Employee Satisfaction Survey as HRM Audit Method – Case Study Based on X Firm

The article discusses an analysis of employee survey results in the context of the objectives of the personnel function in an organisation . In the introduction there are presented theoretical assumptions concerning the approach to the evaluation process relating to the personnel audit . This is the approach used in employee satisfaction assessment programs . The example of such an approach is the one presented in the text, the annual program of the analysis of expectations, motivation and employee satisfaction for huge Scandinavian trade network . Findings described in the text refer to the impact of employee opinions on personnel practices undertaken to enhance the effectiveness of HRM in the studied company . The main conclusions (priorities for managers) of such an audit include actions to improve efficiency in terms of: working conditions, leadership, and promoted values, and job content and development . author is a lecturer in Personnel Management Department in Organisation and Management Institute of University of in Sopot . The main scope of interest is focused on performance and appraisal systems, nonmaterial motivation systems, methods of shaping the commitment, and empirical surveys in the area of HRM . The author is also cooperating with University of Economics in Wrocław, and WSB School of Banking in Gdańsk in area of postgraduate studies .


Introduction
Employee Satisfaction Survey as a method of HRM audit can be used as a very important source of information for improvement of real personnel practices . The paper focuses on the employee opinion survey concerning one empirical example of such research . In the first part of the text there is a short introduction related to theoretical and model approaches . The second part is a synthetic presentation of findings, results and conclusions of employees satisfaction survey of X Firm -Scandinavian trade network . In the end there are practical focus areas for managers to improve and to develop their activities within HRM methods .

Personnel audit as a tool of personnel information system
The effectiveness of human resource management is dependent on the validity of personnel decisions, and their proper implementation . The accuracy of decisions depends on the useful information and on the efficiency of processing of that data 1 . Employee opinion survey is one of the forms of control, execution of specific personnel audit function by targeting key information related to the attitudes and expectations of employees . Significance and interest in such human resources management tool derives from the increasing importance of human capital as a factor in the competitiveness of enterprises in terms of the new economy 2 . Human capital model is based on the optimal use of reinvestment in human potential . To ensure the viability of such a process, you must first make sure -in the context of personal marketing approach 3 to identify factors for the support, commitment and employee satisfaction . These are activities associated with strategic anticipation of social changes 4 , which rely on the diagnosis and study of environmental factors relevant to the organisation and internal resources, particularly in the context of the increasing complexity of management . This process involves providing managers with often ambiguous, distributed data set . Therefore, it becomes an important requirement for construction of the data collection and processing to be combined into one integrated process personal information system 5 . In light of the concept of human capital, a key issue is to have knowledge about the potential and opportunities to optimize their capital investment . Thus, an integral part of the SIP is the employee opinion survey based on an assessment of the personnel function according to effectiveness criteria, in this case -according to the criterion of contentment, satisfaction, commitment and expectations of the most precious of resources, a man in the organisation .
Referring to the definition of personnel audit as an advisory and monitoring activity, which involves a systematic, independent and methodical examination and assessment of human resources and personnel functions of the system, aiming at their improvement by examining the current state of compliance with accepted standards or benchmark 6 , it can be concluded that the concept and the process of employee surveys is one of the key components of audit activities of HRM . Obtaining primary information from a direct source as answers of employees, in the context of the human capital approach, determines a key, strategic resource for information allowing improve HR processes within the organisation 7 . The purpose of the employee survey is to learn their opinions and assessments about the wider-ranging issues related to their needs, their work, work environment and the company as such 8 .

