Employee surveys are an ideal way to feel the pulse of employees. Todays organizations are plagued by high employee turnover. Understanding the exact needs of an employee is a very big task. Attracting as well as retaining talented employees has become very challenging. It is a fact that when an employee leaves an organization, he takes with him a whole set of skills, ideas and expertise, most likely to a competitor company.

Employee surveys help to determine many aspects about an employees ideas and feelings about his/her employer. In the long run, these feelings could become ideologies on which the company would attract better talent. Hence, understanding the needs of employees is very important.

Every company conducts different kinds of surveys, such as employee satisfaction survey, attitude survey, retention survey, benefits survey, communications survey, work environment survey, and loyalty survey. Employee surveys were found to have several benefits, such as assessing training needs, streamlining communication, reducing turnover and absenteeism, strengthening supervision and so on.

Employees leaving the company are a useful source of understanding the employees ideas about the company. Whether the separation is normal (retirement) or unusual (leaving for better opportunities elsewhere), former employees are a very good resource for understanding the existing employees feelings.

Many companies conduct exit interviews to know several things. Ideally, an exit interview contains some general questions about the employees experience while working with the company. These can be casual or very specific. The focus of the survey questionnaire is to determine the exact cause for the separation. Another important objective is to know about the employees experiences with the company. The employee should be able to express how he/she felt about the companys attitude towards employee satisfaction, work culture and environment.

Questions relating specifically to the job, such as: work load, availability of resources, safety standards, orientation, supervisory control, pay and benefits, should be addressed. Any other aspects, such as: efficiency of the management, treatment of the employees, feedback mechanisms, communication effectiveness, effectiveness of the policies and practices, recognition for achievement, and opportunity for development can also be addressed. Ideally, the questions can be open-ended to encourage any additional comments or suggestions.

Other aspects that may be covered are: the employees reasons for leaving, future plans after leaving the company, and level of satisfaction with the company. The survey questionnaire also requires giving personal data, including the time the employee worked for the company, the number of promotions received as well as the time of last promotion, employees annual income, age, sex, personal details about the family, marital status, the department working in, previous employment record and others.

All these would help the company to arrive at unbiased and accurate conclusions. These days, there are companies that provide custom-designed exit survey questionnaires for other companies. These can be accessed and filled out online, and analyzed using sophisticated software and statistical tools for better understanding.