Understanding employee feedback is crucial for driving employee engagement. And an employee engagement survey is a powerful tool to gain this kind of insight. But not all employee surveys are created equal, nor are the questions they contain.
To truly measure and improve engagement, it’s essential to design your survey using a reputable model that provides actionable data. After all, employee feedback and insights without action is just trivia.
When conducted thoughtfully and regularly, engagement surveys offer essential data that can positively influence a company’s trajectory, from enhancing workplace culture to addressing underlying issues that impact productivity and morale. But without the right approach, you might find yourself guessing at what matters, making it difficult to drive meaningful change.
“Right now, efficiency is top of mind for many organizations. Leaders are wanting to ensure performance and productivity are maximized. An employee engagement survey is a key diagnostic tool to understand and drive efficiency. The heart of employee engagement is creating an environment where employees can be successful. When employees are successful, the business is successful. To drive efficiency, you need BOTH a clear understanding of output and an environment where employees can succeed.”
Anne Maltese
Director of People Insights
In this article, we’ll discuss the nuances of employee engagement surveys, exploring why they’re important, how to implement them, and the research-backed questions you should consider for your next survey.
We’ll unpack the what, why, and how of using employee engagement surveys effectively, ensuring they become a vital component of your business strategy.
Key Takeaways:
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An employee engagement survey helps organizations measure and understand employee engagement levels. Typically conducted annually, they involve all employees. They help measure the strength of emotional and mental connection employees have toward their work, teams, and organization, helping translate data collected to action that improves the business and the employee experience.
When it comes to understanding and enhancing employee engagement, deploying a diverse array of employee surveys and other listening tools is key. A traditional annual employee engagement survey is just one piece of the puzzle. Consider a holistic listening strategy that includes these three survey types:
As mentioned above, this comprehensive survey is typically conducted once a year and aims to measure overall engagement and satisfaction among employees. It covers a wide range of topics. The data gathered serves as a benchmark for year-over-year comparisons, helping organizations track progress on engagement.
Unlike an extensive annual survey, pulse surveys are shorter and conducted more frequently—sometimes quarterly or even monthly. They focus on specific areas of concern or interest, providing quick insights into current employee perceptions on a given topic.
Employee lifecycle surveys are distributed at critical junctures in an employee’s journey with the company, such as onboarding, post-training, after significant projects, or upon exiting the company. Each type of survey plays a unique role in helping paint a fuller picture of employee engagement within the organization.
By deploying a mix of these employee surveys in your employee listening strategy, you can gain nuanced insights, respond to issues promptly, and create a more engaged and productive workforce.
An employee engagement survey is an essential tool in your employee listening arsenal. Many organizations have teams working across different environments and geographies, and it's challenging for leaders to connect with every employee personally.
Employee engagement surveys help bridge this gap in connection. They provide a platform for employees to share their perspectives and experiences—and offer a gold mine of insights to help leaders drive better employee, team, and business results.
But when it comes to measuring engagement, not just any old survey tool can do the job. You need a well-researched employee engagement survey template backed by a validated employee engagement model. And you need the proper tools to unearth the best insights and turn them into action.
A professionally designed engagement survey provides a structured and consistent way to measure employee engagement. It helps quantify what can often feel intangible, giving leadership and HR professionals clear metrics to assess organizational health.
Employee engagement surveys dive deep into your workforce's mindset, uncovering insights that might otherwise remain hidden. These insights are invaluable for understanding the driving forces behind employee motivation, satisfaction, and productivity. Plus, the data is a valuable resource for driving business decisions.
Perhaps the most important purpose of an engagement survey is the action that follows. Organizations can use the data to create targeted strategies for enhancing engagement and employee experience.
Employee engagement surveys are more than just a means of communication; they are powerful catalysts for organizational growth and success. They enable you to:
Effectively executed, employee engagement surveys can transform the way you understand and improve your workplace, making them an indispensable part of your strategic toolkit.
Understanding the optimal approach for employee engagement surveys is essential to maximizing participation and effectiveness. Based on our research, here are the key practices to follow:
Start with an annual survey that reaches all employees. This large-scale survey helps gather critical insights on key topics and provides a baseline for understanding overall engagement levels across your organization.
Our research shows that annual employee engagement surveys alone are insufficient. Employees who are surveyed more regularly have higher engagement. But there’s a delicate balance between effective continuous listening and survey fatigue.
