Many businesses today use employee engagement survey questions to assess how people feel about the work environment. Employers commonly ask about benefits packages, company culture and leadership or management practices. The answers provided may help them understand what motivates employees to perform their best.
Despite this benefit, not all businesses use survey questions for employee engagement to their full advantage. Some fall into the trap of not doing anything with the information they collect. Only by acting on the feedback can employers potentially enhance productivity and improve their bottom line.
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Why measure employee engagement?
Organizations that measure employee sentiment have an opportunity to promptly address any issues uncovered in the survey data to keep workers engaged. Doing so potentially gives employers a competitive edge because engaged employees may be more likely to:
- Have positive interactions with clients, potentially increasing revenue and growth
- Outperform the average employee in all areas of performance
- Feel more connected to their employer and promote their brand
What can a survey on employee engagement measure?
Employee engagement can be difficult to track. Employers may find success by focusing their measurements on these topics:
- Overall job satisfaction
- Communication effectiveness
- Motivational tools
- Management effectiveness
- Employee loyalty
Job satisfaction
By comparing and contrasting levels of employee satisfaction across different demographics, such as work location or years of tenure, employers may be able to pinpoint best practices and opportunities for continuous improvement.
Communication effectiveness
Team member engagement surveys can assess how valuable employees find the information they receive from the organization, senior leadership and their managers.
Motivational tools
Asking employees to rank various aspects of their work experience by importance can shed a light on what motivates them.
Leadership effectiveness
Engagement surveys can inform employers if their leadership and management style is a good fit with their employees and industry.
Loyalty
If employees say they would not recommend the company as a great place to work, the business could be at risk for turnover in the near future.
Why the question scale matters in an engagement survey
Asking employee survey questions that seek ratings of "importance" and "experience" on a scale of one to 10 gives employers comparable data they can use to identify opportunities for improving engagement. Here is an example:
| X | How important is X? | How are we doing? | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meaningful work | 7 | 4 | -3 |
| Flexible scheduling | 6 | 3 | -3 |
| Learning opportunities | 4 | 6 | +2 |
| Personalized benefits | 8 | 8 | 0 |
Based on these results, the employer can focus on creating more meaningful work opportunities and flexible scheduling arrangements to improve the employee experience.
How to get the most out of employee engagement surveys
Engagement surveys have tremendous potential to improve team dynamics and make an organization stronger. They can also potentially create problems if executed poorly. To help ensure engagement surveys are successful, employers should carefully design the questions, act on the feedback received, be cautious of creating more work for employees and avoid arbitrary participation metrics.
Respond to employee feedback
Senior leaders can debate for months about which engagement survey results to share with managers and their team members. Some never even thank employees for their participation. This lack of response may cause future participation rates to drop.
A possible solution is to commit to changes before the engagement surveys are administered. For example, HR administrators can choose one or two benchmark questions from the survey and get preapproval from executives for corrective action, depending on the results.
Don’t create pointless work for employees
Committees, meetings and projects may all result from engagement survey feedback. If this activity doesn’t lead to anything fruitful, employees may start to associate engagement surveys with pointless, additional work. Employers should be mindful of their people’s time and promote and celebrate positive survey outcomes.
Avoid arbitrary participation rates
Focusing on an arbitrary participation number can distort the quality of the survey sample. If managers force their teams to complete the survey, employees may answer every question with an untruthful "agree.” Those who are already disengaged might also give untrue responses or focus on generic complaints that fail to address root causes.
Types of employee surveys
Employee engagement can change by the month, week or even day. Consequently, many employers have abandoned annual engagement measurements in favor of more frequent surveys. Two common examples are the engagement pulse and the check-in.
Engagement pulse
Pulse surveys measure engagement at the team level rather than the organizational level. The employee engagement questions are usually short, and the responses are anonymized and delivered straight to the team leader for speedy action. Pulse surveys can be deployed quarterly or as often as needed.
Check-ins
Check-ins are quick, weekly surveys that focus on an employee’s current work and where they feel weakest or strongest. The results can be sent to managers to guide one-on-one conversations and take the guesswork out of how things are going.
The best employee engagement survey questions
ADP’s talent activation platform, Standout® Powered by ADP®, uses eight questions that best predict employee retention and performance. The questions were chosen based on decades of quantitative and qualitative research from multiple organizations and industries. These studies found that responses to the eight questions were most useful to team leaders looking to positively change the workplace environment.
StandOut® powered by ADP®
Help your leaders engage with their teams in dynamic, meaningful ways.
Learn MoreEmployee engagement survey best practices
Employee engagement surveys are important, but they won’t have much impact if they’re not part of a much larger initiative. Here are some tips to avoid this pitfall:
1. Don’t treat the survey as the solution
Surveys are the first step in understanding employee perceptions and improving engagement. They can help answer some questions but might raise others. Employers may need to gather more information about what is contributing to problems before taking corrective action.
2. Get leaders committed
Senior leaders should be actively involved in the process of assessing and improving employee engagement. If they don’t participate or care, that attitude could cascade throughout each level of the organization. Employees subsequently lose trust in the survey having any impact.
3. Shorten the survey process
Employees providing feedback about how work is going for them and what could be improved may expect results quickly. If an organization’s response is delayed, the workforce might forget about the survey or find it no longer has relevance. The faster employers can act on feedback, the more meaningful surveys become.
4. Create a strategic plan
Strategic plans guide an organization’s engagement efforts. Surveys may be part of these plans, but they should also include communication tactics, employee appreciation, workforce development and benefits strategies.
Frequently asked questions about employee engagement surveys
What is employee engagement?
Engagement is a positive state of mind characterized by the following:
- Investing all of oneself into work with high levels of conscientiousness, persistence, energy and mental toughness
- Being strongly connected to one’s work while experiencing a sense of significance, pride, enthusiasm and challenge
- Immersing deeply in one’s work, such that time passes quickly and disconnecting from work becomes difficult
What to do with employee engagement survey results?
Engagement surveys help employers understand how employees feel about their experiences at work, but that information alone may not be enough to improve engagement. Employers should turn the insights into actionable strategies customized to their workforce. For example, if the data shows that employees are lacking motivation, employers may need to help them better understand what they’re working toward or recognize them for their contributions.
What makes a good engagement survey question?
Effective employee engagement survey questions typically ask employees how motivated they feel by their work and how likely they would be to seek employment elsewhere. The best questions of this nature are backed by years of quantitative and qualitative research across different industries.
This article is intended to be used as a starting point in analyzing staff engagement survey questions and is not a comprehensive resource of requirements. It offers practical information concerning the subject matter and is provided with the understanding that ADP is not rendering legal or tax advice or other professional services.
