Employee engagement survey questions
Can you confidently say that your team loves their job? Are they excited to turn up to work every day? Without a sudden onset of psychic skills, management do not have a full image of what their employees think about their jobs. This information matters!
The best solution to this is implementing regular feedback in the form of an employee engagement survey. With well-researched goals and carefully selected employee engagement survey questions, a survey is pivotal in making crucial decisions for an organization's growth and development.
We've got all the details on what makes a good employee engagement survey, and the type of questions you should be using today!
What is an employee engagement survey?
Employee engagement surveys are a tried and tested process of measuring the various factors that impact employees' engagement levels. Essentially, it is a way for businesses to track how likely an employee is to stay in their role and fully commit to it.
However, we believe it is a little more than just this. Collecting these invaluable insights is imperative, but the surveys are also an invaluable opportunity for the employee voice to be heard. The data that the surveys provide can then guide management in making organisational decisions that boost an employee's engagement level and boost the company overall.
What does an employee engagement survey measure?
On one hand, it is as simple as the name suggests - it measures just how engaged employees feel at work. However many people confuse employee engagement with employee happiness and satisfaction.
Being engaged is more than just being happy in your role, this is useful but not a complete indicator of engagement. Instead, engagement is a sense of the employees' commitment, motivation and passion for their work and the organization.
Unfiltered employee feedback is one of the most useful tools in developing a company; allowing managers to gather a clear understanding of the health of the team and how engaged employees feel, without relying on hearsay and guesswork.
Depending on the employee survey questions, the company can make a variety of actionable insights based on the data the survey provides. By measuring engagement through the different aspects of working, managers can build a picture of exactly what is good for the company and what isn't.
What are the features of a good engagement survey?
There is an undeniable art to creating a good employee engagement survey. It takes one part of data analysis and another part keeping employees engaged to actually complete it.
We can all imagine a dreaded annual employee engagement survey that looks like a tome with millions of vague and irrelevant questions, so here are our key features of an impactful survey.
Insightful Questions
To effectively utilise employee engagement surveys you need to make sure you're asking the right questions. Essentially, a good engagement survey must have questions that gather the type of data that can be transformed into action. It is one thing to make employees feel heard through a survey, but it is another to act upon this feedback regularly.
Collecting and working upon this feedback is a key driver of employee engagement levels, employees regularly report this as being a large aspect of feeling comfortable in a workplace. This is why we design questions with results in mind, looking for data that can be used to make real and impactful change.
Simple and engaging
Keeping survey questions simple and easy to comprehend will produce more accurate responses. This could be through basic language choices in the questions or using simple phrases that employees grade how far they agree/disagree on a point scale.
Also, simplicity means that employees are more likely to complete the survey. If your survey takes too long to complete, the response rate is likely to be lower than wanted. This usually means limiting your questions to up to 75 questions and it should only take between 20-30 minutes to complete. If using more open questions, you will want to do less (it shouldn't feel like a strenuous task for the employee).
Honesty
Invite employees to be forthright with their responses. Useful features such as anonymity throughout the survey experience is key for this. This allows the employees to feel confident in answering all the questions thoroughly and honestly, without any backlash.
A good employee engagement survey should provide management with candid information that they can use, not misplaced flattery.
Benefits of open-ended questions
Open-ended questions are crucial to unique, insightful responses that actually help the company. Instead of mindlessly filling out a survey, employees are invited to give personal and more honest responses.
To show just how useful they can be here are some example of open and closed questions for an engagement survey.
Do you like your job?
There are only three possible responses to this question - yes, no, maybe so. But, what can a company do with these responses? This only measures quantity and doesn't provide you with any nuance.
Closed questions like this do not offer any insight into why someone does or does not like their job, and companies cannot use the feedback to do anything productive. Instead, you're left with a difficult statistic and no information on how to fix it.
What do you like/dislike about your job?
This however offers much more generative responses; inviting the employees to comfortably discuss all the positives and negatives of their roles. From this, the organization can see exactly what they're doing correctly and what aspects they can improve upon.
So, you can see how using open-ended survey questions is essential to properly assess the employee experience at the organization. Rather than just guessing and imagining the reasons around disengagement, go straight to the root of it and offer the opportunity to elaborate.
