The Top 5 Signs Your Employee Engagement Survey Needs an Overhaul

When used correctly, employee engagement surveys can help organizations keep their fingers on the pulse of their workforce, making sure morale is high and people are satisfied — which in turn makes teams more productive.

When is the last time you took a look at your employee engagement surveys? Here are five signs that indicate it’s time to give your engagement surveys a face lift:

1. Your employee retention rate is abysmal

Companies use engagement surveys to assess whether their employees are happy at work and satisfied with their jobs. That being the case, if your employees are fleeing your organization left and right despite the fact that your engagement surveys are telling you everything is not so bad, it’s time to figure out whether you’re asking the right questions — and whether your employees are being honest in their feedback. If they’re not telling the truth, figure out why that is.

2. It takes your team hours to complete the surveys

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Maybe your employees aren’t giving you honest answers because your survey’s filled with 200 questions that take roughly six hours to complete. According to our Employee Engagement Report, 70% of workers already feel as though there aren’t enough hours in the week to fulfill all their job responsibilities. The last thing you want is your engagement surveys to turn into another time-sucking task that team members dread each week.

Surveys should be incredibly easy to complete. If yours isn’t, it’s time to make a change.

3. You ask the same vague questions every week

If you ask your employees the same generic questions every week — think “how are you feeling?” and “do you have any ideas for improvement?” — survey results probably won’t be too helpful. After a few weeks of having to answer the same exact questions, there’s a good chance your team members will scream the next time they’re asked to fill out yet another identical survey.

You need to switch up the questions on your surveys — and it needs to be easy to make those changes. For maximum success, engagement surveys need to be completely customizable. This way, you’re able to ask your team all kinds of questions. An example: “We’re thinking about changing collaboration platforms next quarter. Which platforms should we consider? Why?”

4. Managers spend hours, if not days, reviewing survey results

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If your managers take forever to comb through all of the responses to your employee engagement surveys, you’re doing it wrong.

To get the most utility out of engagement surveys, managers need to be able to quickly assess responses so they can offer feedback in real time and make warranted changes before problems spiral out of control. If your surveys take too long to review, it’s time to make a change.

5. Survey results aren’t anonymous

You can’t expect members of your team will be willing to spill their guts in surveys if they have to sign their names to their responses. Why would anyone critique their immediate boss if that person ultimately found out what a specific employee said about them?

To get the most out of employee engagement surveys, responses need to be anonymous. That way, you can expect your employees to be a little more forthcoming. They can be brutally honest when they know management won’t be able to pinpoint who said what.

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• 3 Surprising Ways Employee Engagement Surveys Can Improve Culture
• Employee Engagement Surveys: The 20 Questions You Need to Ask