A Human Resource survey is an important part of the functions of a human resource department. Just as all service providers need to know the level of satisfaction of their customers, the human resource department needs to know the level of satisfaction of its customers, namely, the employees in the various departments of the company. This is essential to ensure that the initiatives and the programmes of the HR department are in line with the requirements and the expectation of the employees of the company. It is also necessary to ensure that the activities of the human resource department are in line with the broader strategy of the organization.

The satisfaction survey should be composed of questions that are easy to answer and that are easy to interpret by people who analyze the survey forms later. Some of the types of questions that are part of a customer satisfaction survey are :-

Choose one or Choose all questions: These questions are based on definite and clearly defined categories. All significant options for the questions are included. Apart from the standard categories for the answer, an “other, please specify” choice ensures that answers other than the specified answers can be registered.

Drop Down Questions: This kind of questions help the respondent select from the number of choices. For instance, he could be asked to name the employee in the HR department he is dealing with.

Rating: Rating questions are used to rate the performance of the department in a particular area. Respondents can be asked to rate the quality of the work, the politeness of the personnel, the response to queries etc.

Open ended questions: These questions can be used to get information that cannot be categorized and which are non standard in nature, such as tips for improvement and complaints.

Ranking: Questions that use ranking ask the respondents to arrange a set of choices in a certain sequence. The respondent arranges the questions in a sequence. For instance, 10 choices can be given to be arranged with 1 as the most important and 10 as the least important. This kind of questioning is useful in understanding the priority of the choices. They do not reveal the difference in importance between two choices. There are many different kinds of ranking.

Fixed Sum Questions: This method of framing questioning uses a fixed sum and asks the respondents to arrange it among different choices.