Encouraging employee engagement is central to our business
Here at Sowga, we're aware of the impact team spirit amongst our staff and the sense of camaraderie can have across the whole organisation – whether it's in the office or on client sites. Creating a positive atmosphere not only means it's a nice place to work but also encourages employees to achieve, which ultimately improves productivity.
Keen to instil this ethos, we're always looking for ways to ensure that any issues – positive and negative – are flagged up at the earliest possible stage. With this in mind, we've recently launched a new concept in staff engagement – an employee pulse survey.
Gaining employee feedback isn't something new to business, in fact the concept was widely utilised during World War II to test morale and find ways to improve the atmosphere for soldiers. However, analysing data to gain an insight into staff satisfaction levels used to be a slow and complicated process by which time the data had become redundant.
What is a pulse survey?
As the name suggests, this concept is designed to offer a fast, responsive and frequent insight into employees' views on a range of issues that affect them on a day to day basis. In our case, we conduct the surveys every week. The key benefit of this type of survey is the ability to gain meaningful data from a few simple questions. The findings can then be acted on in a timely fashion so the positive impacts on staff are realised much quicker.
Why are we launching this initiative?
Our aim is to increase employee engagement and communication by giving staff a platform to anonymously express their views and opinions. This in turn will help our senior management team to develop and improve the business. By giving staff the opportunity to feed back comments and have a say in the running of the company, we believe it will help to create the most rewarding and productive environment possible.
How will it work?
All employees are included in our pulse surveys, from office staff to mobile engineers and management. Completing the survey takes just a matter of minutes, which helps to encourage higher response rates. There is a total of 50 questions in the survey, but employees only have to answer five questions selected at random each week across ten different topics.
The subjects cover all aspects of the business and what it's like to work at Sowga, from employee/ manager relationships and quality of life, to reward and recognition, and career opportunities. Each Sowga employee receives a different set of questions every week so that an insight into all areas of the company can be gained as quickly as possible. By the end of the first week we had at least one answer to every question.
As a building services engineering company, we're in the business of generating benchmarks so our clients can operate at peak performance levels. In the same way, we want our employees to feel in control of their jobs and career opportunities. Establishing a pulse survey to gain greater insight into our performance as a company seemed a natural decision. By doing this we hope all employees will have the opportunity to positively impact the way we work.
Interested in joining us? We are always on the lookout for people to join our skilled team of staff. If you'd like to find out more about working with us check out our careers page or contact us to discuss the latest vacancies.