How often you survey your employees is up to you, but we recommend planning between 4-7 employee surveys within a given year. This will give you adequate opportunity to pick up on signals from your workforce without tiring employees. But remember—don’t ask anything you’re not willing or able to act on. Lack of action is the fastest way to break down employee trust.
Communication is one of the most overlooked and under-executed elements of the survey process. Done well, your employee engagement survey communication can:
Poor communication can result in damaging and costly consequences, such as low response rates, distrust, confusion, decreased morale, and disengagement.
We recommend implementing a 3x3x3 communication model:
Aiming for a 70-80% response rate in larger organizations and 80-90% in smaller ones is a realistic goal. Remember, a high survey response rate not only provides more comprehensive insights but also reflects a healthy level of employee engagement and trust in the organization.
Your people leaders play a critical role in the survey process. Senior leadership should champion the survey and its outcomes, while managers must encourage participation and lead discussions on the results. This involvement reinforces the importance of the survey and its impact on the organization.
There’s an untapped opportunity when it comes to employee engagement action planning.
Our research shows 35% of employees say their organization fails to effectively respond to survey results. But… employees who witness action on their feedback are 12X more likely to be engaged.
To capitalize on the opportunity here, you MUST prioritize actions based on the insights you found. But HR can’t do this alone. You need to empower leaders and managers across the organization to dig in with their teams and develop solutions together.
Quantum Workplace’s AFTER Framework for action planning helps HR teams and managers navigate feedback, uncover actionable insights, and develop an action plan that moves the needle.
Learn more about our AFTER Framework here >>
An employee engagement model is a critical component of your employee engagement survey. This model shapes the survey, ensuring questions focus on the key (and credible) aspects of engagement within your organization.
A trusted employee engagement model will effectively measure engagement and pinpoint actionable areas of improvement for your organization. Your chosen model should include:
Instead of simply showing engagement levels, the survey should reveal the reasons behind these levels, enabling a more effective response.
The questions you ask are just as important as how you ask them. While you may be tempted to ask for open-ended feedback for each of your engagement questions, this can quickly lead to survey fatigue. At the same time, asking an employee to answer “yes” or “no” doesn’t give you enough context as to what is a priority.
That’s why we highly recommend you use a sliding scale to capture your survey feedback. Using more than 20 years of survey experience, our team feels confident in the science that supports a six-point Likert sliding scale. The six-point sliding scale for engagement questions include:
There are a number of benefits to using this sliding scale. The first is that there is no ‘neutral’ option. This forces your survey respondent to lean one way or another, giving you the data you need to know which way your survey base is leaning. Not to mention, the sliding scale is predictable and easy to answer, making the survey quick and easy for your participants to fill out accurately.
The survey questions you choose are critical. They will make or break the accuracy of your insights and how actionable your results will be. Use the following best practice engagement questions, carefully curated by our People Insights Team and researchers with more than 20 years of experience in employee engagement.
Quantum Workplace’s proven e9 model of employee engagement includes a mix of engagement outcome questions and engagement impact questions.
Organizational engagement outcome questions are designed to help you understand the strength of an employee's connection to the organization at large. These questions include:
Team engagement outcome questions are designed to help you understand the strength of an employee's connection to their team. These questions include:
Work engagement outcome questions are designed to help you understand the strength of an employee's connection to their role and their day-to-day work. These questions include:
Employees who have at least quarterly career growth 1-on-1s are 2.4X more engaged and 4X more likely to say they see growth and development opportunities in their organization. When employees see professional growth and career development opportunities in their organization, they are more engaged. Add questions to your engagement survey to find out if your organization is offering the right opportunities for your employees.
Sometimes, as leaders, we think that the paths for advancement and promotion are clear to our employees. But that may not always align with how your employees feel about their growth opportunities.
While growth is particularly important among younger employees, more tenured employees might be looking for different types of opportunities.
When employees can use their strengths, they feel more engaged and empowered to contribute to the organization, leading to higher productivity and job satisfaction.
Growth opportunities are essential to keep employees motivated, as they show that the organization values their development and future potential.
Your employees' day-to-day experiences can be greatly impacted by the tools and information they have at their disposal. While the right resources are important, if employees don’t know what they have access to, they are less likely to find success. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—a sense of belonging and self-actualization are great, but if your basic needs aren’t met, you’re not going to survive.
These workplace survey questions will help you understand how effectively you are communicating with your employees, including access to resources and information.
