How would you define an engaged workforce? You might say it’s an environment where everyone involved feels valued and supported.
Workplace engagement is a crucial aspect of business success. In fact, it’s so imperative that employee engagement has been shown to affect metrics like productivity, retention, and customer service.
However, unfortunately, recent statistics indicate that only a mere 30% of employees are actively engaged with their place of work. Meanwhile, a total of 17% of employees are not engaged at all. That is the bad news. But the good news is that there are steps you can take as a company to revamp the workplace and transform it into a culture that cultivates engagement. On that note, one of the most helpful techniques you can implement is an employee satisfaction survey.
A few caveats of employee engagement satisfaction surveys
There are three rules that you should abide by when putting together an employee satisfaction survey. For starters, not only should all responses be recorded anonymously but you must also reassure your employees that you promise to maintain anonymity.
Also, keep your emotions out of the equation when gathering responses and documenting the results. Last but not least, no matter the outcome of the surveys, it is important to use the results as a way to take action and make change.
Questions to ask yourself when drafting an employee engagement satisfaction survey
Here are a handful of questions you should keep in mind when preparing to pass out employee satisfaction surveys to those who work for your company.
- What is the goal of your employee satisfaction survey?
- Are you going to hire a writer for your employee satisfaction survey or have an internal employee write it?
- How will you let your employees know about the employee satisfaction survey
- Who will you ask to participate and fill out the survey?
- How much time will you give your employees to respond to the survey?
- Are you planning to send out reminders? If so, how frequently will you send them?
- Can employees fill out the satisfaction survey online or will you conduct interviews in person?
- Who will you appoint to collect the surveys and calculate the results?
- How will you decide what to change after analyzing the results of the employee satisfaction survey?
- How will you let your employees know how you plan to change things according to the outcome of the survey?
Other details to consider when creating your survey
Have you thought about how you’ll structure your employee engagement satisfaction survey? Think about whether you want to use open- or closed-ended questions. While closed-ended questions are easier to record and quantify, open-ended questions mean your employees can be more in-depth about how they feel when answering the survey.
Also, consider how long the survey will be. Note that the length of the survey is an important factor that should not be overlooked In fact, the Society for Human Resources Management has suggested that employers keep surveys short enough to complete within 30 minutes or less.
Last but not least, when deciding on a layout for your employee satisfaction survey, it’s recommended that you cluster related questions. In other words, ask similar questions one after the other to keep things simple without confusing your employees. together.
Once you send out your surveys and receive them back, it’s time to collect responses. From there, you can use the responses to determine how to improve the workplace based on the feedback from your employees.
Look for trends, like how many employees strongly agree or disagree with certain topics. Keep an eye out for gaps in data as well, like instances where there’s a high number of neutral responses or outliers. Sometimes, these discrepancies hold the key to improved employee satisfaction.
