Elements Of An Effective Employee Engagement Survey

I can’t think of a time when employee feedback was more important. You must deal with it: employees have options, and so do you. Your job right now is to do everything you can to lure, motivate and retain top talent. So, a must is to learn about and improve the employee experience. If your aim is to construct a stronger workforce, gaining actionable insights is the name of the game.

Surveys are some of the best ways to get employee perspectives, but that annual questionnaire is insufficient. They need to be done more frequently. But what are some of the elements of an effective employee engagement survey? Let’s take a gander.

Just What Are Employee Engagement Surveys?

Let’s start there. These surveys gain employees’ views of their workplace and the work they do. They evaluate employees’ loyalty, drive, sense of purpose, and passion for their job as well as their employer.

Are Such Surveys Necessary?

Surveys that are well constructed and conducted can reveal tons of information about employee views that you can utilize to improve the employee experience. If management values the feedback – which it totally should, otherwise why get it – there likely will be improved retention, less absenteeism, heightened productivity, better customer service and a generally more contented workplace.

Sometimes, just knowing that you care is enough to give morale a boost. Also, surveys can lead to managers uncovering departmental issues that they can remedy – often quickly.

There’s one rub, however: if you’re going to take the time to put together and conduct surveys, you’d better act regarding the results. If your employees feel like you’re going through the motions, they’ll react accordingly.

What Should Be Included in Employee Engagement Surveys?

You can conduct surveys every day, all day, but if the questions aren’t well thought out, nobody benefits.

To gain more understanding of your workforce and produce positive business outcomes, you need to get into the nuances of the employee experience. We’re talking about employee engagement, team effectiveness, leadership, and organizational culture.

What you really should put in place is a “listening program” that mixes the right methods with content and agile technology. An effective employee engagement survey turns out integrative analytics and insight that’s ready for action. This means employee engagement as well as pulse surveys.

Just What Are Pulse Surveys?

They’re short, fast surveys of no more than 15 questions that are easy to answer. They’re conducted periodically — weekly, monthly, or quarterly, for example. They provide a snapshot view of employee satisfaction levels, work relationships, job position, and work culture. Such surveys usually focus on a specific subject or a handful of related topics. This contrasts with employee engagement surveys, which typically cover a broader range of topics.

The cool thing about pulse surveys is that they allow your staffers to express what they’re currently going through – not what they experienced three months ago. Pulse surveys foment immediate action or study, and because they’re conducted regularly, you have some means of ongoing comparison. 

These kinds of surveys are also looked upon favorably by employees. While the average employee engagement survey gets just a 30% to 40% response rate, pulse surveys garner a response rate of 85%.

Now that you know the elements of an effective employee engagement survey, you can get going to learn what your workforce thinks about the company and the job they’re performing.

If you want to recruit and retain employees – it’s never been more important — this is the info you need. Just keep in mind that misinterpreting results or failing to react to what you discover will likely come back to bite. If you need assistance with your surveys, we suggest contacting a consultant such as Mercer.