One of the best things about this question is that it can quickly bring to light the resources employees need to be successful. While tackling equipment needs can come with expenses, it can often be a simple problem to solve—unlike more complex issues like feeling valued or improving communication.
Communication is the lifeblood of an organization. It builds trust, boosts alignment and understanding, fosters good relationships, and improves morale and efficiency. If employees feel that information isn’t available to them, this question can help you learn what processes or communication loops need to be added. It can also uncover deficiencies in training or organizational knowledge.
Nobody wants to work somewhere they aren’t heard. It's important that employees have a chance to speak their minds. This survey question can help you understand your workforce’s receptivity to feedback and new or different ideas.
As your organization faces change, leaders may shy away from or postpone any communication until the dust has settled. However, both of these tendencies can increase anxiety and uncertainty among employees:
This item puts helps bring to light how well (or not) your leaders handle strategic and difficult communication.
Diversity and inclusion has an effect on your organization even if you believe that your team isn’t very diverse. Understanding your employee feedback by demographic can provide critical insight to how certain groups are engaged within your organization. Not to mention, by prioritizing questions about diversity and inclusion you can give every single employee within your organization a voice in making the company better.
A feeling of belonging can be a key indicator of your organization’s magnetism. When employees don’t feel as though they belong, they are more likely to look for opportunities outside of the organization. Almost 30% of employees who were not highly engaged interviewed for a job at a different organization within the past 6 months.
As the trust gap between individuals and leadership grows, understanding the nuance of your organization’s trust gap is critical. Employees need to know that the organization is fair to all employees regardless of their age, race, gender, orientation, role, and more. Questions like this can help you identify and address trust gaps.
Inclusion in decision-making fosters a sense of ownership and accountability, improving engagement and trust in leadership. This questions helps gauge whether or not employees feel involved in what matters most.
Leaders who understand how to manage diversity create a more inclusive culture, leading to higher innovation and employee satisfaction. Ask this question to get a pulse on how your senior leaders are doing with DEI.
Your top performers are going to want to see a clear path for themselves at your organization now and in the future. If an employee can see that path, they're more likely to feel invested and motivated to achieve. If they can't see it, they might start looking elsewhere for something more fulfilling.
Beyond the basic understanding of your organization’s plans for success, employees need to know if and how they fit within that vision. Strong job fit drives employee engagement, but employees also need to see how their current and future aspirations align with the overall direction and success of the business.
Employees who see how their work aligns with company goals are more motivated to perform, as they understand their contribution to the broader mission.
Employees need to have a clear understanding of the organization’s vision for success. When they can see the big picture they will be more capable and motivated to help you achieve your goals. Ask this question to find out whether you are communicating your vision effectively and efficiently.
Confidence in the company’s future fosters loyalty and retention, as employees feel more secure and aligned with a winning team.
Recognition and work-life balance are two basic, but important, needs in the workplace. If employees feel undervalued or constantly torn between getting ahead at work and spending time with their family, it’s unlikely they’ll be engaged. Learn more about your employees’ individual needs by asking these survey questions.
When employees believe they will be recognized, they are more likely to be highly engaged. But that’s not all. According to our employee engagement trends research, 53% of exiting employees say they weren’t recognized for their contributions to the organization. Use this employee survey question to understand whether employees feel valued.
Do your employees feel like robots or people? Our research shows that when employees believe their workplace supports their health and wellbeing, they are 1.7X more likely to stay with their current organization and 2.5X less likely to look elsewhere for employment. Leaders will need to determine what flexibility means to their organization in a way that is meaningful to employees.
Pay isn't everything. Our research bears that out time and time again. However, fair compensation is foundational for engagement, as employees need to feel that their work is valued equitably.
A supportive work culture promotes better mental and physical health, resulting in more energized and productive employees.
Benefits that meet employees' personal needs create a more balanced and satisfied workforce.
When employees have favorable perceptions of their managers, they are much more engaged. While we know managers aren’t the only reason employees leave, managers certainly play a critical role in employee engagement. Find out more about manager effectiveness with these survey questions.
Managers should be empathetic and compassionate, but also assertive and decisive when needed. They need to feel comfortable talking with employees about a variety of topics, including:
When employees believe their immediate manager cares about their development, they are 3.1x more likely to be highly engaged. Great managers can coach toward success and help their best employees find pathways to grow and develop.
