| Each year, Human Resource (HR) and Organizational Development (OD) Departments work to implement employee surveys that will provide their companies' executive team with insights that gauge the mood of the people. In many instances, this survey becomes the basis for a series of corporate initiatives. Often, HR/OD professionals structure these surveys in the form of Employee Engagement Surveys, with the aim of measuring levels of engagement, both cognitive and emotional. In some instances, the surveys are structured in the form of Employee Satisfaction Surveys, which measure levels of satisfaction in one's current job and company. HR/OD professionals must gain clarity on the subtle distinction between each of these types of surveys and what the surveys measure. This clarity becomes critical for their consultation with their clients, as one's orientation leads to markedly different actions.;Further, beyond the constructs that the surveys hope to measure, HR/OD professionals will employ different methodological approaches to obtain their data. The methodological approach stems from a certain epistemology, and the business world includes a host of approaches on the objectives of such measurements. The fact that employee surveys typically are implemented on a yearly basis also indicates a particular temporal orientation. Guidelines for how to conduct these employee surveys, usually found on consulting firms' websites, vary widely, and once a path is selected, it becomes difficult and expensive to change courses. This dissertation makes recommendations regarding quantitative and qualitative data collection methods, based on the researcher's experiences.;This dissertation provides the HR/OD practitioner with insights into the implications of choosing a methodology, guidelines for implementing employee surveys, and anecdotal information from an applied research project at a California consumer goods manufacturing company. The dissertation discusses each step of the survey process, from creating a request for proposal (RFP) to implementing actions that achieve the return on investment (ROI). It highlights the results of a survey implementation at one company, explains the action research steps employed, and concludes with thoughts on future research and limitations of Employee Engagement Surveys. |
