Why Conduct An Employee Engagement Survey?
There are numerous reasons to conduct an Employee Engagement Survey (EES), and, as such, they're an essential gauge by which a business can measure success and encourage growth in the right direction.
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With that in mind, the benefits of conducting an EES are clear for both employer and employee. It provides an internal and anonymous means of two-way communication, of assessing engagement and informing tangible objectives and future organization measures.
Moreover, a study conducted by survey provider Gallup revealed that only 32% of employees are actively engaged in their work at any one moment. The other 68% is split between those who are disengaged and actively disengaged.
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Eager to find out what an Employee Engagement Survey can do for your company? Without further ado, let's explore them in greater detail.
What Are Employee Engagement Surveys?
What is employment engagement? How is this measured? In layman's terms, an Employee Engagement Survey is a selection of survey questions devised to evaluate and interpret the general level of engagement shared amongst a company's staff.
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The engagement survey will then be used to identify the key drivers and differences between disengaged and engaged employees. The survey results can then be used as a means of improving engagement and, consequently, increasing productivity and profitability.
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In modern business, the "culture" of an organisation comes under great scrutiny.
Thus, if, as an employer, you're able to introduce and maintain a healthy workplace culture, your employees will be less likely to quit and procrastinate and, ultimately, more inclined towards productivity.
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Until recently, the majority of Employee Engagement Surveys were conducted via pen and paper. However, the entire process has now moved online.
Benefits Of Conducting An Employee Engagement Survey
Measure employee engagement
As stated above, the main reason for conducting an Engagement Survey is to assess employee engagement levels. It enables an employer to gain insight into the key, standard drivers of employee engagement and thus identify areas for improvement.
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Factors traditionally assessed include employee training, advancement opportunity, leadership and general working environment.
Give employees a say
This is perhaps the most vital purpose of an Employee Survey as giving your employees a voice reaps benefits for both you and your staff.
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The opportunity to provide anonymous feedback can help identify, with precision, areas where you can increase engagement, informing a plan of action and giving staff a direct line to their employers.
Receive honest employee feedback
As above, an Employee Survey gives your staff the opportunity to voice their concerns and arm you with a strategy of betterment moving forward.
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However, crucially, it also makes employees feel valued, and that is imperative for business success.
Learn about workplace conditions
Fundamentally, Employee Engagement Surveys inform an employer about their workplace conditions.
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Thus, it enables a management team to isolate the positives and negatives of their workplace environment and use that industry-specific data to act accordingly.
Create actionable changes if needed
Once you have collected and sorted your survey results, you'll start to recognise patterns within the data. Can the issues raised be rectified? Can the positives be utilised and developed?
Actionable insights gained from your survey can and should be exploited for optimal results.
Increase employee engagement
When collected and interpreted correctly, the honest feedback an EES can provide is invaluable.
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Improving employee engagement is the ultimate aim of your survey, and gaining a clear understanding of how your employees feel about the state of their work environment will allow you to achieve just that.
Work towards organizational growth
As stated above, the data from this survey will provide you with valuable, actionable data that you will be able to utilise and implement to drive organizational growth.
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For example, if a specific department has a particularly high engagement level, you can analyse why and use that data to improve engagement in other, less successful departments.
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This increases the overall efficiency of your business and encourages growth.
What Makes A Good Employee Survey?
Anonymous
Anonymity is a must if you're to conduct Employee Surveys of any value.
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Without the protection of anonymity, employees will hold back constructive criticism, complaint and concern so as not to tarnish their records.
Lots of opportunities for feedback
Providing good, leading questions is one thing, particularly in areas of concern.
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However, giving your staff the opportunity to voice their own concerns and suggestions via means of regular feedback opportunities will often yield valuable data that you might otherwise have missed.
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A successful business requires content, engaged employees. So listen to what they have to say.
Focusses on key areas
While giving employees regular sections for free-hand feedback is important when writing the EES questions, make sure your focus is on including key areas.
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This gives your survey a solid backbone and ensures you will receive feedback on all the areas that you'd like to investigate.
Additionally, it's important to learn about engagement within every aspect of your business, so keep that in mind while writing your survey. Here are some of our best employee engagement survey question ideas.
FAQs
How can I measure employee satisfaction?
The simplest way to measure employee satisfaction is to ask your staff to rate their satisfaction out of ten. Providing a numerical depiction of their happiness is a quick and easy way of gaining a broad assessment of your current culture.
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Similarly, inserting regular opportunities to provide feedback will allow them to expand on this score if they need. Our very own culture management software can help you manage the process from start to finish!
Will employee surveys help grow my business?
Yes. Conducting employee surveys at regular intervals will enable you to keep abreast of what your company is doing well and what your company could improve upon.
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This actionable data will, in turn, allow you to make improvements to your structure and ultimately yield greater productivity and growth.
Why is having engaged employees so important?
The more engaged an employee is, the higher their level of productivity.
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Quite simply, a more engaged employee is more profitable. As such, employee engagement can be the difference between a poor financial year and an excellent one. Here are some of our employee engagement ideas.