Managers should not only show great listening skills, but they should be advocates for the employee within the organization. Employees should feel that their managers want to see them succeed and are positioning them for advancement - even if that means they might grow outside of the manager's direct team.
Clear performance metrics allow employees to understand what’s expected, fostering accountability and goal achievement. Ask this question to see how your managers are measuring up to that task.
Regular coaching helps employees grow and improve, creating a culture of continuous feedback and development. This question gets to the nitty-gritty of how employees feel about direct coaching from their managers. It can reveal opportunities to improve manager coaching skills and also reveal where there might be opportunity to strengthen reporting and feedback loops for performance clarity.
Team dynamics are the unconscious, psychological forces that influence team behavior, culture, and performance. How a team functions as a unit can be incredibly engaging or disengaging. Use these questions to understand if your teams are operating effectively and where there are opportunities to boost team engagement.
Clear communication is fundamental to the success of any team. Among the most important factors to clearly communicate are individual and team goals. In fact, trust has major benefits for both employees and organizations. Employees have 76% higher employee engagement in high-trust organizations. Employees should know who is accountable for achieving, monitoring, and updating goals. Establishing ownership can also empower individual team members and reduce role ambiguity.
Dependability is critical to success and being part of a winning team. Employees need to know that they can rely on other teammates to lend a helping hand, step up when someone needs assistance, and meet deadlines and goals. When team members are dropping the ball, it falls on other employees to pick it up. The team dynamic can have a massive impact on employee success, engagement, and morale.
A respectful work environment strengthens teamwork and creates a positive culture where people feel valued and safe.
Like team dynamics, leadership relationships are extremely important to engagement. Employees want to work for leaders and teams that:
Consider these questions to learn about employee perceptions of their trust in leadership.
Bridging the trust gap between leaders and employees is a major trend for this year. Leaders will need to focus on closing this gap with thoughtful listening, understanding, and meaningful action. When leaders aren’t transparent or honest about how your organization is conducting business, employees can feel disappointed and disengaged. They want to know that the organization is successful, but also how you’re succeeding.
Employees who intend to stay at your organization want to make sure that there will be a place to come to work well into their future career. If they don’t trust current leaders to guide your business to success, they definitely won’t want to stay. Building trust will look different in every organization. And things are likely to change quickly. Leaders should consider how they can keep a pulse on trust by listening often.
When employees feel valued by senior leadership, it increases morale and creates a sense of purpose within the organization.
This question encourages innovative thinking and gives employees a voice in shaping the culture and practices.
Identifying practices that hinder engagement or productivity helps eliminate barriers and improve the work environment.
Highlighting what works well reinforces positive aspects of the organization’s culture and fosters continuous improvement.
Transparency around survey results builds trust and shows that leadership values employee feedback.
Demonstrating that feedback leads to action reassures employees that their input matters and drives improvements.
When designing your employee engagement survey, it's just as important to know which questions to avoid as it is to know which questions to include. Certain types of questions can skew results, confuse participants, or fail to provide useful insights. Here are seven key types of questions to steer clear of:
Questions that lead respondents towards a specific answer can skew results. Avoid phrasing like, "Don't you agree that..." or "Isn't it true that..." which suggest a 'correct' response.
Questions addressing two topics at once can be confusing and lead to unclear answers. For example, “Do you feel your manager communicates effectively and supports your career development?” should be split into two separate questions for clarity.
Keep your questions simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon, acronyms, and/or technical terms that not all employees might understand.
While it’s important to address challenges, framing questions negatively can influence respondents to focus only on the negative aspects. For example, instead of asking, "Why do you think there's a lack of trust in management?" consider, "How can trust in management be improved?”
Questions about hypothetical situations often lead to speculative answers that don’t reflect actual experiences or feelings. Focus on real situations and experiences.
While it’s crucial to understand all aspects of employee engagement, asking about overly personal or sensitive topics without a clear purpose can make employees uncomfortable and less likely to respond honestly.
Questions that are too broad can lead to vague answers that don’t offer actionable insights. Instead of asking, "Are you satisfied with your job?" try to be more specific, like, "How satisfied are you with your current work-life balance?"
By avoiding these types of questions, you can ensure your employee engagement survey is clear, unbiased, and provides valuable insights for improving your workplace environment.
It can be tempting to go off on your own when developing your listening framework. And if you’re at an early maturity level, doing something is always better than doing nothing.
