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The Essential Guide to Employee
Engagement Surveys
Research shows that high employee engagement correlates strongly with positive performance outcomes. Unfortunately, many employees aren’t engaged at work or are even actively disengaged or ‘quiet quitting.” According to the latest Employee Engagement report, employees are feeling significantly less engaged and less satisfied with their organizations year-over-year.
Employee engagement surveys offer a powerful, accessible tool to boost employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity while effectively mitigating this burnout. Learn how in our guide below.
Contents
Tap into the Strength of Employee Engagement Surveys
Employee engagement surveys offer a vital window into the hearts and minds of your workforce. By asking the right questions, you can uncover valuable insights into employee satisfaction, morale, and productivity. These surveys can help identify areas for improvement, measure the impact of workplace initiatives, and ultimately create a more engaged workforce and positive culture.
Take for instance, Metalworking Solutions, a manufacturing organization located in Chattanooga, TN. They collected actionable data from their people for an initial baseline measurement to guide future engagement efforts. After identifying two main categories to focus on over the following year, they saw a 10% increase in overall employee engagement. This increase brought their employee engagement level to 73%, thirteen points above the manufacturing industry benchmark.
Levels of Employee Engagement
At first glance, employee engagement seems simple. But when you dig a bit deeper, and really start to try to measure it, you realize that it is much more nuanced than you’d think. For every organization, there is a whole spectrum and different levels of employee engagement. They can ebb and flow and vary from day-to-day, but you’ll find that the majority fall into four main engagement groups that encompass the spectrum of (dis)engagement:
- Actively disengaged
- Consistently view their work and their company unfavorably
- Most likely to disparage and talk negatively about the company and its leaders
- Tend to blame the company and point fingers at others
- Will quit, or stay and contribute to a negative environment if no change occurs.
- Opportunity group
- Employees who are ambivalent or indifferent about their work and workplace
- Work just enough to get by and fly under the radar
- Do not actively contribute to the workplace
- The main reason for staying is contractual and to get paid.
- Engaged contributor
- Satisfied with their work and speak well of the company
- Meet expectations of the job but not likely to take risks or go above and beyond
- Tend to stay in their comfort zone
- Committed to their work
- Actively engaged
- Take personal satisfaction in what they do and how they do it
- Are likely to take personal risks and stretch themselves to do more and learn new things
- Are learning and growing in order to help the company develop
- Love their work
What Drives Engagement?
Although the drivers of engagement may seem obvious, they aren’t always what you’d expect. Many leaders believe that compensation is the biggest driver, and all it takes to increase engagement is to increase pay. This oftentimes isn’t true.
Looking at data over the last year of surveying employees across hundreds of organizations, we have identified the top five factors that are actually driving engagement:
- Growth & Development
- Having the opportunity to be promoted.
- Being provided with professional growth opportunities.
- Having someone who encourages their professional development.
- Company Communication
- Cite sufficient communication from leadership
- Feel informed about matters that affect them
- Say leadership communicate a clear vision for the future
- Employee Voice
- Feel encouraged to share opinions and feedback.
- Feel their ideas and suggestions are considered.
- Well-being
- Feel they have resources and support to manage stress
- Feel supported in maintaining a work-life balance
- Feel there is sufficient staff to handle the workload
- Feeling Valued
- Say they feel valued at work
- Feel leadership values employees
At Nussbaum Transportation, one of the leading truckload carriers in the U.S., have consistently focused on giving their workforce a voice by gathering feedback through Employee Engagement Surveys. Engagement levels have consistently increased over the past five years. They have seen a 10-percentage point increase since 2020. This year their engagement level hit 81%, an all-time high for the organization.
How to Measure Employee Engagement
To effectively measure employee engagement at every level, you need the right tools. The best approaches provide data that helps you understand your employees’ sentiments, motivations, and challenges. Each tool is different, giving a varying view into your employees minds. Used together, they serve as a regular series of touchpoints over the course of the employee lifecycle, providing you with continuous feedback. Consider these approaches to employee engagement surveys and determine which is best for your organization at this point in time.
- Employee Engagement Surveys: These are the cornerstone of engagement measurement. They offer insights into job satisfaction, alignment with company values, managerial support, work-life balance, and growth opportunities.
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): A simple yet powerful metric that measures employee loyalty and advocacy.
- Pulse Surveys: Frequent, short surveys to track employee sentiment in real-time.
- Stay Interviews: Proactive conversations with employees to identify potential flight risks and understand what keeps them with the organization.
