Online Employee Survey: Platform to Understand Enterprise Agreement Issues

As one of the contractors working on one of the world’s largest natural gas projects and the largest single resource development in Australia’s history, our client required feedback from its workforce (an online employee survey) following the overwhelming rejection of a newly proposed enterprise agreement.

CiVS representatives met with the client to ensure the specific challenges facing this workforce were understood and addressed. Following consultation, CiVS developed an anonymous confidential online employee survey tailored to the client’s specific needs. The survey offered a simple platform to understand the important issues that had driven the agreement vote result.

Customised Employee Survey

The short survey combined several multiple choice and option ranking questions, and a free text response. The ability to use different question formats gave the client more options and control over how questions were presented to employees.

Given the size of the workforce and the optional nature of the survey, CiVS was engaged by the client to develop and manage a Survey Rewards Program to encourage employee participation. The Rewards Program included gift card rewards to the first 200 respondents plus a cash prize for a single, randomly selected survey participant, to be distributed by CiVS. This ensured that no single employee identity was revealed to the client.

An employee survey opening period of 11 days was supported by the electronic CiVS 24 Hour Support Line, to accommodate all shifts, in the rare instance employees required assistance. As a result of the sound communication strategy which included Email and SMS notifications to all employees and the successful Rewards Program, support requirements were minimal and an outstanding survey participation rate of 32% was achieved.

The client utilised the information obtained in the survey to make an informed amendment to their offer to their workforce in subsequent negotiations.