Creating the Best Employee Engagement Surveys: Part 1

Employee engagement surveys are becoming more of a regular part of the performance management process every day. As organizations continue to make a shift toward including the opinion of team members and ensuring employees stay mentally well, these types of surveys and other elements will continue to grow.

Unfortunately, many organizations use employee engagement surveys in the wrong manner. Since they’re a part of most off-the-shelf PMS platforms because of the fact they’re trending, many companies just go through the motions with them.

This seems to be a common theme with many additions and new elements to PMS platforms – trends, new groundbreaking additions, and companies just don’t know how to use them. The tools can be the most groundbreaking that has ever existed. However, if organizations don’t know how to use them, they’re essentially worthless.

The truth is, these engagement surveys can actually be quite useful. They can be leveraged in a powerful way to keep the pulse of your corporate culture, find out where employees’ minds exist, and the overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction of certain elements of your organization or organization.

This article will give you some of the best questions to ask on your employee engagement surveys as part of your performance management system.

Asking the Right Questions

Asking the right questions is important in the corporate world. It’s often not what you ask but how you ask that makes all the difference.

You can essentially ask the same question in two different ways and get two completely different answers. We’ll show you the best questions to ask, how to word them, and the benefits they’ll have on your organization.

Overall Engagement

The following questions are the best to ask about the overall engagement of team members. This can give you a lot of insight into how they feel about being at your organization and how dedicated they are to your overall mission as a company.

• Does It Make You Feel Special to Be a Member of Our Team?

This question gives you helpful insight into how each employee feels about being with your organization. Do they feel like you’re doing anything groundbreaking or cutting edge? Is it a position that people on the outside might seek? This can give you an idea of how clients look at your business as well.

• Do You Feel You Can Take Control of Your Role?

This is a very critical question to ask on your surveys. You’re asking them how empowered they feel in their role. Asking this question is very telling regarding how they feel about the tools you give them to perform their job. When employees have the tools they need on a daily basis, they’ll feel confident and in control, leading to higher levels of productivity and more efficient employees.

Development and Compensation

These questions will give you powerful information about your employees’ career development and how they feel about their compensation. The compensation doesn’t always include money, either. Employees can be compensated in many ways, including the additional education they receive on the job.

• Do you understand the path of your career at our company? Do you feel like you can be the best version of yourself?

Asking this question gives you an idea of how well you are “lighting the path” for your employees. Do they have a clear vision of their opportunities from being a part of your company? You’ll also find out if you’re arming them with everything they need to accomplish their goals and excel in their positions.

• On a Scale of 1-10, Rate Your Overall Work/Life Balance

This is actually one of the most important questions on the entire survey. The answer to this question will tell you A LOT about the following elements:

• Corporate culture
• Employee satisfaction
• Management compassion
• Employee mentality

In surveys conducted, employees stated that one of the most important elements of any position was having the ability to balance work and home life elements. Nobody wants to kill themselves week in and week out. This is especially true of the millennial class of employees. They’re demanding, and they want their free time.

Work Environment and Employee Wellbeing

This section of questions will answer a lot of concerns you have about your corporate culture and how healthy your employees are. When we say healthy, we’re talking about mental wellness, which is a huge metric when it comes to current levels of employee satisfaction and why employees decide to stay or go.

• Do you feel supported when you share your opinion with management and team members?

Employees currently want to feel like they have a voice within their organization. The days are gone when employees are silenced and only speak when spoken to. Research has shown us that the most successful companies operate in an open-ended environment that thrives on collaboration and communication. Understanding the answer to this question will let you know if you currently exist as this type of company.

• Is your team environment transparent?

This might seem like a tricky question, but it’s actually quite simple. Do employees feel like their team environment is transparent? Is it easy for them to understand their position within a team role? Is their job clear with an established set of goals for them to work towards? Is everyone’s role clearly outlined, so the job runs smoother, without any hiccups? Do they feel like they always have a chance to gauge what’s going on and ask questions openly without feeling awkward or intrusive? It’s basically asking all of these, all rolled into one!

Asking these questions will end up telling you a lot about the most important elements of your organization. It will also clearly send the message that you’re concerned with how your employees think and feel.

This is actually one of the most important things to remember in today’s workforce – employees want to feel like they’re a name and not a number. They want their managers to be concerned about their goals and wellbeing – and that’s the way it should be. It ends up being more conducive to a thriving workplace.

We’ll be posting our second part to this article and finishing the final set of questions in our next post, so stay tuned! The eLeaP continuous performance management system provides organizations with powerful options to attract and retain high caliber team members.