The purposes of organisational and HRM surveys
The main reasons in a context of HRM improvement, for conducting organisational surveys are 9 : feedback function, diagnosis area, communication needs, and for training and development purposes . They are closely integrated to human capital philosophy witch needs to gain efficient relationships between individual and organisation . Similar approach is representing by A . Pocztowski . He indicated following configuration of HRM audit: surveys related to determinants of personnel processes, to realization of these processes, and their effects, understood mostly as a employee satisfaction survey, organisational climate survey, and commitment to in work survey 10 . If we take feedback function, one of the most important for audit perspective -surveys can provide management with knowledge about the organisation that is not available by other means 11 . The feedback function is especially important for executives of global, multinational decentralized companies, because it is virtually impossible for them to have any current knowledge of how HRM processes are being accepted by employees . In this perspective surveys are analogous to the audit function . This information gained by employee opinion surveys can appear invaluable for organisational planning and can often reduce some ambiguity involved in making management decision . The use of systematic surveys can sensitize the area of HRM to changes in employee preferences . Generally a survey as an audit device is used to examine the relative level of satisfaction with different facets and to determine which of the individual, job, and organisational environment variables were related to these satisfaction levels . In this perspective it can be defined a survey to assess organisational and HRM changes .
Surveys can also serve an important diagnostic function for management and organisation . The results of that are going to explain or predict critical organisational events such as turnover, absenteeism, decrease in performance, or productivity 12 . Mostly it provides an overview of the research on the relationship between satisfaction and collection of critical organisation events .
In case of communication application for employee opinion surveys, it can be said that surveys guarantee anonymity to respondents, workers should feel free to communicate information that would not normally be expressed directly to management . In the field of HRM it provides a background for effective relationship and communication management . Deepening this purpose of surveys for HRM strategy, we can state that training function of employee opinion research is one of the most pragmatic gained by these surveys . Especially for managers these goals are very important . The involvement of managers in the survey procedures can be high-skilled experience for them and can provide both an opportunity for development of skills and for important insights 13 . They can also -through participating in that -learn how to isolate critical incidents and how to phrase relevant questions in a language appropriate to their subordinates .
Concluding, it should be stressed that the main goal of employee opinion survey in a context of HRM audit is to recognize satisfaction and commitment level 14 . So, now it is worth describing briefly the significance and meaning of commitment . It will be a proper introduction to the empirical part of this paper, where there is a presentation of the results and conclusions of commitment and satisfaction survey . 12 Ibidem, p . 43 . 13 Ibidem, p . 55 . 14 G . Bartkowiak

Commitment as a result of effective HRM
The interest in the study of job satisfaction stems from the positive impact of a sense of human unit's satisfaction from his/her work on the effectiveness of this work . Often, the research undertaken in this regard is to calculate the job description index measuring the level of satisfaction of such dimensions as: the level of salaries, promotion, management style, content of work, and relationships with colleagues 15 . Other factors that are taken into account diagnosing the level of satisfaction includ: working conditions, work organisation, management system, self-esteem and image of the company 16 . All these activities aim at establishing a significant factor in HRM process efficiency, i .e . the level of commitment .
Organisational commitment is reflected in employee willingness to put a considerable effort into the organisation 17 , which is in line with, the concept of commitment defined by LW Porter . According to the author commitment is the degree of employee identification with the organisation and involvement in its affairs 18 . In his view, organisational commitment is based on acceptance and the faith of employees in organisational goals, their willingness to insert a significant effort for the good of the organisation and strong desire to be a member of the organisation . In turn, M . Juchnowicz brings closer definitions of commitment by some selected authors . For example, A .M . Saks defines commitment as an intellectual and emotional dedication to the organisation, or the amount of effort used in operation (work) by the employee . By contrast, according M .L . Ballery and M .L . Morris' commitment is a condition in which the employee shall be engaged for a job, and he/she has positive attitude and feels happy with the job 19 . M . Armstrong claims that commitment is related to the identification of goals and values of employees with the objectives and values of the organisation and to the need of belonging to the organisation and willingness to work for its good 20 . B . Buchanan emphasizes the emotional aspect of organisational commitment . In his view, it is the involvement of the affective organisational commitment to the goals and values of the organisation, to one's role in these goals and values and to the organisation 21 . Described above the willingness to put efforts into the job, willingness to act and engage in the affairs of the organisation and a strong sense of being a member of the organisation are rooted in the employees' perception of both internal and external motivations . This, in turn should transform into positive business results organisation . If we wanted to influence effectively this relationship, we would need to identify the real state of positive feelings of people in relation to their organisation .
Summing up, the purpose of this paper is to present an empirical process and the results of very interesting employee survey oriented on assessment of satisfaction and commitment of the staff on the example of a major European commercial network operating in Poland . In this light, summarizing the theoretical introduction, we can say that a key objective of the personnel audit based on employee opinion survey is a feedback based on diagnosing the current state of implementation of the personnel function . Analysing the data given during the employee opinion survey, we obtain the same basis for the verification of adopted personnel strategy, which through appropriate HR practices and processes should effectively influence the level of motivation, commitment and satisfaction of employees .
Case study of employee satisfaction survey 2010 conducted in X firm

