March 2011 Jonathan Jackson, BIR Solutions

using surveys to make better hiring and retention decisions

I am sure most of us would agree that operating and managing our business would be a lot easier with the right people. In a perfect world, having the right people in the right roles, with the right skill sets, all working together, understanding your common business objectives with innovation thrown in for good measure would make our business a lot easier.

In reality, we are constantly adjusting to people joining and leaving, choosing training packages that will bring measurable benefits and properly looking after the needs of the clients and employees. Every business faces these issues yet only some of them plan and manage their way through it.

If it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed

Surveys take the guesswork out of building a business. Used properly, surveys are a valuable set of diagnostics that provide measurable data across your organisation and your people allowing you to make knowledge based decisions.

We use surveys with our clients for a number of purposes. The following is a quick snapshot of some of the main areas we survey:

• To ensure you make the right hiring decisions
• To ensure you have the right coaching and mentoring system in place for each person within their business.
• To enable you to evaluate the efficiency of its managers and leaders
• To enable you to assess whether the perception of your business from new hires stacks up against the reality of their experiences when they are leaving your business
• To enable you to ensure you have the right sales and customer service staff for your business needs
• To guage the motivational and behavioural aspects of your staff
• To build effective well balanced teams
• To measure an individual’s basic work-related values

The data gathered from these surveys enables businesses which are committed to building, growing, improving or even restructuring their businesses a good sense of what is working and what needs further attention.