Employee surveys: A complete guide

Looking for expert advice with your employee engagement survey? We can help.

Surveys remain a fixture in most corporate calendars. However, many either don’t provide useful results or the results are not used correctly (or at all). By and large, this comes down to failures in planning, design, and processes.

To help you navigate the various decisions that you'll have to answer, we’ve created a comprehensive guide on planning, launching, and reporting any surveys. After reading our guide, you’ll know why your organisational roadmap must start with an employee survey. Let’s get right to it!

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Contents

· What Is an Employee Engagement Survey?

· How Can an Employee Engagement Survey Benefit Businesses?

· How to Carry Out an Employee Engagement Survey

· Planning an Employee Engagement Survey

· Designing an Employee Engagement Survey

· Launching an Employee Engagement Survey

· After the Employee Engagement Survey Closes

· Start Your Survey Today with ETS

· Employee Engagement Survey FAQs

What Is an Employee Engagement Survey?

An employee engagement survey is a tool utilised by companies to gather feedback from employees about factors concerning the overall employee experience. For example, an employee survey may cover job satisfaction, work environment, engagement, leadership effectiveness, and career development opportunities.

This can help organisations determine how emotionally and mentally invested employees are in their current roles and in the company’s success.

How Can an Employee Engagement Survey Benefit Businesses?

Never underestimate the power of what an employee engagement survey can do for your organisation. Businesses can benefit in several ways, including:

1. Improving employee retention

Engaged, fulfilled employees are less likely to leave your business. Engagement surveys can assist companies in detecting areas where employees feel unfulfilled and addressing them promptly.

According to the stats, businesses with high employee engagement enjoy a 59% lower turnover rate.

2. Enhancing productivity

When they feel heard, supported and secure, employees are typically more motivated and productive. These employees are therefore likelier to be aligned with company goals and interested in progressing both themselves and your business.

Studies show that, unsurprisingly, engaged employees typically outperform disengaged workers, and organisations with high engagement levels amongst employees are 21% more profitable.

3. Providing insights into leadership performance

The fantastic thing about employee engagement surveys is that they offer insights into leadership effectiveness from the perspective of those directly affected by that leadership.

If workers express dissatisfaction with leadership decision-making, communication, or anything else, businesses can implement leadership training or adjust strategies to enhance the working relationships between staff and managers. This could lead to better results in the long term.

4. Supporting employee development

Career progression has become an important part of the workplace experience, and employee engagement surveys can gather feedback on this. Businesses can develop more efficient training sessions and learning strategies by knowing employees’ thoughts on career development opportunities.

76% of employees are looking for opportunities to expand their careers. So, providing workers with a means to excel makes them likelier to become more satisfied and less likely to leave your company.

5. Fostering abetter workplace community

Workplace culture is sometimes overlooked in business, but it’s a crucial factor in employee engagement and satisfaction. If your employees feel supported and valued, this can only mean good news for your company. The numbers speak for themselves; 94% of entrepreneurs and 88% of job seekers think a healthy culture at work is important for success.

Employee engagement surveys can help organisations discover what workers think about the current culture and guide them towards maintaining or improving it by addressing the relevant feedback.

6. Offering valuable learning experiences

There are many things businesses can learn from employee engagement surveys. For example, organisations can better understand job satisfaction, workplace culture, relationships, work-life balance, and career growth. By understanding if employees feel satisfied or dissatisfied with these aspects, your organisation can then work to implementany necessary changes.

With so many benefits to gain, don't let organisational change put you off running an engagement survey!

How to Carry Out an Employee Engagement Survey

So, how do you actually conduct an employee engagement survey? This section will take you through everything you need to know, from the initial planning to the post-survey analysis.

Planning an Employee Engagement Survey

When should you run an employee engagement survey, and how often should it be done?

Consider how and where survey results will be used. If your business plans each calendar year, it’ll be best to run a survey before October so that you have the results back in time to inform budgets and planning. Other companies often choose to undertake survey employees in the first quarter of the year.

Frequency-wise, there’s no right answer, and we’d never advocate running more regular surveys just for the sake of it. Your business needs should guide how often you formally seek employees’ views. A single, company-wide annual engagement survey is now considered a minimum requirement.

Many organisations supplement this with smaller and more frequent ‘pulse check’ surveys. Often, these will only be for sample groups of employees rather than the entire population. Explore more about running employee pulse surveys.

How and when should you involve key stakeholders?

Ensure your stakeholders feel involved in the survey process from the start. Hold stakeholder interviews with samples of line managers and ask them what they want to get out of the survey and what it should measure. Have similar sessions with senior managers and employees too before launch. This up-front research will mean you measure what matters most to your people.

