What is an Employee Engagement Survey and How to Run One?

Happy and satisfied employees remain a company's most productive asset, contributing to long-term business growth and consistency. Employee engagement levels determine how committed a company’s employees are to their work.

However, there is no one common metric to measure engagement. That’s where employee engagement surveys come in, and they’re one of the best ways to measure engagement levels on a periodic basis. The aim of these surveys is to take employees' pulses by asking a wide range of questions about different aspects of their workplace experience.

In this post, we’ll understand what employee engagement surveys are, how to conduct one, and how to use the collected data to identify and make significant changes for a better employee experience.

What is an Employee Engagement Survey?

An employee engagement survey comprises a wide range of questions that aim to help company leaders and HR professionals understand the factors influencing employees’ satisfaction with their work and the company. These questions must cover the 5 C’s of engagement, directly influencing how enthusiastic and proactive employees are towards their work tasks, team members, leaders, and peers.

An employee engagement survey can include questions in different formats, such as multiple-choice, rating on a given scale, numerical scoring, describing experiences, emoji-based rating, and many others. The results can give a clear picture of how well the company is doing with its existing employee engagement initiatives.

Moreover, several AI platforms help derive data-powered insights from engagement surveys to accurately predict how a company can improve employee satisfaction and commitment, from the team level to aligning with the company’s vision and goals.

Examples of Employee Engagement Survey Questions You Can Ask

Employee engagement surveys involve understanding all the aspects at the workplace that can positively or negatively influence employees’ behavior towards work, their team members, peers, and leaders.

Questions in the employee engagement survey are generally split into different categories to help gather responses in an organized manner and understand root-cause issues and blockers. Furthermore, the questions must cover a mix of open-ended, multiple choice, eNPS-style, and Likert scale questions, through quick pulse surveys or detailed experience sharing sessions.

Here are some categories for classifying your engagement survey questions and examples of how you can prepare them.

Leadership and Trust

An employee’s immediate supervisor and subsequent higher leaders in their organizational hierarchy significantly impact how they are engaged with their workplace. Here are some questions to learn how your managers are efficient in handling their teams and where there is scope for improvement.

1. On a scale of 10, how have your manager(s) guided you in navigating the organization?
2. My manager has heard me out whenever I needed guidance or help. Yes/No.
3. What great qualities do you appreciate about your team and group leader?
4. Have you faced a conflict of opinions with your manager? Was it resolved?
5. Suggest some changes you wish to see in your leaders.

Career Development and Growth

Work goals should not let employees deviate from their career progression pathway, through continuous learning, upskilling, and ascending the corporate ladder. Engagement surveys must assess how employees remain focused on their career goals and how their current work influences how they see their growth.

1. How satisfied are you with your growth since you joined the company? Rate with a set of 5 emojis. <<emoji scale>>
2. Have you received the proper guidance and support required to support your career? Yes or No.
3. How can the company help you in keeping you aligned with your career goals?
4. Have you pursued any relevant courses to upskill yourself?
5. How have your team members and peers from the company guided you in your growth in this company?

Company Culture and Values

A company’s overall work culture makes employees feel at home and work with peers from diverse backgrounds. Your employee engagement surveys must include questions about your work culture since bad workplace cultures are often a reason for large turnovers.

1. On a scale of 5, what would you rate your sense of belonging in the company?
2. How would you rate your ability to communicate with different SPOCs?
3. Do your leaders encourage and support you to engage in healthy competition and challenges?
4. Have you ever felt unheard or unrepresented for any specific reason?
5. Has your background been a barrier in the workplace during any instance?

Teamwork and Collaboration

A large part of an employee’s engagement levels is directly influenced by how they get along and work harmoniously with their team members. So, your employee involvement questionnaire must include a good mix of questions, as suggested below, to understand if your employee is satisfied when working with their team.

1. Describe your team in one word.
2. Choose which attributes make your team contribute to your growth? Encouraging, embracing diversity, open communication, balancing workload, and helping during crises.
3. Rate your team's friendliness from 1-10.
4. Have you faced any challenges while working with your team? How was it resolved?
5. Would you switch teams within this company or stay in your current team?

Job Satisfaction and Motivation

Several factors contribute to an employee’s satisfaction levels and preference to work in a company, including a mix of direct and indirect benefits. It is essential to understand if a company is providing all expected satisfaction measures or missing out on key provisions that can lead to resentment and turnover.

