Employee engagement surveys: Best practices for maximum impact

Employee engagement is critical to productivity and overall business success. If your employees are disengaged, you may lose them, and that’s never good for morale or the bottom line. Employee engagement surveys help you gauge how satisfied your staff is in their jobs and provide you with opportunities to course-correct when necessary. 

Today, we’ll closely examine employee engagement surveys, what they are, the benefits of doing them, how to structure your surveys, and best practices to maximize engagement so you can continue to improve and evolve your internal culture. 

What are employee engagement surveys? 

Simply put, an employee engagement survey measures how engaged, invested, and motivated your employees are. Survey questions typically cover topics related to the employee experience, overall happiness, and what, if anything, could make the work environment better.

Considering how we work today, with many employees working remotely or keeping asynchronous schedules, it’s not always easy to gauge sentiment. Of course, the proof is often in the output, but waiting until you notice the problem is not always the best strategy. When disengagement settles in, it’s often too late to do anything about it. 

Periodic surveys allow you to understand what’s happening with your employees, even when they’re not in the office. 

When employees are consistently invited to provide feedback, it lets them know that the company cares about their feelings. Over time, you’ll also see whether the engagement strategies you put in place are working and have access to vital metrics to ensure a strong, dedicated, healthy workplace culture.

Why are employee engagement surveys important?

Employee surveys can be anonymous or attributed. Allowing employees to respond anonymously invites complete honesty and often provides more reliable results. 

• Increased employee satisfaction and productivity. Establishing a feedback culture lets employees know you genuinely care about their feelings. When they feel valued, they are likelier to put in the extra effort to make their work shine. 
• Identify gaps and areas for improvement. Insights gained through your surveys reinforce employee satisfaction, but they also pinpoint potential issues or discontent brewing in the workforce. Acting on these findings is essential to show that you pay attention to survey data, evidence of which encourages employees to engage with more surveys because they’ll know their opinions matter.
• Enhanced employee-manager communication. A feedback culture invites open communication, leading to stronger, more trusting, collaborative, and productive working relationships. 
• Enables employee feedback. Employees won’t always speak up unless they’re asked. By giving them a platform, you tap into genuine sentiment and encourage engagement. 
• Improve business outcomes and growth. Feedback and open dialog fuels discussion, leading to collaboration, innovation, and bottom-line growth. 
• Enhanced employee engagement. Surveys engage employees, stimulate ideas, and connect them to the greater community within the company. Engaged employees are more productive, motivated, and innovative because they feel part of something greater than themselves alone. 

Companies with a highly engaged workforce are 21% more profitable than their disengaged counterparts. Engaged employees are likelier to stay in their jobs, be more productive, and recommend your company to potential employees. Your best employees may become your future executives, so nurturing that relationship should be among your top priorities.

What goes into an employee engagement survey?

Implementing a survey program requires careful consideration. The questions you ask matter almost as much as the format. Ideally, they shouldn’t be too lengthy, complicated, or frequent. Questions should be relevant to the role or department and offer the employee a chance to weigh in on points that matter as much to them as they do to you. 

Here are a few points to ponder before you get started.

Components of an effective employee engagement survey

Here are some key aspects of an effective employee engagement survey.

• Choose clear and relevant survey questions. Questions should be appropriate to the recipients. They don’t necessarily need to be specific to any one role or department—unless you’re sending the survey only to that department or team. 
• Segment your surveys to gain more detailed insights. For example, one segment may be limited to newly acquired employees, while another could be middle management. Though the questions may be the same, the responses could be vastly different. 
• Stress the survey’s confidentiality and anonymity. Let employees know their responses can’t be attributed to them. Anonymity encourages transparency and may encourage some to weigh in on issues they would not usually want to approach. 
• Ensure surveys are relevant. Keep your surveys up-to-date and aligned with company policies. Implement a survey maintenance program to periodically review questions for relevance and timeliness.
• Inform employees about the survey program. Let your people know that surveys will be coming, how long they will take, how often they’ll see them, and your expectations for responding. Let them know that their efforts and opinions matter and that leadership is committed to acting on the insights provided. 
• Consider survey length. If surveys are too long or complicated, busy employees may find them disruptive. Keep it concise using the 5-point Likert scale as a template (a five-choice scale with potential responses ranging from “strongly disagree” on the low end to “strongly agree” on top, with #3 as the neutral choice). You can provide them with an optional text box if they want to add more context. 
• Tailor survey questions to future action. Employees will disengage from surveys if they find them pointless. Gearing survey questions toward potential action invites workers to get involved in the decision-making process. If they feel they have a voice in the company’s future, most will want to be part of it. 

