It’s widely known that when employees are satisfied with their jobs, they’re much more likely to be happy, more engaged, and more productive. Since successful companies are built on the backs of satisfied and motivated employees, it would seem like a no-brainer that organizations should care deeply about employee satisfaction surveys.
Apparently, that’s not the case.
Believe it or not, many people in the world hate their jobs, according to Gallup. There are many reasons why that might be the case.
Some employees don’t like their bosses. Others dislike their coworkers, while still others simply feel disconnected to the team. There are also those who feel as though their hard work is never recognized.
Some workers feel expendable. Others believe they’re underpaid. And others don’t believe in their company’s mission or how it treats its staff.
Do you know whether your employees are satisfied with their jobs? If not, figuring that out is actually quite easy. All you need to do is ask them directly in anonymous employee satisfaction surveys.
In this article, we’ll list down 15 employee satisfaction survey questions that can help you gain a clear understanding of your current position.
Let’s get started.
Why Employee Satisfaction Surveys Matter
Low job satisfaction levels can impact the bottom-line of organizations in a number of ways. Here are some of them:
- Because unsatisfied workers don’t like their jobs, it’s impossible for them to become fully productive.
- Unsatisfied workers can become toxic over time, which could seriously hurt employee morale, pollute your work environment, and increase turnover.
- Since unsatisfied workers show up to an office they don’t like every day, it’s only a matter of time before your employee retention levels take a hit.
- Unsatisfied workers may take their bad attitude out on your customers, adversely affecting your brand’s reputation and your bottom line.
- When your company has many unsatisfied team members on its payroll, it’s nearly impossible to attract top talent.
To improve employee engagement and become a stronger company, you’d be wise to issue employee satisfaction surveys at regular intervals. Whether that means once a quarter or once a month depends on your organization.
These surveys can be administered electronically and anonymously to ensure employees are able to share their thoughts without fear of retribution.
15 Questions to Incorporate in Your Employee Satisfaction Survey
When crafting your employee satisfaction survey, be sure to avoid sprinkling business jargon or corporate-speak into the questions. You want to communicate with your workers as directly and honestly as possible. That’s the way you elicit accurate answers that reflect the actual state of your company’s employee satisfaction levels.
So, what questions should be on your employee satisfaction survey?
To make things easier, we’ve split these questions into three categories, including:
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Questions related to workplace culture
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Questions related to the management
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Questions related to the actual job
Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions Related to Workplace Culture
Culture is the key to having satisfied employees.
A survey conducted by Speakap revealed that 74% of the 1,000 respondents viewed culture as an important factor.
Considering that, your job satisfaction survey needs to include the right questions about culture.
Here are a few:
01. Do you enjoy our company’s culture?
According to our 2019 Employee Engagement Report, the invisible company culture reigns supreme. The top factors related to employee happiness turn out to be intangible ones: interpersonal relationships, culture, and work environment.
If your employees don’t like your culture, it’s impossible to take your organization where you want it to go.
02. Do you feel connected to your coworkers?
Coworkers are the number one thing employees like about their jobs. However, according to our Engagement Report, only 24% of employees feel connected to their colleagues.
It’s impossible for your employees to be truly satisfied at work when they don’t have any friends at the office.
03. How open to change are we as an organization?
It's essential to understand how employees perceive your willingness to make changes. They'll only feel valued and be motivated to provide feedback if they know their opinions are going to make an impact.
04. Do your managers value your feedback?
Just because they may not be senior-level managers doesn’t mean your employees don’t have fantastic ideas of their own.
It’s disheartening to work for someone who never asks for your opinion or ideas. If your employees are never asked to provide their feedback, chances are they’re not satisfied.
Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions Related to the Management
An employee’s relationship with their manager and how the latter behaves could have a major impact on worker satisfaction and employee experience levels.
Our Employee Retention Report revealed that 40% of employees who did not rate their supervisors’ performance highly had appeared for interviews in the past three months.
Here are a few questions that are relevant to this:
05. Do you feel valued for your contributions?
Our Engagement Report revealed only 25% of workers feel as though their employers recognize their hard work on a consistent basis — a 16% drop from the previous year.
Make employee recognition a top priority if you want your workers to stick around.
06. Do your superiors communicate company news effectively and in a timely manner?
Employees spend at least 40 hours — if not many more — at the office each week.
That being the case, it’s only fair that you clue them in on major developments that take place. Nobody likes being blindsided by important news that affects their jobs.
