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HR A SUPPLEMENT OF THE ZWEIG LETTER

Are your employees satisfied? Obtaining third-party assistance and issuing surveys are among the ways firms measure satisfaction, but information is nothing without action.

By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent

other survey next year to judge the results of our actions.” In addition to these surveys, the president of KJWW meets with all employees in small group settings. At these “roundtables,” he makes a pre- sentation on the state of the company, where they are headed, and asks for feedback. “It generates a long list of items on which to work,” Anderson says. Liz Uzzo, vice president of HR with H2M archi- tects + engineers (Melville, NY), a 290-person full-service consulting and design firm, also turned to an outside vendor to conduct an employee en- gagement survey in 2014. The survey had 95 per- cent participation and the company now has a good baseline from which to approach issues that were identified. “We shared the data with executives and then down the line from which we formed working com- mittees [volunteers] from each division to tackle is- sues identified,” she says. “Communication is key to the success of the survey. We are about a year See SATISFACTION, page 8

Companies with highly engaged employees have 3.9 times the earnings per share growth rate compared to organizations with low engagement scores, ac- cording to Gallup. This link between company per- formance and employees’ potential will help drive the performance of your employees and business. How are you making sure your employees are sat- isfied? ASK FOR THIRD-PARTY INPUT. Tim Anderson, HR man- ager at KJWW Engineering Consultants (Rock Island, IL), a 500-person global engineering design consulting firm, says that last year they hired an outside consulting firm to conduct an employment engagement and satisfaction survey. “They presented the results to us along with na- tional and regional norms. Although our overall results were very positive, we did identify areas in which we could improve,” he says. “From there, we established a task force in each office to brainstorm ideas. For several months now we have been work- ing on initiatives to make KJWW an even better place at which to work. We will follow up with an-

THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 9, 2015, ISSUE 1127

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