What's the lead time for launching an employee engagement survey?

We recommend an 8-12-week lead time from commencement to survey launch. While we've frequently launched surveys far more quickly, this timescale allows for things like IT checks, platform testing and sign-off from your stakeholders. Also, it ensures you have a chance to plan a communication strategy for the programme.

Designing an Employee Engagement Survey

What survey methodology should you choose?

Naturally, you want the channels or platforms that make it easiest for employees to participate in the engagement survey. If you have large numbers of office-based employees, an online survey platform is probably best.

However, in retail or manufacturing industries, where many employees are based remotely or on the shop/factory floor, you’ll need to find other ways to reach them. Establish whether employees have easy access to a PC. If they don’t, could you provide a shared one or a tablet in a communal room? Or do they have smartphones? A paper-based survey can be considered if none of these options are feasible. You can, of course, opt for a mixed-media survey methodology.

Discover what employee survey type you need for your company.

How do you design an engagement survey questionnaire?

Having a clear purpose for a survey is really important. To measure engagement, you must ensure the employee survey questions align with your business priorities and cover important employee issues. Doing this should mean the survey helps to drive business improvement. It will provide business leaders with useful insights, helping them understand what engages their people and enabling the employees to have their say on important issues.

If you’ve run previous employee surveys, start by reviewing these and carrying out statistical and qualitative reviews to identify any staff engagement survey questions that should be retained or reworded. Employee engagement is organisation-specific, so what makes an engaged employee at one company will be different in another. That’s why your questionnaire must be specific, actionable and relevant to your employees and the decision-makers in the business.

Having said this, you’ll also want to include benchmark questions with the same or similar wording as those used in other organisations’ surveys, enabling you to compare your results externally.

What list of questions should you include in an engagement survey?

To say “you need to ask the right questions” is, I appreciate, stating the obvious. But it bears repeating because there are no right answers to the wrong questions. So, the many employee listening initiatives being run have little to no value if they aren’t covering relevant issues.

What are the best employee engagement survey questions to ask, then? The more ‘standard’ ones you’ll want to include must be supplemented by those that measure key issues specific to your business, its goals, and employees.

It should also not focus entirely on engagement. To get a broader picture of your employee experience, you should also include questions directly relating to enablement and empowerment (more on that later). Additionally, asking some open-text questions where relevant can prove insightful.

As a starting point, here’s a list of employee survey questions we strongly suggest you include:

Engagement

I am proud to work for the company
I would recommend the company as a great place to work
I intend to be still working for the company in a year
Overall, I am satisfied working for the company
I feel a strong sense of belonging to [brand name]
Morale in the company is high at present
I am willing to go the extra mile for the company
I have recommended the products and services of [brand name]
I am treated fairly within the company
My job provides me with challenge and interest
I am planning to stay with the company for the next 12 months

Empowerment & Enablement

I have the appropriate level of freedom within my role to do my job well
I feel like a trusted member of the company
Overall, I have everything I need to do my job well
I feel fully supported to do my job well

My role, training & development

My basic pay is fair for the work I do
I am satisfied with the performance appraisal system
I am happy with my opportunities for career development
I enjoy my job
I understand what is expected of me in my job
I feel I have equal and sufficient opportunity to apply for roles
My job makes the best use of my skills and abilities
I always work hard to do everything I can to deliver a good result
I feel supported in my personal development
I have had opportunities in the last year to develop my skills
I have received feedback for ideas I put forward
I receive timely praise or recognition
Performance reviews are effective
Poor performance or inappropriate behaviour is dealt with in an effective manner

Leadership & communication

I feel that I am well-managed
My immediate manager shows appreciation for the work I do
My manager transparently communicates information (i.e. clearly and honestly)
My ideas and views count (employee voice)
I can approach my supervisor or manager if I have concerns with work colleagues
I believe my supervisor or manager will deal with complaints in a confidential and supportive manner
My supervisor/manager keeps me informed about important issues
I feel well-informed about the company
I am satisfied with the level of communication I receive

Work environment

The physical environment is satisfactory
I am provided with the right tools and equipment
People in my work area are appropriately protected from hazards
We are encouraged to come up with ideas
We are encouraged to challenge existing ways of doing things
I am comfortable sharing my ideas and opinions, knowing there will be no negative consequences
There is a good sense of teamwork
There is cooperation between different areas of the business
I believe that the company is well-led
The company encourages me to try new ways of working [be innovative]

Pay & benefits

All things considered, I am satisfied with my pay
I believe the company has a good benefits package
The company treats its employees in a fair and ethical manner

‍Other

Actions that will improve the company will be taken as a result of this survey
By its actions, the company shows that its employees are important

It’s also worth looking beyond typical survey questions to gain real business value. You could, for example, include more detailed demographic questions by adding in gender, ethnicity, age, first language, etc., which will mean you can really ‘drill down’ into trends and gain additional insights from a diversity and inclusion perspective.