Introduction
The 2010 conducted survey as usual used a web-based data collection in an organisation 22 . Such a method addressed the request of Board of the researched organisation . For needs of this paper it is called X organisation . X is a Scandinavian trade network operating in several countries in Europe . The survey has been conducted within 1-14 February 2010 by the professional research company form the country of origin of X organisation . At X level the firm has distributed 5,101 passwords to employees who had the possibility to participate in the survey -4,605 did, which means that 90% participated . This is an excellent result, as compared to the participation level in last two surveys: In 2008, 87% participated - The questions used in the survey were exactly the same as in the survey of 2008 . Therefore, it was possible make a correct benchmark with the 2008 survey on the overall issues and all specific issues . The results presented in the following graphs are described in the scale of the examined phenomenon of value-response (0 -negative ratio, 100 -a very positive attitude) .

Participation
In the first part of the audit there was compared the results of the percentage of answers to the questions in surveys . As we can see from the Chart 1, the participation of Polish workers in the study is the lowest in Europe (87%) . What's most interesting, in the research of 2008, the percentage participating in the study was the highest in Europe . The results show a negative effect of decreased the motivation of employees to express their opinion on the whole X network in Europe . The indicated trend is taking place only in Poland .
Chart 1. How many employees answered the questionnaire in the eight countries? Overall results benchmarking satisfaction level in countries The consequence of the above dependencies is the lowest registered level of commitment among the countries where the studies were conducted . The level of satisfaction in Poland in the scale of a hundred-point reaches just over half of the scale . In addition, there is also a downward trend compared to 2008 . The results show very important critical conclusions regarding the organisation's management . From the perspective of human capital theory, it can be assumed that this is a situation requiring immediate intervention in the area of the personnel function .

Satisfaction level in head offices
A similar trend as noted recorded above is witnessed in case of managers . The difference is that, at first, there is identified a higher level of satisfaction in relation to the average in the company -the difference is 17 percentage points . Secondly, the lowest level of satisfaction was obtained among Dutch managers . Nevertheless, the results obtained in Poland are still one of the lowest results among managers working in Europe. Source: Report of EES in X organisation 2011

Classification of employees -benchmark of 2010 and 2008 surveys
Another very interesting presentation of described results is a typology of internal classification of employees . This concept implies (in terms of matrix) identifying the level of two dimensions: commitment and attitude (relationesprit de corps) of employees to the company . Following the submission of these dimensions four groups of workers were identified: the first group are employees with a low degree of commitment and a low sense of belonging to the company (SCOUT) . The second group are people with a high degree of commitment and a low sense of belonging to the company (ZAPPER), the third group comprises employees with low level of commitment and high level of sense of belonging to the company (SLEEPER) and the last group is the group of employees with a high degree of commitment and high sense of belonging to the company (THE REAL DEAL) . The first group includes workers who want to leave the company, looking for a new job and have a negative attitude to the company . The second group are the challenges waiting staff, but not caring about where they work . The third group are the employees who enjoy working for a company, but do not want to go beyond the scope of their duties . The last group are employees who are representatives of the company, called "ambassadors", they take additional responsibilities, and identify with the mission and corporate values . The table below shows the distribution of the results of classification of employees (in percentage of the total employed in the X company Poland) in survey from 2008 and 2010 . Based on the results, there can be clearly seen negative trends particularly in two key groups of workers . In the SCOUT group there was an negative increase (from 16% to 20%) of workers with low level of commitment and a low sense of belonging and also negative decrease (from 58% to 56%) in group THE REAL DEAL, characterized by a high degree of commitment and high sense of belonging . Maintaining the trend described in the above groups of workers can lead to serious personnel problems (lack of reserve personnel, high turnover) .

