What Are Your Employees Thinking?

Do you know what your employees are thinking? What they’re reallythinking? How they really feel about working at your animal hospital? How they really feel about working with the rest of your staff? What they reallythink about you and your management team?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, you must be sending anonymous surveys out to your team members regularly. Well done!

………………..

Wait… You aren’t regularly surveying your staff?

If you aren’t anonymously surveying your employees on a regular basis, you don’t truly know what they’re thinking. You don’t know how they’re feeling. You don’t know what they want. You simply don’t know.

But, don’t worry. Sending anonymous surveys to your team is easier than you might think, and it’ll provide insights that you can use to improve employee satisfaction, performance, and production, which, in turn, will improve your patient care, client service, and bottom line.

Why you should survey your employees

Surveying your team will help you to keep up with changing attitudes and prevent minor issues from growing into monster issues. It will also help you to stay on the same page as your team while providing opportunities for growth as a leader and manager. It will prevent employees from becoming toxic and help to keep job satisfaction high.

How often you should survey your employees

It’s a good idea to survey your team once per month.

How to create and send employee surveys

A survey service, like SurveyMonkey, makes the process easy and has multiple levels of account options, from free basic accounts to $99-per-month premier accounts. Your surveys should be anonymous, so your employees feel comfortable answering your questions honestly. Give them a deadline to complete the survey, and then discuss the results (and any changes you might be making in response to the survey results) at your next staff meeting. (I’ll write about the importance of regular team meetings in an upcoming blog post.)

Questions to ask on an employee survey

If you’ve recently made changes in your practice, a survey is a good way to find out how your team feels about those changes. Otherwise, here are some common questions you can include on employee surveys:

• List two areas you excel in and two areas you tend to struggle with at ABC Animal Hospital.
• The management team clearly communicates its goals and strategies to me. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• When a client is dissatisfied, I can usually correct the problem to their satisfaction. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• What can your supervisor and managers do to improve communication?
• What is the best thing about working here?
• Do you have any suggestions for the company to improve performance and efficiency?
• I feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• I am empowered to make my own decisions and act on them so that clients’ needs come first. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• I have training and professional learning opportunities at work. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• List two areas you would like to be trained on or have additional training on.
• What suggestions would you make to improve team morale?
• Name one or two of your professional goals this month.
• I am informed about matters affecting me and my job responsibilities. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• Name two ways you can contribute to increase efficiency or improve client service.
• My supervisor takes time to listen to me. — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of client service provided by our team? — Always/Most of the time/Sometimes/Almost never/Never (Include space for additional comments)
• What does your management team (or supervisor) do to keep your morale high?
• Name a time in the last 30 days when you went above and beyond for a client.