Why it's important to monitor employee satisfaction and monitor how employees feel about the company
Employees are the engine driving a successful company. So what happens when employees feel like they're undervalued or struggle to care about their role? Without satisfactory levels of employee engagement, a company is at risk of stagnating and spending exorbitant amounts on hiring new staff.
There are endless benefits to focusing on employee engagement and satisfaction. It impacts both employee experience and the health of a company. For an organization, boosting employee engagement results in higher levels of staff retention and productivity in the workplace. These translate straight into saving in hiring costs and increasing profits. Furthermore, when an employee's motivation stems from actual care about the work they do and feeling like they contribute something, the work is far more impactful.
Also, it is important for management to give employees a voice and ample opportunity to share their concerns and suggestions. For a healthy work culture, there has to be a balance between managers and employees, so that every employee feels like their opinion is heard.
Using employee engagement surveys is a surefire way of boosting engagement levels - an organization that does not take surveys or act upon employee feedback score only 27% on the employee engagement index. With the right employee survey questions, management can effectively monitor engagement levels and take the necessary action to grow.
What are popular company employee engagement survey questions?
So what are the kind of questions you should be asking employees? The best employee engagement survey questions are the ones that directly help you gather the data you need to achieve your company goals. Here are a list of some popular and effective employee engagement survey questions.
Here are some examples of the best employee engagement survey questions;
Do you feel like management listens and acts upon feedback?
Nothing is less demoralising than feeling like your feedback is being ignored. Step one of engaging with employees is actually engaging with the feedback they give! When requesting regular feedback in a company, management then needs to make changes that reflect the overall employee opinion.
Asking this question is crucial to gauge how employees feel about management - are they actively listening and making changes? Do they have a genuine interest in hearing employees' perspectives? Asking this question addresses the importance of a strong team and proactive feedback culture.
Do you receive adequate feedback from management?
Behind every strong team, there is a respected and engaged manager. Studies show that management accounts for at least 70% of the variance within employee engagement scores across companies. It is a no-brainer then to focus engagement survey questions on this vastly important aspect of our work.
Similarly to the above question, employees want to feel seen and heard by management. Regular evaluation in the workplace is a cornerstone to a productive employee-management relationship. Engagement levels are boosted when an employee feels like their work is monitored and given fair constructive feedback and praise. Scoring low on this question can push a company towards further management training and more formalized employee appraisals.
Hypothetically, if you were to quit tomorrow, what would your reason be?
This an open-ended question that will provoke unique insights into your employees view of the role and what could be hindering employee engagement. It is provocative and directly asks the employee to say what the barriers to fulfilment are in this role.
Possible reasons can crop up to these types of questions: a lack of clear information or transparency, poor pay and benefits or feeling undervalued. For a company, these specific answers are the building blocks to that dream team of engaged employees, all committed to the companies success.
Do you believe you'll be able to reach your full potential here?
This is a very simple question that can show a lot about the company. Whether the employees see the company as somewhere they could The responses to this question can measure employee retention rates whilst also illustrating any weaknesses in career progression, work culture and opportunities.
If an employee does not believe they can see themselves thriving fully in their job role, then it is implied that at some point they will start looking elsewhere for a new job.
There are a variety of reasons why someone might not feel capable of reaching their potential, including a lack of support and opportunities, and bad work culture. Using these results the company can make meaningful changes.
Career development is listed as one of the highest drivers of engagement for employees across Australasia - employees are far more likely to feel engaged and happy in a role in which management support their development.
How would you describe the company culture?
Your employee engagement survey should address the company culture from the employees' point of view. Whilst management may feel that it's a comfortable, productive working environment, an anonymous engagement survey can provide some crucial recognition of the employees' experience. This draws light on uncomfortable working practices, relationships and possible tensions. The first step in overcoming such barriers to engagement is identifying them!
This question also has strong links to predicting employee retention rates. Companies that are seen to have an uncomfortable or toxic work culture have a higher turn over of employees which racks up huge hiring costs. It can also demonstrate what is going well for management - whether they have created a comfortable space for people to work in.
Would you recommend this company as a place to work?
Scoring low on this is a huge indicator to the management of how their team of employees view the organization and their daily experience. We think this survey question is extremely useful in painting an objective image of the organization.