Overall results of satisfaction level for Poland
One of the key areas identified in the described research is the analysis of the factors affecting the overall level of employee satisfaction in the X company . These factors included following items: satisfaction, relation to X, commitment, work environment, job contents/development, X values, X leadership . As can be noticed -in typology of notions for ESS in X -in this survey there is definitely a distinction between satisfaction and commitment . The low level (the lowest in all European branches) of satisfaction does not correspond to high level of commitment . It shows that it could be to some extent independent relationship between commitment and job satisfaction . The main hypothesis is that the commitment is not directly made by creating factors of satisfaction . There is also another perspective resulting from distribution of presented results, tools for developing satisfaction are not the same as these influencing commitment . This is very strong relation that the lower level of compensation, the lower level of satisfaction, but, on the other hand it is known that the higher level of commitment does not indicate higher level of wages for work (i .e . Herzberg theory) 23 . The commitment is also the highest indicator among all presented in the survey, and the satisfaction is the lowest one . The most striking conclusion of presented results is overall collapse of all analysed indicators level in the survey in benchmark of 2008 and 2010 . One of the synthetic explanation to that is eventual serious internal problem related to HRM areas .

Chart 4 Presentation of the key drivers for overall results satisfaction level
in Poland in X This part of paper where it shows a particular, detailed results of employee satisfaction the survey . All the following results in tables are presented in the percentage share of surveyed employees' answer .

Results distributed -seniority
Many interesting information is provided in an analytical summary of these findings with regard to seniority of employees . The working group in the shortest period achieved the highest levels of satisfaction and commitment to work . The longer the period of employment with the company, a sense of belonging and job satisfaction, slightly but steadily declines . This is a clear signal for management that the implementation of HR strategy the X firm does not provide at present goals related to retention strategy . This situation is underlined by the further decline in all indicators examined in relation to the findings of 2008 . Top-rated component of the sense of job satisfaction in the X company, regardless of the level of seniority -is the commitment to work . It should, however, be noted that despite falling rates of satisfaction and a sense of belonging (especially those employed for over 3 years), commitment and identification with the values of X is at a relatively high level (around 70 points) . This is a situation in which it is worth considering improvement of the quality factors (drivers) making a level of satisfaction . This should cause an increase in greater sense of involvement . A similar trend could be seen in the presentation of research results for managers . General decline in rates has been reported in relation to 2008 . Nevertheless, it is noted that the level of positive answers in the opinion of managers is a few percentage points higher compared to the overall performance for X, in each category of drivers . The largest difference is in the job content and development opportunities -the difference is about plus 6 .5 pp . on managers' side . Source: Report of EES in X organisation 2011