07. Does management seem invested in the success of the team?
If your employees believe that management is just there to boss people around and collect a paycheck, there’s no chance they’ll be satisfied or motivated.
08. How transparent do you feel the management is?
Our research shows that while 39% of managers strongly agree that management within their organization is transparent, only 22% of employees feel the same way. This pervasive blind spot must be addressed in order for employees to function effectively in their roles.
09. Do you think that work is distributed evenly across your team?
According to our research, nearly 70% of workers believe there’s not enough time in the week to get all of their work done.
It’s one thing if everyone on the team is overworked and have little or no work-life balance. It’s quite another if certain members have work piled on them while others do not.
This usually happens when there’s a lack of strong leadership, and employee feedback can help reveal this flaw.
Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions Related to the Actual Job
Last but not least, you can’t really measure employee satisfaction if you don’t include some questions about the actual job and/or the nature of work itself.
Are you enabling your employees to achieve the desired level of personal growth? Do they have all the resources they need to do good work? Are they proud of the work they do?
Here are some questions that incorporate all of these difficult queries and more:
10. Do you find your work meaningful?
In a recent survey, millennials indicated that the ability to tackle meaningful work was just as important as salary when considering where to work.
If your employees don’t find their work meaningful, they are unlikely to be engaged.
11. Does our company offer adequate opportunities for promotions and career development?
Many of today’s workers care a great deal about having opportunities to climb the corporate ladder and otherwise develop in their careers.
Yet, according to our research, only one in three people strongly agree that they have the opportunity to reach their full potential at their organization.
If you don’t support career growth, your employees will not be happy.
12. Does our company give you the tools and technologies you need to do your job well?
Work is not fun when you’re forced to rely on outdated tools and legacy technology to tackle your workload.
If the bulk of your staff believes you’re not investing in modern tools, chances are morale is very close to the floor.
13. Do you feel as though your job responsibilities are clearly defined?
In our 2019 Employee Engagement Report, when we asked employees if their promotion and career path were clear to them, more than half of them (54%) said no.
When you don’t know what’s expected of you, it’s impossible to succeed. When roles are not clearly defined, there is a lot of confusion — which can be demoralizing enough on its own.
14. Do you feel like your job utilizes your skills and abilities as much as it could?
It’s extremely difficult for employees to be satisfied when they feel as though their employers are ignoring their strongest skills.
If your employee satisfaction survey reveals that many members of your team don’t feel like their talents and know-how are being fully leveraged, start encouraging your workers to pursue pet projects and collaborate with colleagues in other departments.
15. How happy are you at work?
Want to know if your employees are satisfied? Ask them how happy they are at work!
This question does not fall under any specific category. Rather, it provides a concrete answer to HR about the general satisfaction and happiness levels.
Understanding your employees' true feelings and monitoring the trends over time will help you detect an issue before it becomes a problem. From there, you can ask follow up questions to open the dialogue and see if there's anything you can do to improve their experience.
Employee happiness is also tied to productivity. Our recent study found that high performers are roughly 15% happier at work than low performers, which also aligns with research conducted by the University of Warwick that found happiness increases productivity by 12%.
How to Conduct Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Now you're off to a good start when it comes to putting together a comprehensive employee survey. How will you send out the survey to get accurate responses so you know what can be improved?
Here are a few essential take-home tips to get it right:
01. Send out the satisfaction survey once a year
An annual satisfaction survey is still one of the most popular ways to gather data on employee satisfaction. I don't need to tell you the downside of annual surveys, here's a whole article about it.
Although it's easy to do, at first, (with copy, paste, attach to email, and send to all), it requires endless manual work to compile and analyze the feedback in order to form an action plan to address issues.
02. Ask one question at a time throughout the year
Keep a pulse on your organizational health by sending short, frequent surveys to help you gather insights on a regular basis. Instead of overwhelming employees with a list of questions to cause survey fatigue, ask one question at a time to get real-time feedback to inform your next decision.
"TINYpulse gives us the data to indicate in which direction we should focus our energies."
— Cindy Lopez-Larson, Director of People and Operations at Wheelhouse DMG
Learn more about lightweight and effective employee engagement surveys to build a better workplace. How do you conduct employee surveys at your company?
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How to Conduct Employee Surveys to Engage Your Team (And Grow Your Business)
47 Science-Backed Questions For Your Annual Employee Survey [Template]
