The generational changes and diversity of the workforce have changed dramatically in the past 20 years and will continue to change. So many kitchen and bath firm owners and managers are facing the same challenge I am: managing your business’ most important asset – your employees.

I’ve always been a big fan of employee performance evaluations. I also like the two-part evaluation where the supervisor evaluates the performance of the employee and the employee performs a self-evaluation. Then the evaluations are compared in an open sit-down with supervisor and employee.

A number of years ago, I was curious what my employees thought of their jobs, our business and me as a boss. With that thought in mind, I put together a “Quality of Work Life Survey” and asked all 35 of our employees to complete it (anonymously if they preferred). This takes a certain amount of intestinal fortitude on the boss’ part – because you may hear and learn some things that don’t feel good. I wanted to know how people felt. This exercise helped me improve areas that needed some attention and continue to do well in areas that were strong.

I hope by sharing this survey, other firms will choose to do the same as a means to help make their firms better places to work.

For the first 43 questions, use the following Frequency scale:
Percent (%) of time:
Almost Never 0% to 10%
Rarely 11% to 30%
Occasionally 31% to 50%
Frequently 51% to 70%
Very Frequently 71% to 90%
Almost Always 91% to 100%