Steps to conducting an employee engagement survey

It’s not uncommon for organizations to conduct multiple employee engagement surveys throughout the year. This approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of employee sentiment over time and enables the identification of trends and patterns.

However, simply issuing surveys without a well-defined strategy can lead to ineffective results. That’s why establishing a clear critical path is vital for success.

Step #1: Define your goals. 

Every organization is unique, so developing survey questions that align with the insights you need to collect is vital. 

Think about what you are measuring—is it department-specific? Or are the topics relevant to the entire organization? Are you looking for details or to take a quick pulse?

You’ll only get the answers you want by asking the right questions. Topics might include culture questions, such as how well they get on with team members, work-life balance questions, or sentiment around professional development and whether they’re getting enough training to perform their jobs well. 

Whatever you decide, ensure you are prepared to act on the insights you receive, or the process is meaningless.

Step #2: Identify key themes to address in the survey. 

Ideally, you’ll want to tailor your survey around a theme. The insights will be challenging to quantify if your questions are all over the map. 

Some potential areas you can cover include:

• Career opportunities: are they satisfied with their career potential at the company? 
• Collaboration: how easy is it to collaborate with colleagues, teammates, or other departments? 
• Company leadership: do they trust company leadership? Are they satisfied with the direction leadership is taking the company? 
• Company values: do they feel that the company’s values align with their personal values? 
• Employee engagement: how do they feel when they arrive at work daily? Are they motivated to do their best work? Do they think they have what they need to excel in their job? 
• Employee experience: does the company care about their happiness? Are they satisfied with their compensation, benefits, and the workplace culture? 
• Recognition and reward: Do they feel their managers, coworkers, or leadership value them? 

Before you choose your questions, decide how you want to capture the answers. We mentioned the 5-point Likert scale, but there are several other methods to choose from. 

The Likert scale has respondents rate their answer at one of five points, with “strongly disagree” as the lowest and “strongly agree” as the highest. The middle is neutral. 

The agreement scale is more of a yes/no response: Strongly agree or Strongly Disagree. 

The rating scale asks respondents to rate their answer from “very good” to “very poor” or using wording to that effect. 

Ideally, you’ll want to pick one method and stick with it, as it lends consistency to the process. 

Step #3: Choose the right questions. 

Consider your goals (see point #1) and create questions that will deliver answers relevant to those objectives. The more intentional you are, the more meaningful your metrics will be. 

A “good question” on an employee engagement survey should be clear, specific, and relevant. Ensure the questions align with your survey goals and that you are ready to act on the results. Ultimately, engagement is about job satisfaction, so crafting your questions around that topic will likely yield the right insights. 

Step #4: Take action based on the survey results. It's not enough to collect data; you must implement plans and take immediate action to correct areas of concern. This may involve implementing new policies, providing additional training or resources, or addressing specific issues raised by employees.

By demonstrating a commitment to addressing employee feedback, you can foster a culture of trust and engagement within the organization.

Step #4: Let your employees know. 

Your teams need to know you will be issuing a survey, why you are doing it, and what is expected of them. 

You might tell them that you’re launching a survey initiative in which surveys will be sent out periodically, their answers will be anonymous, and it’s their chance to weigh in on what’s great and not-so-great about their jobs. Get them excited about adding their voice to the company’s evolution. Feeling included makes them more likely to dig into the task.

Step #5: Survey administration.

Once you’ve designed the survey, we recommend using survey software to streamline the administration process. Jostle integrates with Survey Monkey, simplifying survey design and allowing you to push it out and collect insights on a single platform. 

Launch surveys on set dates and set a deadline to review and discuss the results. Responses may take a few days to complete, but after the first couple you do, you’ll have an idea of what to expect. 

Since it’s a new initiative, encourage and be open to feedback to enable improvements. 

Step #6:  Analyze your survey insights. 

Compile your responses into a report to visualize the answers, consider what they mean for the organization, and discuss how to respond. 

Here are a few ways you can measure your survey results:

• Desire to stay. We always hope this quotient is high, but if not, it indicates something deeper is affecting the culture. An overwhelmingly negative response might trigger further surveys to get to the bottom of the issue. 
• Connection with company values. Disconnects could indicate a breakdown in communication or failure to align the culture to the mission. 
• Ability to get their work done. If employees don’t feel they have the support or tools to stay productive, they must take action to remedy the problem. Software, connectivity, access to content, and collaboration between departments are essential to a thriving workforce.
• A sense that their work matters. If employees don’t feel appreciated or are continuously overburdened with too much work, they’re likely to move on sooner rather than later. 
• Feeling appreciated for their work. A little acknowledgment goes a long way. Recognition is critical, especially when managing remote or hybrid teams. Awareness of this sentiment should encourage you to find a remedy. 

