An employee satisfaction survey is a research regarding various aspects of enjoyment related to employees’ performance and work conditions. It received great attention and importance during the last few decades.

One of the best question types to use in the job satisfaction survey is the scale question. Scales can rate employees’ opinions according to various grades that may adequately show their satisfaction.

Let’s dive into two different surveys and scales to know which one is a better fit for you.

  1. What Is a Job Diagnostic Survey?

There are several types of job satisfaction surveys that have become extremely popular. We will examine the Jobs Diagnostic Survey and the Gallup Workplace Audit. A Job Diagnostic Survey is applied when there is a need to measure overall job satisfaction.

This type of survey is aimed to analyze nearly all aspects of employee performance, including both personal and external factors. The key survey areas include (but are not limited to) responsibility for decision-making, skills, and tasks correlation, visibility of efforts, the importance of work, feedback from managers, complex skills, working freedom, and many others. This survey takes less than 30 minutes to complete and contains a couple of dozens of indicators. If you struggle for excellence and want to know how to improve the satisfaction of your employees first-hand, you have to try this type of survey for sure.

Within different interpretations of the Job Diagnostic Survey, researchers can apply 3, 5, or 7-point scales. While the most simple scale includes “agree, hesitate, disagree” or “satisfied, okay, dissatisfied” options, other scales may include extra options to reveal employees’ sentiments more clearly. This type of survey produces mostly quantitative data that is quite understandable and suitable for statistical analysis.

2. Exploring The Gallup Workplace Audit

The Gallup Workplace Audit is aimed to examine everything related to the workplace, including the measurement of job satisfaction. It uses an overwhelming psychometric approach to obtain information about working conditions, and whether an employee feels good or bad about her/his work.

The survey contains twelve questions (Q12) that measure employee engagement. These questions are related to employees’ tasks, work materials and equipment, recognition of work, supervisors’ attention, encouragement, opinions’ appreciation, friends at work, and so on. Be sure that your employees will appreciate your endeavor to hear their voices and make their life at work more comfortable and confident. 

A typical scale for this survey contains 5 points that can measure the sentiments and feelings of employees regarding their work environment, job conditions, and workplace. The scale ranges sentiments from “extreme disagreement” to “extreme agreement”, however for the first question about job satisfaction possible answer options range from “extremely dissatisfied” to “extremely satisfied”.