What Is an Employee Engagement Survey

Employee Engagement Survey guide will be described in this article. A questionnaire that makes it easier to gather both numerical and qualitative information on the motivations behind employee engagement as well as its challenges is known as an employee engagement survey. According to Forbes, a disengaged worker costs you close to $16,000 year at average salary! Additionally, this increases to $27,200 for senior professionals. Surveys about employee engagement might help you prevent disengagement and increase productivity. Read our comprehensive guide on how to do this and discover which providers of employee engagement surveys you should be keeping an eye out for in 2020.

What is An employee Engagement Survey?

In this article, you can know about What Is an Employee Engagement Survey here are the details below;

Employee engagement surveys are defined as questionnaires that are distributed in a variety of formats to evaluate the existing levels of employee engagement, the challenges facing your current engagement activities, and the efficacy of those programs.

Indicators of productivity, employee retention, and general workplace happiness make engagement a top priority for any business. Companies frequently learn about employee disengagement after it’s too late, and remedying this can be expensive. Employee engagement surveys can help in this situation.

Employee engagement surveys have different formats from firm to organization, or even between divisions. For instance, a small team may opt to deploy brief pulse surveys periodically rather than comprehensive questionnaires that generate voluminous volumes of data.

To assess the success of your initiatives, you can also conduct brief internal surveys. You can then use the data from these surveys to enhance your initiatives without revealing the findings to the full workforce. External surveys, on the other hand, are designed to assess the overall levels of engagement inside your company and to update your staff on workplace engagement.

Engagement surveys of benchmarks

Two benchmarks can be used to compare employee engagement surveys.

1. Internal survey benchmarks: The organization establishes these standards for what defines positive engagement within the organization, and they allow for comparison of engagement growth over time.
2. External surveys benchmarks: These benchmarks allow you to assess how engaged your company is in comparison to its rivals. Since external benchmarks compare institutions that may or may not be at the identical level as yours, they may not be a good indicator of internal engagement levels. For instance, if your company is small and just has one location, it is impossible to compare your engagement levels to those of a company that operates in multiple countries, has been around for much longer than you have, and has a culture that is unrelated to your own.

Considerations when defining an employee engagement survey

Despite the above variations, you can define an employee engagement survey by keeping in mind the following general guidelines:

1. An industry standard is the 12-month (annual) survey. The typical employee tenure is 2+ years, which makes it easier to collect useful data from most employees.
2. Companies that are just starting out with employee engagement surveys can use an 18-month frequency and use extensive questions. You will have a ton of data from this to compare to other polls in the future.
3. At crucial times in the employee experience lifecycle, such as during onboarding and offboarding, shorter surveys can be distributed.
4. To safeguard the privacy of employees, surveys are often made anonymous. You can get this right with the aid of an employee engagement survey provider.
5. These surveys require some level of engagement analytics skill. In order to come up with actionable insights, you should be able to see patterns and correlations in the data you collect. then put the appropriate measures in place to guarantee that engagement levels rise or remain stable.

Benefits of administering employee engagement surveys

It can appear that implementing employee engagement surveys is a drawn-out and challenging process. Why therefore does it remain a constant for all top employers?

There are several important advantages to conducting an employee engagement survey.

1. They quantify employee engagementOpens a replacement window, which is a challenging phenomenon to gauge. They thus aid in preventing turnover by identifying instances of poor engagement for particular teams and line managers.
2. They can be altered to elicit particular information. The survey can be altered to suit your particular needs. If your business recently underwent a shift, for instance, you could survey your staff to learn how they felt about the change.
3. They aid in spreading company awareness among the workforce. By asking your employees for input on a particular component of the workplace, you enhance their awareness and the likelihood that they would reconsider their behavior or response. This is a sometimes neglected advantage of these surveys.

Now that you have a solid understanding of what employee engagement surveys are, let’s look at how you may begin the employee engagement survey process. Could technology providers assist you in automating survey programs and obtaining more precise results? Find out now.