How long should an employee survey be?

The number of questions needed should consider the areas identified as significant, as well as the culture and employees’ preferences.

As a general rule, though, most of our clients have 30 to 40 questions for a ‘full census’ survey, but it can range between 10 and 60+. Ideally, you should aim for a survey that takes no longerthan 10-15 minutes to complete.

What rating scale should you use for an employee survey?

Four or five-point Likert scales are the most common. You’ll need to consider what will work best for your organisation if choosing between the two:

Four-point scale – data is easier to interpret, but forcing respondents to make a positive or negative response may mean that some issues appear better/worse than they really are
Five-point scale – it is easier to distinguish between strengths and weaknesses, but it can be tricky to decipher clear issues between neutral and negative scores.

What questions are included in an engagement index?

Your engagement index should include a small number of questions that are statistically proven to be key measures of engagement for your employees. Our ‘Think, Feel, Do’ model (below) underpins all questionnaires we design. It helps you measure what’s most important for your employees. This works by assuming that what employees think drives what they feel and do in the workplace – their engagement.

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What’s the best method for accessing an online survey?

There are a few options here – most of our clients use a unique link, team code, or open link access. The most suitable one depends on the workforce, how the survey will be communicated and what devices employees can access.

Where possible, we usually recommend using unique link access due to data accuracy. However, where not all employees have a company email address – like retailers – team codes can work well. Open link access is favoured when it is not possible to preload employee data.

Launching an Employee Engagement Survey

How can you ensure smooth survey rollout in bigger businesses?

To ensure clear and consistent messaging when surveying different regions, provide template materials for local HR teams or business units. A central survey administration hub could also work well as a source for materials like template emails, manager guides, and action plans.

How can you create a communications plan for a survey launch?

Identify your audience groups, which will likely include managers and employees, and tailor your approach and messaging to each accordingly. Consider how best to tap into each group’s motivation to participate in/support the survey.

For managers, show how increased engagement could help them lead a more successful team, aiding their own rewards and development. If they buy into the rationale for the survey, they’re more likely to champion it to their teams and encourage participation.

For employees, make the survey relevant by showing how giving their views will benefit them personally. Explain what the survey is to be used for – for instance, to improve the work environment and practices – and use ‘you said, we did’ messages to play back to them how previous employee feedback has led to improvements.

See our guide on creating an effective engagement survey communications plan for more advice on this.

How can you create a buzz around an engagement survey launch?

Engagement surveys are likelier to be successful when the process is more collaborative and feels less business-led. If you involve your stakeholder groups from the outset, this should happen naturally, with these people helping to increase ‘buy-in’ across the population.

Also, create a survey brand. By giving your survey its own name/identity that fits the culture, it will be easier to embed engagement and the survey process and to get your people interested and excited about giving their views.

How can you encourage higher survey participation?

It’s important to get authentic participation. Never coerce employees into taking part. Instead, explain what’s in it for them, make it easy to participate and use senior leaders as ‘survey champions’. Also, stress the confidentiality of the process.

If you use an online employee survey tool, see if you can access live completion rates. This data can be used in strategic communication stargeting regions or business units with low participation to encourage employees to take part.

After the Employee Engagement Survey Closes

What's the best way to report back on employee survey results?

Reporting the employee survey results and highlighting what will change as a result of the survey is essential in reinforcing the value of the survey for employees. It’s also good to share results quickly after the survey closes to maintain momentum.

You’ll also want to deliver the results in the optimum format for your stakeholder groups. Think about who needs access to what.

For senior executives and leaders – present survey headlines underpinned by some analysis and commentary of the main trends.

For line managers or business area heads – provide them with a summary report highlighting what’s happening in their team/area. For context, you could also include a comparison with other teams and the business as a whole. Separately, you can also provide access to the full survey data to allow them to dig deeper into it where necessary.

For employees – use a high-impact summary of the results and key themes and, just as importantly, tell them what comes next and how the results will be used.

How should you support post-survey action planning?

Usually, action planning is seen as a stage in a linear engagement survey process, which naturally comes after the results. However, for it to work best, we strongly suggest you consider the following key themes from day one.

