In order to keep employees engaged and avoid burnout, you need to know just how close they are to burning out. You need to understand the current levels of engagement throughout your organization. That is where employee engagement surveys come into play.
What Is an Employee Engagement Survey?
Employee engagement surveys have a different focus than other types of employee surveys.
Employee opinion and satisfaction surveys measure workers' views, attitudes, and perceptions of their organization, and an employee culture survey measures employees' points of view to assess whether they align with the organization or its departments.
An employee engagement survey measures employees' commitment, motivation, sense of purpose, and passion for their work and the organization. Employers should understand the definition of employee engagement in order to better understand these types of surveys.
Typically these surveys are created and administered by HR and management, which is why the role of HR and management in employee engagement is crucial.
How to Create an Employee Engagement Survey
When developing employee engagement surveys, organizations should take the following into consideration:
- Include questions that could be asked every year or more frequently. This will provide a baseline for the management of employee engagement.
- Keep language-neutral or positive. For example, ask, "Is our line-to-staff ratio correct for a company our size?" instead of "Are there too many staff for a company our size?" Avoid negatively worded items.
- Focus on behaviors. Good questions probe supervisors' and employees' everyday behaviors and relate those behaviors to customer service whenever possible.
- Beware of loaded and uninformative questions. For example, questions such as "Do you look forward to going to work on Mondays?" elicit a "no" response easily, even from engaged workers.
- Keep the survey length reasonable. Overly long surveys reduce participation rates and may result in skewed responses because participants check answers just to finish the survey as quickly as possible.
- If you work with a vendor that comes to you with a "standard" list of questions, consider tailoring questions to reflect your organizational needs.
- Consider what you're saying about the organization's values in issuing the questionnaire. Question selection is critical because it tells employees what the organization cares enough to ask about.
- Ask for a few written comments. Some organizations include open-ended questions, where employees can write comments at the end of surveys, to identify themes they might not have covered in the survey and might want to address in the future.
- Consider doing more than one type of survey, each with different questions, frequencies, and audiences. For example, "pulse" surveys are brief, more frequent surveys that address specific issues or are given to specific segments of the workforce, and they can take place between annual surveys. Or conduct different surveys for company leaders and employees, or in different business units or specific countries.
Employee Engagement Survey Questions
Below are some examples of potential questions to include in your employee engagement survey:
- How satisfied are you with your average workday?
- Do you look forward to coming to work most days?
- Do you feel like you belong at this company?
- Do you plan to work here one year from now?
- Do you feel there are opportunities for advancement here?
- Are you proud to work for this company?
- Would you recommend this company to others?
- Do you feel you are compensated appropriately for your job duties?
- Do you feel like you are collaborating effectively with your coworkers?
- Do managers treat employees fairly?
- Do you have the tools you need to complete your job?
- Would you be interested in another position at this company?
- Do you feel like your contributions are valued at work?
- Do you worry about losing your job?
- Do you feel like you have room for growth in your role?
- Do you feel safe at work?
- Do you receive recognition for your professional achievements?
- How familiar are you with the company’s values?
- What barriers to engagement have you encountered at this company?
- What do you enjoy most about working here?
How to Use an Employee Engagement Survey
After an employee engagement survey has been administered, survey data should be reviewed in aggregate and broken down for each business unit to allow individual managers to make changes that will truly affect engagement levels. Some experts also advocate having line managers communicate survey results to their own employees and create action plans to respond to survey recommendations.
In addition, the organization may require that all employees have engagement objectives in their performance reviews so that engagement goals are developed both from the top down and from the bottom up.
The bottom line is employee engagement surveys are meant to improve employee engagement.
Best-Practices
Common missteps that organizations make with engagement surveys are failing to gain senior management commitment to act on survey results and failing to use focus groups to delve into the root of negative scores or comments.
To avoid those mistakes, organizations should:
- Have management communicate to employees that the survey is an organizational, not a public relations, initiative.
- Consider creating a survey committee to instill broad buy-in.
- Create feedback or focus groups to determine the level of significance of specific items mentioned in the survey.
- Involve the entire management team in the action-planning process to ensure that changes are made based on employee feedback.
- Group open-ended survey comments by theme and categorize them at the workgroup level to ensure the confidentiality of survey feedback.
Get Help with Employee Engagement Surveys
Businesses that are struggling with employee engagement and retaining employees may want to reach out to an HR Company for help. Many HR solutions are equipped with employee and HR survey tools that can be leveraged to easily conduct engagement surveys.
Companies can learn more about employee engagement and retention by checking out this guide, or contact us today to learn more about how we are already helping countless businesses.