Step #7: Take action based on the survey results. 

It’s not enough to collect data; you must implement plans and take immediate action to correct areas of concern. It may involve implementing new policies, providing additional training or resources, implementing a reward system, or addressing other issues that may come to light.

By demonstrating a commitment to addressing employee feedback, you’ll begin to foster a culture of trust and engagement within the organization, from which engagement will flourish. 

Employee engagement survey questions and themes

The ideal employee engagement survey will offer questions in four distinct areas. Within those topics, you can get a little more granular to add context. The following sample questions were culled from Gallup, Qualtrics, and Survey Monkey employee engagement survey templates. 

The following are examples of questions you might ask. While the topics below are fairly general, once the responses are in, you should have a good idea of workplace sentiment. Choose questions that can be answered with the Likert 5-point scale to provide context.

Questions 1-4: Engagement

These are examples of general questions you can ask to gauge employee happiness and, more specifically, how connected employees are to their work. 

• Do you feel your company is a great place to work? 

• Do you know what is expected of you at work? 

• Do you have the tools and information to get your work done?

• Are you inspired to meet your goals at work? 

Questions 5-7: Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is directly related to engagement. Disengaged employees are generally dissatisfied with their job or their work situation. 

• How satisfied are you with your ability to apply your skills to your role? 

• How satisfied are you with your current workload? 

• How satisfied are you with your relationship with your manager? 

• Do you feel your manager cares about you as a person? 

Questions 8-14: Enablement and Collaboration

Employees must have the right tools and information to do their jobs and rarely excel in a vacuum. The following questions dive deeper into the organizational culture and dig into why an employee might be disengaged. 

• Are you recognized or praised for the work you do? 

• Do you feel your colleagues or teammates are committed to doing quality work? 

• Do you feel that your opinions are valued? 

• Do you feel your colleagues adapt quickly to different situations? 

• Do employees in the organization willingly accept change?

• Do employees in the organization take the initiative to help when needed? 

• Do you feel employees treat each other with respect? 

Questions 15-19: Career Progression/Growth

The desire to learn, grow, and progress is inherent in human nature and is essential to motivation and forward movement. Gauging how employees feel about their prospects may reveal how engaged they are with their work and the company’s mission. 

• How satisfied are you with your opportunities for career advancement? 

• Do you feel the company is dedicated to your professional development? 

• Are you satisfied with the job-related training opportunities available to you? 

• Is there someone at work who encourages your development? 

• Has anyone spoken to you recently about your progress? 

You can craft a survey that includes questions in all the above categories or focus on a single category. The most important thing is that you are prepared to act when you receive the results, which will lead us into the next section, where we delve into some of the challenges you may face when launching an employee engagement survey initiative. 

Common challenges in employee engagement surveys

Low survey response is exceedingly common, but the reasons behind it are usually easy to identify. 

Some of the issues can include:

• Survey fatigue: too many surveys, irrelevant topics, or dated content may cause people to tune out. 
• Language or accessibility barriers: consider all employees and their challenges. People with low vision or non-English speakers may not be able to respond adequately. Provide accommodations for disabilities, support language needs as appropriate, or offer support to affected employees to ensure everyone has a way to engage with the survey.
• Poor communication: a survey that drops out of the clear blue sky with no explanation or substantiation may take employees by surprise. Your people should be made aware of the program and how it benefits them and be given the opportunity to ask questions. 
• No discernable change after the fact: there’s really no point sending out surveys if you don’t intend to act on the findings. If you are using surveys to transform your culture, the onus is on you to follow through to affect the change you want to see. 

If any of these issues exist, they must be addressed, or employee success will be elusive. 

It is crucial to communicate the value and importance of employee feedback. Let them know the surveys are being implemented because you genuinely care about their opinions. When employees feel their input is crucial in shaping the company’s future, they will be more likely to step up. 

Emphasize that their feedback will be taken seriously, and that action will be taken based on their responses. Keep in mind that words are just that—words. The commitment to making good on promises is what separates one employer from another. In doing so, you create a sense of purpose and motivation for completing the surveys, and the feedback will be that much more meaningful. 

Remember, the goal is not just to collect data but to nurture a culture of engagement, inclusivity, and open communication.

Final Thoughts

Engaged employees are energized, enthused, and empowered, and will take your company to new heights of success. Implementing employee engagement surveys is a way to gauge sentiment and identify areas of concern before they hinder company culture or the bottom line.

Jostle integrates with SurveyMonkey, a user-friendly platform to help you create surveys and collect insights to support continued improvement, while our internal communication module helps to keep employees up to speed on how their opinions are making a difference.