It’s not the easiest task to ensure good employee engagement across a large workforce spanning many different locations and working environments. Your staff will value different things, face different challenges and require varying amounts of information and communication. How do you ensure you’re giving everyone the support, tools, rewards and info that are going to make them happy and loyal employees for ever more?
An employee engagement survey! But what is it?
Not to be confused with an employee satisfaction survey which solely measures happiness within a company, an employee engagement survey captures your workforce’s commitment and drive, their views on rewards and facilities, as well as happiness.
Why is it important?
We’ve given you a wealth of ideas on how to make your workforce – office-based and otherwise – more engaged but it’s not possible to do all of them. You need to be selective and focus on the areas that’ll have the biggest impact. And the only way you’ll know where and who you need to focus on is by conducting an employee engagement survey.
This will help you assess how big a problem you have and then by repeating it regularly, you’ll be able to see if your efforts are making a difference.
What will it tell you?
Done properly, an employee engagement survey can be INVALUABLE. As well as learning how good or bad the company-wide employee engagement currently is, you can also identify who is most disengaged and therefore detect whether it’s a location or department issue.
You can also ask employees what they value most at work in order to define ‘quick wins’ to boost employee engagement and satisfaction.
By running the first survey as an ‘audit’, you can then build a plan and put in place a programme to get your employee engagement back on track.
You then monitor progress regularly by repeating the employee engagement survey every six months or so.
How do you run the survey?
As with the appraisal process, paper-based systems are OUT. They’re ineffective for capturing information and analysing it quickly and it makes it harder to track completions.
A digital-based system will ensure a quick and effective collection of views plus it will ensure people can answer the survey anonymously which means you’ll get a more honest point of view. These systems don’t need to cost an arm and a leg either.
How do you get people to complete the survey?
Your staff are busy enough and now you’re asking them to do MORE work? Why not offer an incentive such as free lunch or say that each survey response will be entered into a competition to win a free meal for two?
It also helps to keep the survey short to avoid drop-offs. To make it as easy as possible to answer, structure the questions so that your staff are required to rate how much they agree with a statement from strongly agree to strongly disagree rather than asking an open-ended question. True or false questions don’t work either because the answer is rarely black and white.
What do you ask?
Based on our recommendation above to provide statements which people must record whether they strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree or strongly disagree, we suggest the following are worthwhile to test workforce’s commitment and drive, their views on rewards and facilities, as well as happiness.
To test satisfaction:
- I am happy at work
- I would refer someone to work here
- I have a satisfactory work-life balance
- I feel valued at work
- I have a friend at work
To test commitment:
- I have no plans to leave the company
- I am not looking at roles elsewhere
- I respect the company’s leadership decisions
- I feel that if I presented my point of view it would be taken seriously
- I am comfortable giving feedback to my line manager
- It gives me pleasure to see my company perform well
To test ambition, focus and drive:
- I have a clear understanding of my role and what is expected of me
- I feel I am provided with the tools and support I need to do my job
- I feel I am satisfactorily rewarded for my input at work
- I feel I play an important and worthwhile role within this company
- I am satisfied with the level of training I receive at the company
To assess views on rewards and recognition, as well as communication:
- I feel I am provided with all the information I need in order to do my job well
- I am content with the information given to me about the company’s performance
- I frequently receive recognition from my manager
- I have a clear understanding of my career path and opportunities for promotion within the company
How do I start?
The first step is to find a system that can run across the devices every one of your employees uses. If some don’t have access to a computer, then using a system that requires intranet access won’t work. StaffCircle is an app-based communications, performance management and employee engagement system that is helping hundreds of companies get the best from their staff. What are you waiting for? Schedule a free demo today.
