Thursday, January 31, 2013

THE EMPLOYEE SURVEY

Most BSC's spend a considerable amount of time making sure that their customers are happy and stay customers and that is how it should be. We have all been taught about the old adage--There are two rules in dealing with customers,

Rule number 1--The customer is always right.

Rule number 2--If you ever think the customer is wrong, refer to rule number 1. 

How many times have you been told that and passed it on to your employees. Customers are the lifeblood of the business and without them we wouldn't have a business, right? By the way, I know people that strongly disagree with these two rules but to each his own.

But...what about our employees? Where do they fit into this equation? We are in a labor intensive industry and yet we many times take the labor for granted. Think honestly about how much time you spend really being involved with your labor. When was the last time you REALLY paid attention to the individuals that work hard every day to provide, not only their income, but yours as well.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a conference where my friend David Stein was also in attendance. David is President and CEO of the highly successful company, Office Pride Commercial Cleaning Service located in Tyler Texas. As we visited about keeping customers he brought up the subject of what do we do to keep employees? Great question, isn't it? David then went on to explain a survey he conducted among his employees that really gave him and his staff some great insight to the workforce he had keeping his customers happy. It is an easy 5 question survey that takes about 5 minutes to complete. I asked David to share it with me and he gave permission to share it with you. Here were the questions he asked,

1. What do you like best about working for this company?

2. What is something you think we do very well as a company? 

3. What is something you think we could do better?

4. Part time work provides extra income that helps you do something (i.e. car payment, medical bills, help make ends meet). Would you mind sharing with us what this job helps you do?

5. Tell us something about yourself we can share that most people probably don't know about you?

NAME ____________________________.

Pretty simple questions aren't they? But look at them again. See how much you can learn about your valuable assets just by having them answer 5 easy questions. David said he got almost 100% participation. 
Think about it. You can find out your company weaknesses, why people are working for the dollars, what they think are your strong points. 

I particularly like question 4 inasmuch as you can build a recruiting campaign etc. around the more popular reasons people are working for you. And look at number 5, think of how valuable that information  can be. You may find people that have the talents you are needing in a full time person as you build your staff. After all, you are looking for career minded full time people as well as part time workers.

Let me suggest you do something similar in your company. You may just find some real talented people you didn't even know you had.

David learned a lot about his employees and I bet you can do the same. I want to thank David for sharing this information with us and if you decide to do a survey such as this, drop me a line and tell me about some of the interesting information you found that helped your company. 

Till next time. MAKE IT A GREAT WEEK. One last thing. You can sign up at the bottom of our home page at www.consultantsincleaning.com and our blog will come directly to your e-mail box each time one is published--NO STRINGS ATTACHED.

 

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