Breaking Down the Employee Engagement Survey Process: 5 Steps

The initial survey is always the most difficult to conduct. Setting a target and gaining senior executives’ support can be challenging when the employee engagement survey process is just getting underway. To start the initiative, we advise using the following five-step methodology:

Fig 1. the method for developing and executing employee engagement surveys

1. Identify the targeted employee group

Choose an employee group that is representative of all departments, levels of employment, and locations for your initial survey. Count up from the lowest-level employees to the most important team leaders. With the help of this group, you may establish a baseline from which you can build more in-depth surveys to assess if involvement has increased or decreased over time. Also check Jane Software Alternatives

Targeted employee engagement surveys, for instance, might be more effective for larger, multi-location organizations. For instance, you might wish to conduct department-specific surveys in Location A if there is a hint of disengagement there in order to identify the root of the issue.

2. Define the objective of the survey

Trying to collect information on all engagement drivers is a common error made by businesses when conducting employee engagement surveys. Never forget that no one poll can provide you with a complete picture of employee engagement throughout your entire organization.

It is preferable to begin with a hypothesis, such as that X% of the workforce may leave due to Y issue (such as a lack of remote working possibilities). Prepare your survey questions to confirm or refute this theory. Making ensuring your employee engagement survey is outcome-oriented by using this best practice will make the next stage much simpler.

3. Obtain buy-in and investments for engagement survey technology

Manual surveys are not very useful in the digital age. The manual approach requires a lot of work, even if you have the necessary data analysis skills. By the time the effects are ready, engagement levels may have changed, necessitating the need for a new employee engagement survey.

In order to garner support for your decision to support in an employee engagement survey forum, you can come senior management or even the C-suite armed with a clear survey purpose. You can choose a vendor who meets your needs if your leadership supports you in doing so.

4. Partner with an employee engagement survey vendor to design the survey

Any employee engagement survey process begins with the design phase and lasts through analysis. Now is the time to create the survey’s last questions, estimate how long it will last, and complete the survey’s questionnaire. Ideally, it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete an employee engagement survey; 6–10 minutes is even better.

You can get assistance with this stage from an employee engagement survey provider who will provide open-ended and closed-ended questions as well as questions that can be measured. Here is a representation of each type:

• How likely are you to suggest your place of employment to friends and family? From 1 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely), give your rating.
• Which aspect of your job makes you the most enthusiastic to arrive each day? Pick one of the following: “Free pantry, flexible hours, or Friday office fun.”
• “What do you believe to be the greatest strength of your company?””

Aim to collaborate with vendors who provide both pre-set employee engagement questionnaires and the flexibility to customize the questionnaires in the future for organization-specific results.

5. Administer the survey

Employee engagement surveys are useless if no action is taken as a result of them. Your staff would feel underappreciated and ignored if you use a survey solely to gather data without taking any further action. Even if the length of the questionnaire is drastically cut down, they will be less likely to take part in the subsequent cycle of engagement surveys.

Informing your staff of the survey results is the first (and simplest) step you can take. To graphically depict the data in an appealing fashion, collaborate with the provider of your employee engagement survey. Blogs, newsletters, and printed materials can all be used to disseminate this information. You can simultaneously use predictive and prescriptive analytics to transform survey data into HR choices that need to be taken.

5 IT companies to consider to increase employee engagement

When it comes to working with an employee engagement survey vendor, there are many platforms to select from. Here are five businesses that have excelled in this market by combining data analytics with a keen understanding of people.

1. Lattice

Lattice offers two employee engagement survey products: one that aids in the creation of pulse insights and one that is used for annual or biannual surveys. With the service of the software, you can create a survey and email it to your staff for completion.

For the development of complex insights, Lattice features a specialized analytics module. For your convenience, the solution interacts with well-known HRIS systems as BambooHR and Namely.

