Topic: Employee Surveys

5 Things Your Employee Engagement Survey Must Have

2 min read

Oct 28, 2014

Obviously, we're employee engagement survey junkies. We think every company should be able to check in with its employees on a regular basis to see how they're feeling. We believe in the idea so much, we wrote an entire guide on it. If you can't commit to reading the whole thing, well, here's a quick primer.

Here are the top 5 things to keep in mind when creating an employee survey:

1. Keep it anonymous. Anyone who's had a bad boss can tell you it's a lot easier to tell the truth when you can leave your name out of it. For honest, candid feedback, employees need a safe way to provide criticism. Letting them speak up anonymously is a great way to meet that need.

2. Keep it short. You know what they say about the attention span of a goldfish; according to a Harvard Business School professor, ours is worse. Besides that, your employees are just as pressed for time as you are. If you want a survey completed, keep it short. It's respectful, and your staff will appreciate it. Bonus: short surveys have higher response rates.

3. Keep it simple. You don’t need convoluted questions and crazy, choose-your-own-adventure survey configurations to find out how people think. You really just need three types of questions:

1. Yes/No (e.g. “Do you feel professionally fulfilled in your job?”)

2. Scale (e.g. “On a scale of 1-10, do you feel you have a solid grasp of your day-to-day responsibilities?")

3. Open-ended (e.g. “What is one reason you enjoy coming to work?”)

4. Plan for feedback. One-third of employees become disengaged when their feedback is met by inaction. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by collecting opinions and doing nothing once you get them in your hands. Have a plan in place for how you’re going to respond to survey feedback, both good and bad.

5. Repeat. They say less is more. When it comes to employee surveys, more is more. Sentiment changes all the time. As new projects get into the queue, and new employees join the team, employee happiness can change. Don’t settle for a single survey. To stay dialed in, commit to frequent surveys.

Keeping these five steps in mind will result in actionable, effective feedback that will improve employee engagement and boost productivity. So go ahead, give it a try today.

RELATED POSTS: