Employee Satisfaction Core to Successful Strategy Execution
Writing this piece has not been an exciting experience, as is usually the case. I must confess being disturbed by the experiences that have elicited the write-up. Sometime back Martha (name changed), a consistent reader requested me to write something about employee satisfaction survey.
Instead of heeding to the writing request, I perceived a business opportunity. Thus, feedback involved asking a few questions targeting the business relationship aspect. One of them was what exactly the reader wanted to achieve from that subject as opposed to engaging us so that we could help them understand their exact problem. Unfortunately, there was no response to the business overtures, a fact that led me to forget about the matter all together.
Recently however, I learned that the company closed shop after years of being very visible in our lives. The effect has been loss of employment for hundreds not forgetting the company’s contribution to the country’s overall economic development. This development has now made me connect with the employee satisfaction survey.
That is why I am now feeling inclined to painfully discuss the topic. The aim this time is to advise those interested in protecting business from experiencing the full cycle. How then does the employee satisfaction survey come into play as a useful business tool?
Ideally, it’s a great tool of ensuring efficient and effective execution of organizational strategy. It does not matter the size or nature of business. It applies to SMES, corporate entrepreneurships and all other forms of organizations, in equal measure, only differing in the magnitude of application.
Meanwhile, strategy or strategic planning is one of the greatest tools, of business management and development, ever conceptualized in the 20th century. One can’t agree more with Brian Tracy, a respected author and global consultant who intimates thus.
In fact, the more I immerse myself into formulation of strategic plans, the more I continue relating with Brian Tracy’s assertion. What may be unknown to many is that strategy itself is as old as the art of war. We learn this from Sun-Tsu, the Chinese author credited with early writings on war strategy.
However, application of strategy in business only took shape after the Second World War, which ended in 1945. It was realized that in peacetime, the same strategies applicable in war situations can effectively be used in business management. In that regard, they were found to be appropriate in overcoming or adapting to the forces of change or competition. Until now, no better tool has been found that can replace strategic planning. Incidentally, the process was intricately explained in the June strategy column, of this year.
As revealed, the strategic plan should be owned by all internal stakeholders, for it to effectively drive business, on an organization-wide basis. It should cover all aspects of the business and particularly have the roles cascaded to each and every one of the employees. Alongside, the leader is supposed to excite his team in the same way as going to war. Author Robert Greene says that soldiers can be motivated through being made more aggressive and desperate.
Further, the secret to motivating people, and maintaining their morale is to get them to think less about themselves, and more about the group. Involve them in a cause, a crusade against a hated enemy – the forces of change in the case of business. Make them see their survival as tied to the army as a whole. In a group that people have truly bonded, moods and emotions are so contagious that it becomes easy to infect the troupes with enthusiasm.
Additionally, leading from the front, will let them see the leader in the trenches, thus making sacrifices for the cause. In that regard, we all need to learn some leadership lessons from Abbas Guret, the CEO of Kenya Red Cross. He is no doubt the symbol of crises management situations in Kenya. He admirably leads his highly effective team, as they execute their well drilled crises management strategy.
In the meantime, keep remembering that a motivated army can work wonders, making up for lack of material resources. But, how do you keep the organizational troupes consistently motivated? Apparently, this may not be exhausted in this forum and will be tackled at a future date. Nonetheless, we may need to be sure that organizational armies are always motivated, and endowed with desirable performance culture that is ideal for purposes of strategy execution. The earlier mentioned employee satisfaction survey becomes handy for this purpose.
This survey is actually a research into the affairs of an organization, especially with regard to employee engagement, communication, leadership, performance management, training and career development, work environment, value system and attitudes or motivation amongst others.
The survey may also be used to satisfy objectives such as, identifying problem areas that management may not be aware of; uncovering the needs of employees that may not be explicit and obtaining information regarding employees’ views and opinions about the organization. It is also possible to get ideas on creativity and innovation or simply continuous improvement.
The benefits of conducting regular employee surveys can be considerable. Notably, the post-survey analysis, response and action ultimately determine how useful and effective the process has been. Further, surveys can be very effective in identifying problem areas before they become serious. More still, survey results can be benchmarked with those of previous years. That allows an organization to monitor and measure progress and development in non-financial terms.
The good news is that it’s today possible to easily conceptualize and create effective surveys. This is different from when I first conducted a research, about a decade ago, which was eventually published in an international business journal. The greatest challenge then was administration of the questionnaire.  Today, it is easy to administer a research using online tools that provides real-time results. However, surveys will almost always involve parameters that are attributed to quantitative ratings, thus requiring good appreciation of figure work.
Apparently, not everybody can effectively make sense of the results obtained. Experience has proven that research or surveys require great sense of imagination or creativity, right from preparing the questionnaire to interpreting the results. Moreover, broad understanding of business theory and practice gives more impetus to the interpretations. More still, surveys need the full backing of management, which may sometimes be uncomfortable with the outcomes.
Ideally, the survey will achieve nothing if the results are just filed away without purposeful action. It does not matter that the employee satisfaction surveys may, most often reveal unpalatable truths, which discomfort organizational leadership. Interestingly, experience has continually revealed that employees have high expectations, especially with regard to implementation of findings of well conducted surveys. Successful organizational continuity may, actually require that the findings of surveys be acted upon.
One of the greatest setbacks of surveys is that their negative revelations could unfortunately be attributed to the messenger; whose role is only to bring out both the good and the bad feelings of all stakeholders, who form the sensory system of any organization.
Whatever the case though; it is unlikely that strategy execution can ever be smooth, in the absence of concerted efforts of continually understanding the internal organizational health.  One of the most important attribute is the employee engagement. Probably, Martha’s company could have borrowed more time, if they had conducted the survey. Most likely, the results could still be guiding their strategy execution process.
Meanwhile,
- At what stage of the performance cycle is your business organization operating?
- If you wanted to holistically and strategically transform the fortunes of your organization, where would you start?
- Did you ever know that we can help your organization to completely transform direction for the better in only 2 – 3 days?
- Did you also know that we extend PERSONALIZED and MONEY BACK GUARANTEES on the respective solutions?
- How about starting with a non committal, one on one discussion on how the transformation can be achieved?
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