Benchmark of 2010 and 2008 surveys -specific issues analysed in survey
The confirmation of presented above general considerations will be synthetic interpretation of selected detailed results on satisfaction and loyalty of employees in the X company . First of all there is a noticeable decrease in positive attitude with regard to aspects such as: job satisfaction, expectations arising from the work undertaken in the X company, or images of an ideal for jobs offered by the X company . No significant intervention in area of HRM in the near future by the company may aggravate the unfavourable trends . There is a huge and striking collapse between 2008 and 2010 in a sense of satisfaction of employees in X . The ratio of 42% of these workers who imagine the ideal job as job in X -is rather very poor indicator . Without this increase in such a driving factor, there is no possibility to intensify the level of loyalty . Similar trends are shaped while determining the level of sense of belonging . The last two years diagnosed in the employee opinion survey shows negative trends in the behaviours and attitudes as loyal employees . As example, it may be seen a significant drop (over 10%) of the number of employees who are proud of the work in the X company, or those who are recommending a with in the X company to other people . Other detailed distributions of the results of presented research questions in the analysed areas confirm the downturn in the level of positive feelings and relationships in the area of employee satisfaction and motivation to work . Assessment of the impact of environmental factors on the level of job satisfaction and commitment also shows a downward trend in 2010 against the 2008 survey . The only factor not showing a downward trend is the understanding by employees of their daily, on-going tasks in the workplace (76%) . But on the other hand, we must admit that it is a very slight change . Closer interpretations are obtained in results of the ESS area based on the job content and work development . There is no surprise that the year 2010 brought a slight deterioration of the results . This is probably a consequence of dependence between the evaluation of the work environment (described in Table 7) and the impact on this appraisal in such areas as opportunities to raise the competence, making training projects, or work challenges . On the other hand it must be recognized that the absolute levels of the achieved results in the ESS are quite high (most fall between 60 and 80 points) . The following table describes the subjective feeling of X's employees in relation to the factors leading to satisfaction . In other words, we can say that this is an attempt of evaluation of the effectiveness offered by non-material incentives of motivation . Employees are the most satisfied with the relation to colleagues, and the same trend occurred in the research two years ago . Interestingly, this is the only indicator that has been positively recognized in the current study in 2010 (an increase of almost 10 percentage points) . This may indicate a high level of correct relationships between employees . Both in 2008 and 2010, employees evaluated as the weakest, in the view of sense of satisfaction -the process of communication management from the organisation . This, in turn, may result from relatively hierarchical commercial organisational culture . Operating Divisions (shops) in the opinion of managers * are implementing "just selling" rule . So, what is the need to communicate it?

Conclusion and focus areas
At the end of the paper the main conclusion and focus areas resulting from the conducted surveys need to be indicated . Compared to 2008, Poland has shown a minor decrease in the share of answers (87% in the 2010 survey compared to 88 .8% in the 2008 survey) . The satisfaction level in Poland has decreased dramatically since 2008, while Poland again has the lowest satisfaction level in all European structure of X . It could be found out that Store Operation in Poland also scores much lower than in 2008 (significant), but the Head Office in Poland are showing results almost similar to 2008, in terms of satisfaction . In Poland, the distribution centre has increased the satisfaction level -even though the level is low, the increase is significant (very good) . The loyalty level in Poland is very poor . The level in the share of ambassadors has decreased since 2008 -this is also the case concerning the level of scouts (increasing -negative development) . In Poland the negative development concerns both managers and staff in general . According to above conclusions there are priorities which influence where to focus efforts .
The presented research pinpoints a priority list to improve, which has the strongest impact on future satisfaction and loyalty in the X firm . The list below indicates how to prioritize future CMT (Country Managers Team) efforts in order to improve employee behaviours and competence . The list is based on a statistical method analysing the relationship between all answers across X Poland to pinpoint what the drivers to increase the satisfaction level in the future are . Like in the 2008 survey, working environment was the area, with the lowest scores on in average compared to the other generic focus areas . In this analysis in Poland, there has been identified a very strong relationship between working environment and satisfaction . In the list specified -we can find the specific questions to improve in the future with the highest impact on Employee Satisfaction in Poland . Even though X Poland has improved some of the specific questions in the specified list, -X Poland has to improve those areas even more in the future -because the impact on satisfaction will be strong .
Job content & Development 4 . That all has key impact on level of satisfaction Focus areas to improve for Poland 2010: A) Work Environment I feel appreciated as an employee at X 1 .
I have experienced X provides enough support to the employees in peak 2 . periods X is working to create a good work environment 3 .
I think X is a good employer to work for 4 .
I have an interesting and stimulating job 5 .

B) Values
I find that X treats the employees fair considering the X values 1 .