Strategic HR Review

Using employee surveys to attract and retain the best talent

Kate Pritchard

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Kate Pritchard , (2014),"Using employee surveys to attract and retain the best talent", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 13 Iss 2 pp. 59 - 62
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Using employee surveys to attract and

retain the best talent
Kate Pritchard

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Abstract
Purpose This feature seeks to demonstrate the importance of organizations understanding how they
are perceived externally as an employer, and how regularly tracking the opinions of staff can ensure the
best talent are engaged and stay with an organization.

Kate Pritchard is based at

ORC International, London,
UK.

Design/methodology/approach ORC International is an expert in employee engagement research.

This article incorporates findings from its global HR survey HR Reflections, and includes two case
studies that demonstrate how regular tracking and deep analysis of staff opinions can help
organizations to boost their employer brand and retain their best talent.
Findings Advanced analysis of employee surveys can predict how employees are feeling to help
organizations retain their most valuable staff.
Practical implications This is a practical paper designed to give ideas and good practice to readers
facing similar situations.
Originality/value The paper combines findings from a global survey with case study content to help
employers to understand how to improve engagement and retention of staff through effective use of
regular employee surveys.
Keywords Employee engagement, Employer brand, Analysis, Employee surveys, New joiners surveys,
Respondent level modeling
Paper type Research paper

esults from our recent HR Reflections survey, which captured the opinions of HR
professionals around the world, have revealed the biggest HR challenges facing the
industry as engaging staff and attracting the best talent. While there are lots of job
seekers, HR professionals say that it is harder to fill their positions than 12 months ago.
Furthermore, while labor turnover is low, respondents reveal a concern that they are not
retaining their best staff. Attracting and retaining talent is as big an issue today as ever, and
researching your employees can be extremely valuable in helping to overcome these
challenges.

Understanding perception of your brand

Having a strong employer brand makes it easier to attract staff. However, many employers
are unaware of how they are perceived externally. Often, job seekers will consider
companies as an employer based on their experience or knowledge as a customer. For
example, companies who sell exciting products or services are likely to be considered
exciting as employers also. Such companies may be overwhelmed with job applicants, but
do job seekers have a realistic impression of what it is like as a place to work? Likewise,
organisations with a weak customer brand often find it difficult to attract candidates.
Therefore, it is important that organisations are aware of how they are perceived externally
and take action to ensure their employer brand is clear, accurate and compelling.

DOI 10.1108/SHR-10-2013-0100

VOL. 13 NO. 2 2014, pp. 59-62, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398

STRATEGIC HR REVIEW

PAGE 59

Research into job seekers to find out how they perceive different organisations as places to
work (by rating them on a range of job attributes) can provide really valuable insight to assist
organisations in developing their employer brand. This insight enables employers to
understand what is important to potential recruits and how their organisation stacks up
against the competition.

Perception versus reality

We recently conducted such a survey for a large private sector company, comparing job
seekers opinions concerning this company as a place to work against four of its closest
rivals. This provided valuable information about how the company was perceived externally,
and gave the organisation a clear steer of which messages they needed to emphasise in
order to enhance their reputation in the recruitment market.

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In some areas, the perceptions of job seekers were in stark contrast with perceptions of
current staff. One example of this was related to the attribute having fun at work. This was
something for which external job seekers rated the organisation poorly, whilst current
employees rated it very highly. Therefore, the message to the organisation was to get the
word out in the recruitment market.
In some cases, we find that the reverse is true that external job seekers hold more positive
perceptions of certain job attributes than current employees do. We call this false
advertising, which employers should do their best to avoid happening, if these perceptions
cannot be made a reality. Such discrepancies are evident by plotting the views of jobseekers
and staff on a quad plot similar to the diagram in Figure 1.

Engage your joiners

Once staff are successfully recruited, it is important to engage them as quickly as possible.
While new recruits are often amongst the most engaged employees, our new joiners surveys
tell us that a third of new hires do not feel they are effectively oriented into the job.
Furthermore, 29 per cent intend to leave their organisation within the following year.
These figures are really disappointing given the expense around recruitment and training,
and it implies that there can even be a mismatch between the perceptions of new recruits
from during the recruitment stage and the reality of the job. Joiners surveys are very useful in
understanding how new employees are feeling, identifying the gaps between expectations
and reality, and ensuring that all aspects of the new joiner process are working.
Figure 1 Views of jobseekers versus views of staff

PAGE 60 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 13 NO. 2 2014

 Having a strong employer brand makes it easier to attract

staff. However, many employers are unaware of how they are
perceived externally.

Tracking responses over time

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It continues to be important to measure staff opinion on a regular basis. Many organisations

survey their employees each year to understand current levels of engagement and where
action needs to be focused to increase engagement in the workplace. Most employee
surveys are anonymous and analysed at an aggregate level. They provide a useful means of
tracking employee engagement levels over time and understanding the engagement of
different groups of staff.
Whilst such surveys are of great value, far more insight is possible if the surveys are set up in
a way so that we can understand the responses of individual employees over time. In some
cases all survey respondents are given an individual, unique link to their survey. The survey
is still completely confidential and anonymous, but we can analyse individuals attitudes over
time, and potentially alongside other data about this employee, such as salary progression,
job change, performance reviews etc. to gain additional insight. It enables us to identify dips
in the engagement of individuals, and take action to engage the disengaged, retain the best
staff, and understand why high achievers leave.

Intention versus behaviour

Analysis undertaken recently for a large private sector client proved to be very interesting
when we looked at their survey data from the last two years. To begin with we analysed
whether people intended to stay at the organisation (by analysing responses from the
employee opinion survey) against their actual behaviour. This analysis revealed that 76 per
cent of those who left were intending to stay, and of those who intended to leave, only 38 per
cent actually did. This confirms that the question I intend to be here in 12 months time is
not a great predictor of actual attrition. It also indicates that disengaged people often end up
staying with the company. In this example, we found that the leavers were more likely to be
higher grade employees with a longer tenure, which was of particular concern.
Further scrutiny of the data, comparing those who left the organisation against those who
stayed, revealed where perceptions differed between these two groups of staff. We
identified that leavers were less positive about the following aspects of the job:
B

performance improvement as a result of skills developed over the past year;

feeling valued;

equality and diversity;

work life balance;

commitment to health and wellbeing; and

feeling motivated and inspired to be more effective at work.

So, in essence, we are able to model the journey employees take out of a company. We
found for this client that it starts with negative feelings about the way they are being treated,
leading to negative views on the way decisions are made in their department, and then a
feeling that their performance is not improving. Through deep analysis of your data, real
insight can be gained to predict how employees are feeling and help organizations retain
their most valuable people.

VOL. 13 NO. 2 2014 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 61

About the author

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Kate Pritchard is the board director responsible for Employee Research across Europe at
ORC International. She has 20 years experience in research and consultancy, and since
joining ORC International in early 1997 has conducted a wide range of research projects for
both public and private sector clients. Most of her experience has been in the management
of employee engagement programs, working with a wide range of clients including John
Lewis Partnership, Tesco, Legal and General and the UK Civil Service. She holds a BA (Joint
Hons) degree from Strathclyde University. Kate Pritchard can be contacted at:
kate.pritchard@ORCInternational.com

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PAGE 62 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 13 NO. 2 2014