Winning at employee engagement takes a holistic approach that involves many consistent and proactive initiatives on the part of the organisation seeking to improve and measure this key aspect of the business operations. Communication is at the heart of any solid employee engagement strategy, including communication that is two-way in nature.
Without drilling down on what your employees think (and feel), you as the business decision-maker will only be acting on hunches and assumptions. Decision-making not based on concrete data, as we all know, can lead one down the wrong path and have a serious impact on the success of the business. So, one of the integral components of the employee engagement strategy is the survey.
Employee engagement surveys provide a vehicle for employees to speak candidly and rate the state of engagement in the business. The benefit is this information can help the business determine what their baseline is, where they are succeeding as well as where improvement is needed.
Another significant benefit of the employee engagement survey effort is that it can if done consistently and on an ongoing basis, determine when things have changed, identifying small dips in engagement before they snowball into larger problems.
As a result of increased employee engagement, businesses enjoy increased productivity, higher levels of innovation and improved employee retention rates.
Now that we understand why employee engagement surveys matter, let us dive into how to craft one that works… starting with the questions!
9 Tips For Crafting Employee Engagement Survey Questions That Drive Success:
- Meet employees where they are. Pen and paper may not be the best way to get your off-site employees to participate in your employee engagement survey. By using HR software platforms that can push employee engagement surveys out to employees anywhere on the globe (via mobile app or web-based tools), you’ll reach the entire team and gain statistically valid insights into your business’s employee engagement. Not to mention that the tech will make viewing and arranging the results much more efficient.
- Keep it confidential. Allow your employees to answer the employee engagement survey questions free from fear of a negative impact on their jobs. Without the ability to be confidential, you’ll run the risk of obtaining results that are not authentic. Your goal is not to single out employees that tell the truth or state an unpopular opinion, but rather to look for trends that indicate a pervasive problem is brewing within your team and having an impact on employee engagement.
- One and done is not good enough. One common pitfall of the employee engagement survey strategy is ending it at one. A consistent initiative is required to truly measure employee engagement via surveys. Through this consistency, your organisation will be able to measure the validity of the answers to your employee engagement survey questions over time, rather than a one-off snapshot. Most companies perform employee engagement surveys at a quarterly or annual frequency, based on their unique makeup.
- Be prepared to pivot. Now that you’ve crafted your perfect list of employee engagement survey questions, what’s next? Often, businesses receive the feedback from their employees but are not willing (or able) to pivot toward addressing the issues that are flagged. It seems that it might go without saying, but just in case, if your employee engagement survey results identify an issue that is negatively impacting employee engagement, be sure to address it.
- Get input on your questions. You’ve made plans to implement an organisation-wide employee engagement survey initiative. That’s an excellent start. Next up creating a list of questions that ask the right questions and provide answers that are quantifiable and measure the correct attributes. One important element of this process will be incorporating a team of influencers to help you determine what you want to measure and what questions you want to know the answers to.
- Follow best practices. Follow general best practices for your employee engagement survey questions for improved results.
- Include questions that measure overall levels of employee engagement, engagement driver questions as well as open-ended questions so employees can provide unsolicited information.
- Limit your employee engagement survey questions to 35-50, but adjust this as it applies to your unique workforce.
- Group questions into theme categories that may look like the following list – leadership, values, safety, communication, teamwork, training or company benefits.
Gaining feedback from your workforce in the form of answers to employee engagement survey questions can be akin to having your ear to the ground. If done correctly and regularly, you’ll gain quantifiable and actionable data sets that can contribute to your employee engagement success. After you’ve created your list of employee engagement survey questions, check out the StaffCircle HR software platform that can take your survey goals to the next level.
StaffCircle is the powerful, yet easy-to-use HR software tool that supports your employee engagement initiative with:
- Simple tools to track employee sentiment – Employees can click happy or not happy emojis to report their level of happiness, quick and easy.
- Vehicles that allow you to gather actionable feedback – Create a culture where your employees know their voice matters.
- Refine and reinforce your company values – Regularly communicate the tenets of your company mission statement for better effectiveness.
- Discover where your strengths lie – Every team has a few influencers (both positive and negative). StaffCircle’s tech can help you identify them and maximize their potential.
- And so much more.
StaffCircle has mastered the art of making HR technology easy to use for maximum engagement but powerful enough to provide true insights into your business.
