THE POWER OF STRATEGIC SURVEY INFORMATION
Developing Baselines, Comparatives and Trends
Excellence in baseball—throwing a one-hitter.
Excellence in car making technology—fuel efficiency over 40 mpg.
Excellence in employee satisfaction—priceless!
Actually, our Employee Satisfaction and Performance Model developed by Ference Leadership and Strategy & Center For Survey Research in the 80’s, and validated throughout the 90’s, has become renown for its realistic industry approach. It has since gained global recognition for its industry norms, operational benchmarks, and matrix of targeted performance levels with excellence achieved for results exceeding 86%. From our years of organizational consulting, we know that these thresholds represent quite an accomplishment for overall property satisfaction as well as for our organizational dimensions such as: communications, leadership, motivation, teamwork, service quality, and climate, to name but a few.
On the other hand, below a 66% level of satisfaction indicates that either survey statements or organizational dimensions are rated at fair to poor levels, somewhat akin to driving one of those “gas guzzlers” that give you 13 mpg or less. Of course, in between these two opposing levels are the categories of Above Average, Average and Below Average, all with their corresponding assigned percentage level of satisfaction.
An employee satisfaction survey administered for your company by Ference Leadership and Strategy & Center For Survey Research is your first step in a drive towards excellence. If you have never had such a survey given to your employees—or recently given—your first time through will establish a baseline grade from which to begin areas for improvement. Doing so gives the organization a practical roadmap for implementing comprehensive and effective management policies, practices and roles, enabling employee growth and skill development.
With the administration of a second company employee satisfaction survey, comparative data is analyzed. By automatically comparing outcomes from the first survey and checking where results from the second differ, comparisons and gap analyses can be made.
Performance progress measured through gap analysis provides a
solid foundation for measuring the company’s investment of time, money
and human resources needed to achieve peak performance.
This valuable tool enables companies to compare actual service and performance with potential service and performance. Gap analysis will aid in viewing at what level your business is currently performing and where it should be going in the future.
Coupled with gap analysis, our metrics identify key areas on which each property needs to work. This matrix of what to do focuses the process of examining, documenting and taking action on the differences between department or company requirements and current capabilities. It is a natural progression related to benchmarking and applied statistical assessments. From within the company, the value of internal benchmarking can be seen as competition against self and its individual and departmental internal targets.
See the target, aim for the target, hit the target.
Following a third survey, trends can be seen and analyzed. Historical data is compared to the present and trends in improvement or inadequacies can be viewed to be either celebrated or acted upon. Trends can be seen by properties, departments, by job and by company. Moreover, the leadership styles of supervisors, managers and executives can be identified, evaluated and scored.
Augmenting the analysis of trends in leadership styles is a Ference Leadership and Strategy paper on Leveraging Team Dynamics that clients use to help achieve peak performance through various phases of action-planning. While our research shows that being able to manage a variety of growth elements in the modern service environment is key to achieving peak performance, we have developed an organization-wide process to facilitate managed growth through measuring employee and customer/guest satisfactions, building dynamic business teams and aligning strategic resources: the Service-Culture Map™.
Another valuable tool that Ference Leadership and Strategy brings to the table is our compilation of Industry Norms. We have over 25 years of experience developing world class service cultures. Being able to compare to industry standards and know what have been historically acceptable rates of satisfaction is a great benefit. It allows you to set your goals to reach peak performance and maximize efforts towards higher levels of morale and service culture.
For over 25 years in designing, administering and applying survey results, we have consistently helped organizations raise the levels of their employee satisfaction scores. Consequently, these increases have lead to greater efficiencies, overall leadership effectiveness, and guest service satisfactions.
For all of our clients, our ability to develop baseline data,
establish comparative analysis, and generate performance trends
has directly and positively impacted their success.
Regardless of the size of your organization, large multi-unit properties or individual boutique operations, our systems and dynamics remain fundamentally the same: custom design of survey questions, timely rollout of survey results, and strategy consulting for future organizational impact. While other companies end their service by merely crunching numbers, we continue the dynamic process by helping clients integrate survey results into their performance strategies.
Our survey process has enabled our clients to stabilize scores within the excellence range and also to be awarded The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Employer of Choice, Best Human Resources, Employer of the Year and Fortune’s Best 100 Companies to Work For.
What Gets Measured Gets Done
What Gets Measured And Fed Back Gets Done Well
What Gets Rewarded Gets Repeated