“The Decision Co. helped us to better understand the true feelings of our employees, their motivations, and how best to engage them. With more honest data collection and The Decision Co.’s analysis, we are able to better serve our employees – our greatest investment – so that they can better serve our clients.”
– Bill Wallace, CEO, Goodwyn Mills & Cawood
Goodwyn Mills & Cawood (GMC) – a 375-employee-strong architecture and engineering firm – needed a better approach to measuring employee satisfaction. After an attempt at an in-house survey the previous year, they realized a more professional survey instrument, in-depth analysis, benchmarking from the previous year, and guaranteed employee anonymity was needed. While their in-house survey yielded usable results, they wanted additional honest insight with a clear way forward, as well as higher levels of employee participation.
Anonymity Without Sacrificing Valuable Insight
GMC was concerned employees were not responding honestly to in-house employee satisfaction surveys distributed by the HR department. This is a common issue for every company and a major benefit of outsourcing employee satisfaction research to a professional firm. We were able to ensure each employee’s anonymity without sacrificing any beneficial demographic data that could provide further context to answers provided.
We matched employee data with each survey taker, removed all identifying information, and delivered a report back to GMC that provided key insights for GMC and peace of mind for their employees.
Outsider’s Perspective
Analysis is hard. It’s even more difficult when approaching the data with internal biases that color the data. By entrusting us with their employee satisfaction survey, we conducted analysis on the data and provided meaningful insight, free from the baggage that comes from the expectations of managers, HR departments, and legal teams. We also compared the results against national trends and gave GMC a clear picture of how things are internally and how they look in the larger context of the American workforce.
Detailed Analysis and Insights
GMC wasn’t just interested in knowing what their employees thought, they wanted to know why. We expanded GMC’s previous efforts by including open-ended questions. Performing sentiment analysis on open-ended responses shone a new light on the quantitative data we collected, allowing us to provide deeper insight into employees’ motivations and feelings.
We also benchmarked our survey against their previous survey. This showed GMC where they were compared to prior results. Being able to look at this year’s data in light of the previous survey, as well as industry wide numbers, gave us an unambiguous picture of where GMC was excelling and where there was room for improvement.
Incorporating depersonalized demographic data let us drill down further. Suddenly results aren’t limited to company-wide brush strokes, but intricate pictures of the work environment amongst location, salary ranges, rolls within the company, and many other demographics. This detailed look allowed GMC to develop custom solutions to HR and staffing concerns.
The solution is more cost-effective than you think.
With a Decision Co. employee satisfaction survey, we saved GMC months of work and gave them more honest, useable results. GMC now has a better path forward to care for and improve their most valuable resource – their employees.