By keeping these things in mind throughout, your survey is far likelier to lead to targeted action being taken with the involvement of teams and managers at a local level:

Process – what’s the most appropriate action-planning approach for your organisation? Think about your organisational culture and structure. Should local line managers, HR teams, or business area heads lead this?
Accountability – which stakeholders are crucial to ensuring action plans take place? As already mentioned, make sure these people are consulted over the questionnaire content to ensure the survey will be relevant to them and offer valuable insights.
Translating data into action – provide your audience with useable (and user-friendly) data. As we covered earlier, this means creating different reporting outputs for groups. Beyond this, though, provide them with action planning templates and tips to get teams involved in the process.

Learn more about this in our seven-step manager action planning guide.

Start Your Survey Today with ETS

At ETS, we can help your company move from data gathering to actionable steps. Through an expert-led approach and tailored, strategically-aligned programme, we help companies like yours quickly identify priorities and generate focused action plans. We also offer tool kits and workshops to arm managers with the required resources to drive meaning fulchange.

The big risk, as we see it, is too much time spent gathering and poring over data at the expense of the time spent acting on what we find in the numbers. This issue is somewhat exacerbated by things like ‘always on’ employee listening tools. A balance isneeded…

Here are a few dos and don’ts on how to achieve such a balance:

Do: Gain a good understanding of the current conditions within your environment, which either prevent managers from considering the information or prevent them from taking responsibility to act on it
Do: Make sure the information you're giving to managers is relevant, timely, and meaningful to your people and organisational goals (this will create personal accountability for driving change)
Do: Train and support managers to quickly sift out the key nuggets of information and translate these into effective actions
Don’t: Swamp managers with so much data they can’t see the wood for the trees!
Don’t: Spend so much time measuring and crunching numbers if it limits your ability (and time) to act on what you find

And, if in doubt, focus on these three common key drivers as a starting point:

Having opportunities for career development
A strong customer focus
Having a strong employer voice

Working with our team may be just the solution you’ve been looking for if you’re looking for assistance in creating, carrying out, and, most importantly, acting on your employee engagement survey.

We go beyond gathering data – we help companies transform their survey results into strategic actions, ensuring that any implemented engagement efforts are both data-driven and effective.

Employee Engagement Survey FAQs

What is the average response rate for employee surveys?

It depends! In our experience, average employee survey response rates can vary a fair bit depending on the survey methodology used:

· Online survey = 79% response rate

· Paper (offline) survey = 58%

· Mixed (online and paper) survey = 69%

How can you get remote workers to complete a survey?

If you have employees with either no company email address and no access to a suitable personal device (computer or smartphone), you’ll need another way to enable them to complete a survey.

You could do this by setting up ‘engagement kiosks’, designated areas for employees to access your online survey and complete it privately and at a time that suits them. This might be a PC in a break room or a bank of laptops on the factory floor.

An alternative is to communicate survey access instructions to your employees via 'pigeon-holes' in pay slips or by creating and distributing QR codes on posters so employees can scan them with their own mobile devices to gain access to the survey this way.

Or there's the old and somewhat unfashionable route of paper surveys. It naturally means additional admin, but it remains the best option to reach remote employee groups in some circumstances. It remains a method still used by around 12% of our current list of clients for some of their people.

How do you know which areas to focus actions on?

Your staff engagement survey questions are unlikely to all be priority areas for action. That’s not to say that understanding and addressing them isn’t important, just that they may not be the highest priority.

This is where managers must understand the areas and factors that most drive employee engagement. Naturally, questions that are low-scoring inthese areas will be ones to consider for possible action.

How do you define and develop your chosen actions?

Leading a collaborative process within teams works really well. Support managers to involve employees in a post-survey discussion to explore survey findings for their team, consider where to focus actions, and even what the best solutions might be.

Above all, ensure managersand teams keep action plans targeted on a manageable number of areas (maximumof three).

How do you track and measure the progress ofactions?

Make action plans visible to increase accountability and ensure they remain on the agenda. You could provide a central hub (on the company intranet, for example) where managers record their team actions.

As well as creating transparency, this also helps ‘action owners’ to identify other owners of similar actions, encouraging knowledge-sharing. Furthermore, survey actions should be an ongoing agenda item in team meetings to check progress, and progress could also be communicated in workplace public spaces or staff areas.

Need Help with Employee Engagement Survey Planning?

Are you seeking support with any aspect of your employee surveys or listening programme?

We can help streamline the entire engagement survey process, from the initial customised design to the actionable insights, complete with a user-friendly platform with real-time reporting and advanced analytics. So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch for a chat today.

If you’re also looking for help evaluating prospective engagement survey providers or tools, you may find our other resources valuable, such as our guidance on the cost of employee surveys.

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