US Firms Falling Short on Employee Research, Says ORC

Only around half (51%) of US companies formally ask their employees about their views of the workplace, according to findings from Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) - and almost half of these (46%) fail to use the response to change things.

More than 800 respondents were interviewed. Given that ORC is a major provider of employee research, cynics may take for granted the finding that employee attitudes to being surveyed by their bosses were generally very positive. More interesting are the breakdowns by company size and sector. The result was particularly strong in mid-sized companies, not necessarily the traditional homes of any kind of research – here 90% of respondents viewed the actions taken as positive. Financial services firms are the keenest on employee surveys, 75% saying they conduct them, while only 35% of non-profit organisations and 45% of manufacturing firms do so.

'Companies put so much emphasis on customer perception that employee opinions can be easily overlooked' comments Terry Reilly, Director of the firm's Employee Research practice. He adds: 'It's surprising but common for companies to conduct these studies and then not act on the research findings.'

Opinion Research, part of infoUSA, is online at www.opinionresearch.com .

The next edition of DRNO's 'People and Skills' supplement MRWho will focus on employee research – see www.mrweb.com/who for subscription details and the latest issue, published this week.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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