facts or a cause but just about perception or opinion. Do employees like the logo? Do they like the food in the cafeteria? And then, don't read into those comments. (ie: people don't like the food in the cafeteria--maybe if we improved the vendor our retention would get better?).