Employee Research

1. Conducting employee research: reasons and benefits

Introduction; State of the nation; Prioritizing management action; Managing response to change; Culture mapping; Work/life balance, harassment and stress; Benchmarking ; Key performance indicators; Balancing top-down communications; Widening the ideas pool; Internal communications audits ; External communications ; Successful recruitment and retention; Customer and business alignment; Business models and quality systems; Conclusions

2. Employees and customer satisfaction

Introduction; Unhappy employees and unhappy customers; Unhappy employees and happy customers; Happy employees and unhappy customers; Happy employees and happy customers; Loyalty and commitment; Employee engagement; Employee-customer profit chain; Customer relationships; Employees as 'real' customers; Internal 'quasi' customers; Organizational citizenship behaviour; Employees in the wider world; Conclusions

3. Employees, shareholders and capital

Introduction; Happy employees and happy shareholders; Complete convergence; Works councils; Encouraging employees to become shareholders; Other stakeholders; Intellectual capital; Human capital; Conclusions

4. Employee research and the communications context

Introduction; Representatives; Direct communications; Knowledge management; The communications mix; Indirect communications; Employee research; Conclusions

5. Good practice in setting up a survey

Introduction; Prerequisites; Writing a research brief; Research objectives; The advantages of using an external supplier; Next steps in conducting a quantitative study; Quantitative studies generally; Conclusions

6. Internet and e-mail surveys

Introduction; What constitutes internet research; E-mail, an intranet or the internet?; Advantages of web-based surveys; Issues for consideration; MRS internet research guidelines; Conclusion

7. Qualitative research

Reasons for and benefits of conducting employee research; Employee and customer satisfaction; Employees, shareholders and capital; Employee research and the communications context; Setting up a survey; Internet and e-mail surveys; Qualitative research; The advent of employee insight; Information and consultation regulations.

Goudge, Peter

Peter Goudge is a founder member and former chairman of the MRS Employee Research Group. The author of the MRS Best Practice Guidelines for Employee Research, he was also session chairman of the first MRS Conference session devoted to employee research.

Prior to establishing his own business Peter was a board director in one of the WPP group of companies and previously spent lengthy periods in both HR and market research functions during his career in the services sector.