- People Analytics: Leveraging data on absenteeism, turnover, and productivity to uncover engagement trends.
Crafting Effective Employee Engagement Survey Questions
There are multiple levels of employee engagement and while generic questions might provide a surface-level understanding of your workforce, they won’t equip you with the actionable insights needed to make meaningful changes. Let’s explore how four simple best practices can elevate your survey and empower you to gather data that drives positive action.
1. Focus on Actionable Insights.
Avoid generic questions that yield fluffy responses. Instead, tailor questions to uncover actionable data. For instance, instead of “Are you happy with your work?,” ask “What aspect of your role could be improved to enhance your satisfaction?”
2. Strike a Balance.
Maintain equilibrium between open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions like “What would make you feel more engaged?” provide rich qualitative data, while closed-ended questions with multiple-choice options allow for easy quantification.
3. Clarity is Key.
Use clear, concise language that your entire workforce can understand. Avoid jargon or overly complex sentence structures. Offer your employee engagement surveys in multiple languages and via mobile platforms to increase accessibility.
4. Variety is the Spice of Life.
Finally, organizations utilize stay interviews to show employees that they care and want them to stay. While this isn’t the primary reason you would conduct a stay interview, it’s still highly relevant to this conversation. People want to know that their company and leaders care about them and value their input.
For a well rounded engagement survey, you will want to ask a variety of questions that hit on different categories within the employee experience. Below are sample questions that could be used:
Culture:
- Employees are treated fairly (regardless of their race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc.)
- My ideas and suggestions are given consideration
Job Satisfaction:
- I have enough freedom in making decisions to do my job effectively
- I have the resources and equipment I need to be successful at my job
Communication:
- The company’s communication tools are useful (i.e. newsletters, bulletin boards, emails, company website)
- Communication between departments is effective
Growth & Development:
- I am provided with opportunities to grow professionally
- Procedures for considering employees for job openings are fair
Compensation:
- I am paid fairly compared to others at the organization doing similar work with similar experience
- My compensation is competitive with similar organizations in the area
Let's simplify your employee engagement surveys
Utilizing Employee Engagement Survey Providers
Gone are the days of standardized, one-size-fits-all surveys that provide results after-the-fact.
Modern employee engagement survey software allows HR teams to design customized, interactive surveys tailored to specific goals and timelines — all with a suite of templates, languages and distribution methods. An intuitive user interface empowers employees to instantly provide detailed and meaningful feedback. Moreover, interactive dashboards provide instant access to data analytics for those asking the questions.
Implementing a digital employee engagement platform is a strategic decision for organizations seeking to enhance employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall workplace culture. However, selecting the right platform and effectively implementing it requires careful consideration and adherence to best practices. It starts with establishing your organization’s needs, evaluating integration with existing systems and ensuring data security and privacy.
Building an Engagement Survey Action Plan
When employers see employee surveys as opportunities to create real change at an organizational level and commit to develop and execute action plans, the results can be astounding. After all, top performing employees are one of your greatest assets. It only makes sense that their thoughts, ideas and even frustrations be taken seriously.
On the other hand, when employers choose to sit on survey results rather than take any action that promotes real change, the employee engagement surveys can have the reverse effect. A recent survey of more than 3,000 HR professionals revealed that only 22 percent saw a visible improvement in employee engagement after conducting workplace surveys. The problem for these companies wasn’t that they weren’t collecting valuable data, it was what they did, or more importantly what they didn’t do, with this data.
Avoid this risk by tasking managers to help with the development and execution of a well-defined action plan that ensures the company takes realistic and actionable steps to improve productivity, strengthen workplace morale, build teamwork, and more.
Choosing From Top Employee Engagement Survey Vendors
A skilled vendor offers more than just a survey platform; they provide expertise in crafting effective questions, analyzing complex data, and generating insightful reports. To start, identify your goals and budget. Then, create a list of potential vendors based on your organization’s size, industry, and specific needs. Request demos or trials to evaluate the platforms firsthand. Consider factors such as cost, features, ease of use, customer support, and data security.
You know that building a culture of engaged employees is a must. That’s because engaged employees are happier, more productive, and less likely to leave for greener pastures. But how do you actually measure employee engagement, especially as it evolves over time? People Element’s industry-leading employee engagement surveys can help you effectively gauge your team’s morale and identify key areas for actionable improvement. Request a demo to see the surveys in-action and the impact they can make for your organization.
