ATTITUDE SURVEYS

The typical attitude survey presents the employee with a set of statements or questions with a rating scale indicating the degree of agreement.
The organization can include in their survey about as compared with those of other organizations, Best use of individual abilities in their job, and knowledge of employee about his job.. Ideally, the items should be tailored to obtain the specific information that management desires. An individual’s attitudes score is achieved by summing up responses to his or her questionnaire desires. These scores can then be averaged for work groups, teams, departments, divisions, or the organization as a whole.
Result from attitude surveys can frequently surprise management. Because employees were actively involved in division decisions and profitability was the highest within the entire company. Management assumed morale was high and to confirm their beliefs, they conducted a short attitude survey.
Employees were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:
1. At work, your opinions count.2. Those of you who want to be a leader in this company have the opportunity to become one.3. In the past six months, someone has talked to you about your personal development.
In survey, 43% disagreed with step 1, 48% with step 2 and 62% with step 3. Management was astounded. How could this be? The division had been holding shop floor meetings to review the numbers every week for more than 12 years and most of the managers have come up through the ranks. Management has made a committee from every department in the divisions and all three shifts. The committee quickly found some little things the divisions were doing was alienating employees. Through the committee came lot of suggestions which improved the employees’ perception of their decision –making influence and career opportunities.
With attitude surveys on the regular basis helps the managers with valuable feedback on how employees perceive their working conditions. Policies and practices that management views as objectives and fair may be seen as not compatible by employees in general or by certain groups of employees. If distorted perceptions lead to negative attitudes about the job and organization it is important for management to know about it.
The use of regular attitude surveys can alert management to potential problems and employees’ intentions early so that action can be taken to prevent repercussions.