2. Hyphen

Data on employee engagement is used by Hyphen to create dashboards. You can distribute surveys using text, Slack, or Facebook Workplace; these questions have been approved by researchers at NYU. With built-in templates and automatic engagement ideas, Hyphen makes post-survey actions simple. If you want a mobile-first rollout and predictive capabilities, work with this seller of employee engagement surveys.

3. Culture Amp

For measuring staff performance and engagement, Culture Amp provides robust surveys and data. The data scientists and psychologists that created the dashboard can help you create cutting-edge surveys even if you don’t have the necessary internal knowledge. Managers can act on survey results thanks to the creation of tailored dashboards for various stakeholders. Finally, a thorough heatmap reduces a big amount of data into an approachable manner.

4. CultureIQ

This seller of employee engagement surveys offers many questionnaires, such as pulse programs and onboarding/exit surveys. The business has a group of consulting professionals on staff who can help you through the process of an employee engagement survey. Step #2 in our suggested survey strategy for new businesses is to define your survey objectives. CultureIQ provides a patented framework called ClearAdvantage that makes this task straightforward.

5. SurveyMonkey

Beyond simple employee engagement surveys, one business does more. It includes a complete toolkit that can be used to build a wide range of surveys for internal and external use. SurveyMonkey is a great choice for data-driven businesses since it combines components like market research, customer analysis, employee engagement, performance managementOpens a new window, and performance managementOpens a new window into one comprehensive package.

Employee engagement surveys can significantly alter your organization’s culture and the way you utilize your human resources. Inspiring examples are shown below.

How Companies Use Employee Engagement Surveys: Examples to learn from

Measuring and acting on survey data is crucial, whether you choose to utilize an internal model or collaborate with a provider of employee engagement surveys. You may set the stage for data-driven decisions in HR by posing the correct questions and gaining reliable insights.

1. Air Canada boosted engagement across diverse cultures

30,000+ employees from different countries were surveyed for the employee engagement questionnaires that Air Canada wanted to use. To reduce the chance of prejudice, the company selected a platform that prioritized anonymity. The survey method’ primary goals were listed as employee wellbeing, support, and the workplace environment.

In order to let employee groups know their opinions were taken into consideration, Air Canada also distributed the survey results to the whole workforce.

2. Mott identified micro-pain points in the engagement

An employee meeting survey that could be accessed by floor employees who don’t often check their emails was required by the manufacturing business Mott. To distribute pulse polls, the company selected a mobile-first platform. Mott sent further in-depth surveys to collect precise data when pain spots were found. Also check EngageBay Alternatives

Mott could greatly increase participation by substituting the yearly survey with a format more suited to the manufacturing industry, and its manager feedback survey would have an amazing 98% participation rate as a result.

3. Vend optimized its engagement spends using surveys

The Australian-based retail software business Vend was curious as to what was the main driver of employee engagement. By doing this, its HR investments would be maximized. Vend chose to conduct employee engagement surveys every two years and found that the demand for learning and development (L&D) had increased by 23%. Additionally, each survey saw an average employee participation rate of 90%, giving the business confidence in the caliber of employee input.

Final Takeaways

Low participation rates are caused by the time and effort required for employees to complete surveys. However, it’s impossible to discount the advantages of engagement surveys, which is why they’ll remain a standard practice for businesses.

Creating, implementing, and getting employee engagement survey findings can be made simpler by:

• Establish a series of standard inquiries that can be applied across a number of years to measure any change.
• Using sentiment analysis, draw conclusions from open-ended questions.
• Inquire about any investments you believe may not be effective at reducing HR costs.
• Receive regular feedback to foresee the risk of high-value talent leaving.
• To reduce subjectivity and bias, get explicit employee insights.

The employee voice needs to be heard if an organization wants to create an employee-centric culture. Employee engagement surveys are a great approach to accomplish this and give your staff a sense of value while also aiming for more wise business decisions.