Employee engagement surveys are a powerful way of gathering open and honest feedback that can be used to measure key metrics. Once the information has been analysed, it can then help to drive positive change within your company culture and remain at the heart of your development strategy.
If you’re new to employee engagement surveys or your current model isn’t bringing the desired results, we’ve put together some key objectives and example questions that will enable you to achieve a strong return on investment when conducting employee engagement surveys and gathering employee feedback.
The purpose of an employee engagement survey is to collect employee input with the ultimate aim to improve employee engagement and have more motivated employees by providing constructive feedback to businesses. This should contribute to wider workplace culture and business success by improving employee engagement levels.
First of all, you need to decide what your employee engagement survey will cover. There are typically five themes included in an employee engagement survey, which were set out by psychologist Abraham Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs way back in 1943 when measuring employee engagement and employee satisfaction:
When creating and carrying out an employee engagement survey, all of the questions and topics included will fall into these five categories. For instance, communication is linked to belonginess whereas suitable training and coaching are part of self-actualisation. You don’t necessarily have to list your employee engagement survey questions in the order of these five categories – simply understanding and acknowledging them will help you to cover all bases.
Now that you’re familiar with the needs of your workers, it’s time to create and implement your employee engagement survey. Here’s the best approach to ensure you don’t miss any crucial steps:
To help you get your employee engagement survey up and running, here are a few example questions that you can include if you believe they are relevant.
This gives a strong indication of how your individual staff, teams and wider workforce feel in their roles. By encouraging them to give as much detail as possible, you can then determine the level of employee morale and work out if there are any underlying problems affecting mental health and wellbeing.
Your employees should be your greatest advocates, so if any say they wouldn’t recommend your business to a friend seeking a new role, there’s definitely something wrong. This is another question that requires a detailed answer, so make sure to follow it up with why/why not?
Creating roles that carry clear meaning is very important, especially when it comes to staff retention.
If your survey is filled out anonymously, your employees may feel more confident bringing up any issues that are impeding their team’s dynamic. In the event that any employees have problems with their team. members, you can follow up by reminding everyone how to resolve particular issues through the official channels.
A company can change significantly as it grows, which may result in employees no longer relating to its mission and goals. The key here is to see whether staff members feel that they’re still an active participant in maintaining organisational values.
Recognition of accomplishments is a major driver of employee engagement and lack of it can lead to a disconnection between the employee and their workplace. If anyone feels that their achievements aren’t being recognised, it’s time to make some changes.
This simple question can potentially uncover issues with health and safety, supervisor support, internal comms, physical layouts and so much more. Again, the more detail your employees provide, the better.
This is a question that can be very awkward to answer if asked face-to-face, whereas an anonymous survey gives the opportunity to be truly honest. Some team members may see themselves leaving for reasons that can be addressed, such as there currently not being enough opportunities for Continuous Professional Development.
This is an excellent way to uncover any gaps in your processes, such as machinery that would benefit workflow and productivity.
Open-ended questions invite useful insight. Directly addressing how engaged employees feel and what can be done to increase engagement can lead to some eye-opening suggestions.
This question works well towards the end of your employee engagement survey, as that way the individual has had time to think about how they feel about their role and what can be improved. By asking everyone what the most important change would be, you can weigh up their recommendations and prioritise effectively.
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