The right survey partner can not only provide the survey framework you need to start building your listening program, but also provides you with the tools, data, analytics, reporting, and insights you need to impact what matters most to your employees.
When is a survey partner the right fit for you? There are several indicators that working with a survey partner is the right fit for your organization. Here are a few key indicators:
You don’t have to do it alone. There’s a right way to survey your employees—and your survey technology plays a huge role in your success. With the right mindset, the right approach, and the right surveys and tools you can affect meaningful change at your organization. You need a scientific approach to survey design that helps you ask, understand, and act on the right things. That starts with selecting the right survey partner.
When selecting employee engagement survey software, it's about more than just choosing a tool; it's about finding a solution that aligns with your strategic goals.
Here's a checklist to help you choose the right partner for your organization:
✅ Efficient survey launch. Ensure the software allows for quick survey setup and launch, respecting your time constraints but still delivering a quality implementation.
✅ Monitor participation rates. Look for features that enable you to track employee survey participation in real-time and provide communication tools.
✅ Provide responsive support. Ensure the vendor offers prompt technical and customer support throughout the survey process. Ask questions like:
✅ Advanced reporting and analytics. Your software should offer an intuitive online system for easy data access, survey customization, and advanced reporting capabilities.
✅ Training and best practices: Choose a vendor that provides comprehensive training and resources for effective tool usage and data interpretation.
✅ Continuous listening tools: The software should support a variety of surveys (pulse, onboarding, engagement, exit) to complement your ongoing engagement strategy.
✅ Industry benchmarks: Opt for a solution that provides benchmarking against similar organizations to gauge your engagement levels.
✅ HRIS Integration: Ensure the software can integrate with your HR Information System for streamlined data management.
✅ Manager support and training: The tool should include resources and dashboards for managers, offering insights like engagement driver analysis, heat maps, and customized reports.
✅ Ongoing innovation: Your chosen vendor should be committed to continuous product enhancement and share their vision and updates regularly.
Select a partner that not only meets these criteria but also shares your commitment to creating a thriving, engaged workplace. That’s where we come in.
Employee engagement survey software can help you understand the big picture and boost employee engagement. You need a platform that helps you capture employee voices with a trusted strategy and efficient tools. You need to maximize participation, get an accurate baseline, and move the needle on results.
Quantum Workplace is built to help you maximize your employee listening efforts. We help you uncover the true meaning behind your employee voice so you can impact what matters most.
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Survey design you can trust.When it comes to measuring employee engagement, any old survey won’t do. Our 30-item engagement survey is designed by talent experts and researchers immersed in the ever-changing workplace. |
Identify trends and share results.Easily understand and share survey results with our robust reporting and analytics. Our custom demographic filters and interactive data visualizations allow you to analyze and view your organizational data any way you want. Simplified dashboards and reporting features help highlight only the most important takeaways for managers and teams. |
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Add context with unparalleled benchmarks.Elevate your culture as a competitive advantage with our benchmarks. As the engagement partner behind America’s Best Places to Work contest, our database enables you to compare your results to thousands of organizations in your industry and size category. |
Enable managers with easy access.Managers are on the front lines of engagement but are often under-equipped to play a leading role. Our tools make it easy for managers to understand results, take targeted action, and stay accountable for improvement. |
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Add context with unparalleled benchmarks.Elevate your culture as a competitive advantage with our benchmarks. As the engagement partner behind America’s Best Places to Work contest, our database enables you to compare your results to thousands of organizations in your industry and size category. |
Hold leaders and team accountable for action.Insight is useless if you don’t take action. Our action planning tools empower teams to understand survey results, create targeted plans, and act on strategies that will increase engagement, performance, and retention. |
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Reach every employee, wherever they are.Don’t choose tech that makes capturing feedback from a dispersed or deskless workforce difficult. You need solutions that can reach, activate, and empower employees who are always on-the-go. |
Uncover the meaning behind employee comments.Still reading through employee survey comments one-by-one? Quantum Workplace’s AI-powered Narrative Insights is an award winning solution that summarizes your comments in seconds – revealing underlying themes and sentiments, surfacing sensitive topics, and highlighting where you need to dig deeper. |
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If you’re looking to level up your employee listening strategy, download our eBook: The Employee Listening Flywheel.
Ready to see how Quantum Workplace can help you move the needle? Get a custom demo today!
Published September 24, 2024 | Written By Kristin Ryba