If an employee would recommend someone else to work at their job, then it reveals positive engagement. It demonstrates that there is value and integrity in the work for the employee, and is likely to be fairly paid. These are all signs of a thriving healthy work environment and establishes a strong reputation in the industry.
On the other hand, how comfortable can an employee feel in their job if they are unwilling to recommend someone else to apply there? This is a damning statistic and it would be useful to go further into reasons as to why this is felt by employees. Integrity and value is important in an organization's image, having staff unwilling to recommend it speaks volumes about their own job satisfaction.
Are there ample learning and development opportunities in your role?
This is a similar question to our previous one about reaching full potential within the company, but focuses on the training and development aspect of it. This is a great question because of how important career goals are to most people - training and upskilling is at the core of reaching these goals!
Learning and development spans from onboarding training to regular training updates to upskilling courses to take the next step in a career. This question reveals whether employees are satisfied with the current ongoing training and if there is enough investment in developing staff.
Growth and development is essential for any person, especially within the workplace. Focusing on this in the survey can yield useful results that can shape how a company approaches their learning and development programmes; whether they need updates or more financial investment.
Would you describe the company as having an adequate level of communication?
Communication is a critical driver of employee engagement, promoting productivity, better team performance and overall wellbeing. An open culture of concise and frequent communication, whether it's feeling like you can ask colleagues for assistance or that you receive adequate information from management, is a hallmark of a thriving company.
Further specific questions could include whether information freely shared across departments and throughout the organization? For larger organizations, this is an often overlooked area of interactions but clearly can make a huge difference. Having clear channels of communication across different departments can solve so many trivial issues and help boost productivity.
In an even larger sense, communicating effectively can be whether employees believe that management explained the vision and mission of the organization properly. Without the right guidance and discussion, a company could be split with employees working towards differing perceived goals. This question can be adapted in many different ways to explore this important work aspect.
Do you feel motivated by your team members?
This is the perfect question to ask when trying to gauge the ease of teamwork within the company. Questions like this get to the root of how well the team works as a unit - do they feel like a team full of people with strong skills and passion, or do they feel burdened and demotivated by each other?
As a company ultimately aims for a high level of teamwork, with mutual motivation and freely sharing knowledge between colleagues, hearing what individual employees think about this is important! Self-motivation is necessary but management should be checking in to see if they are making the right kind of hiring decisions or need to do more workshops on teambuilding.
Do you feel fairly compensated in your role?
This can be a trickier question to work with but ultimately money does talk. Salary satisfaction is imperative for so many people, even the dream job can be demoralizing if not sufficiently paid. This means even with deep passion and commitment to a company, without a satisfactory paycheck an employee can be less productive and maybe even look for a new job.
By asking this, it generates a more open discussion about salaries with employees, thereby creating a positive work environment. If an overwhelmingly negative response to this question is recieved, management will know to consider communicating their financial plans to employees or find ways to bring salaries in line with expectations.
Do you feel the organization and management are transparent in their communications?
Transparency translates to success! When asking questions about transparency, we are talking about whether the employee believes the organization operates with openness at the heart of all interactions between employees and management. The responses from this question can illuminate weaknesses in how staff communicate and the culture within the company.
When an organization is considered transparent by its employees, they tend to be much more successful than its competitors. It is the secret ingredient to creating an environment in which employees feel comfortable and valued. This naturally leads to high engagement from staff and builds a solid reputation for the organization.
Verdict
Focusing on choosing the right employee engagement survey questions is the big step in creating actionable insights. Collect the right kind of data and reap the rewards of being able to effectively strategize your company.
The data that these surveys produce are used to create performance-based plans that develop the team's engagement levels, with the kind of results that can be measured and have a tangible impact. This is why every question matters. An effective survey is a powerful tool that so many managers have neglected to use over the years, but it is necessary for assessing and developing.
The bottom line is that employee engagement matters! A workforce full of dedicated employees will outperform competitors with lower levels of employee engagement by a whopping 147%. With a large percentage of employees reporting not feeling fully engaged in their roles, organizations are haemorrhaging money by not addressing their employees' needs and best interests.
Take the first step to success by focusing on overall engagement and identifying places to improve. Start inspiring employees to fall in love with their roles again!