Where your next resignations are coming from
An exit survey tells you why people left. By then, they have gone.
Exit data is valuable, but it arrives late. Every answer comes from someone you have already lost, along with their training and the customers who knew them. The people most useful to hear from are the ones who haven't decided yet.
They are also the hardest to hear from. People don't tell their manager that the roster is wearing them down, or that they have stopped trusting the person they report to. Asking early is cheaper than recruiting again, and the answers often point to how people are being managed.
What staff do, and what you get
A short online survey for your people, and an organisation-wide picture of how they see the job.
The questions cover what shapes how people feel about coming to work: the workplace itself, whether they enjoy the work, reward and recognition, how they are managed and led, whether they understand where the business is going, the chance to develop and progress, and how much the business cares about its customers.
The answers come to us, not to the person they report to. That makes them more honest, because nobody is telling their boss to their face what isn't working. It also makes them comparable, because every team is asked the same thing and nothing is filtered on the way through.
You can use our questions as they stand, or have our psychologists build them around your organisation — your roles, your rostering, the way your teams are run.
Asked the same way in every team
Identical questions help you compare teams and locations and spot warning signs before people leave.
Because every team answers the same questions, you can compare them: this team against the organisation, this quarter against the last.
The survey is built to flag the areas that need urgent attention. That usually means one or two teams where something has started to go wrong — a new manager, a change to the roster, a workload that crept up over a busy season — while the rest look fine. Found early, that is a conversation with a manager. Found late, it is a string of resignations and another round of recruitment.
Most teams are large enough for their answers to be reported safely. Where a team is small enough that answers could identify people, it is reported within its department or the organisation instead.
Run periodically, the survey also shows whether a change worked.
An exit survey tells you why people left. A climate survey tells you where they are about to.
What happens once the answers are in
Our psychologists analyse the answers and tell you what to change — and who needs to change it.
We analyse the data statistically, identify where your organisation is doing well and where the concerns are, and recommend what to change to improve how people see their work and their workplace.
Those recommendations don't all go to the same place. Some belong in policy, because they apply everywhere. Some need support from HR or operations, because they affect several teams. And some are for one manager, about one team.
Results work best shared. Each manager can see their own team against the organisation average, which gives them something to act on. Publishing what people said, and what is being done about it, also tends to motivate the people who took the time to answer.
The evidence behind it
Research across thousands of business units, and surveys designed and analysed by psychologists.
The case for measuring this team by team is well established. A review of research covering 7,939 business units in 36 companies found that how satisfied and engaged the staff in a unit are is linked to that unit's customer satisfaction, productivity, profit and staff turnover — and that the links were large enough to matter in practice. (Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2002.)
The questions are designed by organisational psychologists, asked the same way in every team, and analysed statistically rather than summarised by hand. The climate survey sits within wider retention work that draws on exit and satisfaction surveys, interviews and focus groups.
Psych Press has developed and published psychometric instruments since 1995, in-house and in partnership with universities and international test publishers.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
Organisations that would rather find a turnover problem before it becomes turnover.
It suits
Organisations where staff turnover is a recurring cost, and leaders who would rather have one conversation with a manager now than replace a team later.
It isn't built for
Finding out why people have already left — our exit survey does that, and the two work best together. Nor a single unhappy employee, which needs a conversation, not a survey.
The same approach runs across our other surveys. The exit survey asks the people who leave, and the culture survey shows how far each team has drifted from the way your organisation means to work.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from an exit survey?
An exit survey asks the people who have left; a climate survey asks the people who are still there. Exit tells you what went wrong. Climate tells you what is going wrong now, while it can still be put right. They work best together.
Will people actually be honest?
More honest than they would be with their own manager. The answers go to us, not to the person they report to, and results are reported so that no one can be identified — small teams are grouped until there are enough answers to protect the people giving them.
Do managers see their own team's results?
Yes, against the organisation average, which gives them something to act on rather than a ranking to argue with. Where a team is small, its results are shown as part of its department rather than on their own.
What does it cost?
It depends on how many people take part, whether we write the questions or you use a standard set, and whether it runs once or periodically. We scope it with you. The figure worth setting it against is what it costs to replace a team you could have kept.
Start a conversation with us
Tell us about your situation and the support you are looking for. You can write as much as you need.
Or call us on +61 3 9670 0590.