Employee surveys are an ideal way to understand the feelings of employees. They help to feel the pulse of the employees, which can determine the cause of several problems like high absenteeism, high turnover, organizational conflict, disputes, and high employee dissatisfaction. These, in turn, would help to determine the steps that have to be undertaken to reduce the incidence of such issues, as well as to improve employee morale and productivity.

Employee attitude surveys help to understand the organizations needs from the perspective of the employees. They analyze the employees opinions on several aspects including the companys mission, ideologies, and leadership, to more implicit issues like communication and interpersonal relations. An analysis of these opinions would be useful in facilitating organizational development and change, as well as determining the organizations needs. It would reveal the companys strengths and weaknesses, internal health, and external image. The impact of the companys policies and programs on the employees productivity, satisfaction and morale can also be determined. This would help the company to examine its future standing in the community.

Some of the common aspects covered in an employee attitude survey are: importance of creativity and innovation, employee satisfaction, attitude of senior management, interpersonal relations, functional expertise, ability to listen, customer service, communication, results orientation, analytical thinking, strategic leadership, teamwork adaptability, development, leadership, corporate culture, importance given to development and change, ethics, communication, recognition, commitment, employee empowerment and participation, accountability, work-life balance, job security, career and succession planning, and so on. It can also include the employees own experiences of working with the company that may have affected his/her morale, satisfaction, personal accomplishments, career goals, creativity, efficiency, and overall well-being.

This could be a result of the companys attitude towards teamwork, communication, feedback, decision making, training and development, flexibility provided to employees, facilities and work environment, cooperation, supervision, honesty, compensation policies, and several other things.

Many companies are conducting employee attitude surveys for long-term benefits. Generally, these are conducted in-house by HR departments. However, many companies today are outsourcing these surveys to external third-party agencies that would be able provide expert and unbiased analysis of the survey results. There are many such agencies that offer professional employee attitude survey services. They use special software tools for better and faster analysis of data. These can also be accessed online through the Internet. The questionnaires can also be filled by employees online, which is faster and more efficient. Some sample questionnaires can also be downloaded for free from some of these websites.