1. What motivates you to come to work every day?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our employee engagement initiatives?
3. Can we include any initiative that your peers outside seem to benefit from?
4. What is one company policy or provision you wish to change or revise?
5. How have the company’s policies motivated you to work better?

Work-Life Balance and Well-Being

A hectic work schedule with no time for personal life often causes employees to feel burned out. Engagement surveys must be conducted regularly, with mandatory questions on employees' workload and abilities to balance work and personal time.

1. How satisfied are you with the work-life balance in this company? Rate with emoticons.
2. Rate on 10, how do you find the flexibility of your work schedules?
3. Are you getting sufficient time for yourself and to spend time with your loved ones?
4. List out the activities you do outside of work to engage yourself.
5. How do you spend time with your team members outside of work?

What are the Types of Employee Engagement Surveys

Measuring employee engagement levels involves gauging employees’ responses to various day-to-day activities and experiences at the workplace. Since experiences and corresponding engagement levels are susceptible to frequent changes, employment engagement surveys must be conducted frequently in different formats.

Here are some standard formats of employee engagement surveys so that employees do not feel burdened by a monotonous survey template.

1. Pulse surveys

What are they? Pulse surveys are short and frequent check-in surveys that help gather accurate feedback from employees on any engagement initiatives or employee engagement concerns.

Frequency: Pulse surveys can be conducted every fortnight or month to understand employee satisfaction levels and responses to new policies or initiatives.

Ideal Survey Questions: Pulse surveys consist mainly of scoring or rating-based questions that employees can fill in quickly in less than ten to fifteen minutes. They can be offline or online.

2. Annual Engagement Surveys

What are they? Annual surveys consist of questions from several areas, as discussed in the previous section. They try to gather a complete view of an employee’s experience through ups and downs in the current work year.

Frequency: Annual surveys are typically collected at the end of a work year or at a specific time when the company decides to analyze employee engagement levels for revisions.

Ideal Survey Questions: Annual surveys comprise all questions, ranging from multiple choices and binary answers to emotion-rating, scale-rating, and open-ended questions. More weightage is given to questions where employees share their experiences in their own words.

3. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

What are they? The eNPS is an industry standard for measuring overall employee satisfaction levels on a scale of 0-10 for different questions. Based on employees' scores, they are classified as detractors (0-6), passives (7-8), and promoters (9-10). A sample question would be: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate your team’s openness to embracing diversity?”

Frequency: eNPS scores can be used to gather feedback at any time for any particular area, such as team friendliness, leadership quality, career development, work-life balance, and more.

Ideal Survey Questions: All questions in eNPS involve employees in giving a score for different aspects that influence their engagement levels. The scores are then added up to classify employee satisfaction levels and provide insights to company leaders or managers.

4. Culture and DEI Surveys

What are they? Culture surveys are conducted to understand how the employees feel about how the company values and honors their work fairly. Such surveys clearly show how a company looks at its talent without biases and provides equal opportunities that improve their satisfaction and engagement.

Frequency: Engagement surveys focused on DEI can be conducted two or three times a year, in addition to any pulse and annual surveys. This way, companies can uproot any challenges in work culture that may slowly contribute to growing resentment.

Ideal Survey Questions: Questions on culture and DEI must be highly specific and let employees rate accurately so that companies can identify any root cause issues at the team or group level. A few open-ended questions may be used to encourage employees to share any cultural or diversity challenges they faced at the workplace.

5. Remote/Hybrid Work Surveys

What are they? Remote work surveys are curated explicitly for employees working in a remote or flexible work setup, where they do not come to work in a physical office setting. Remote engagement surveys are important for gathering employee pulse since remote workers seldom get opportunities to meet and engage with their teams and peers.

Frequency: In addition to the above-discussed surveys, remote employees can take monthly or quarterly surveys specifically aimed at understanding how they engage through company initiatives and feel included.

Ideal Survey Questions: Questions of several types must be focused on understanding how remote workers balance their work and personal lives, how they feel connected to the company, whether they get perks similar to their office peers, and so on.

6. Onboarding and Exit Engagement Surveys

What are they? Engagement surveys during onboarding help gauge employee expectations and understand the gaps between expectation and reality. The survey results help take quick action to prevent abrupt turnover of new joiners within a year. Similarly, engagement surveys during an employee's exit help understand how employees can prevent similar exits.

Frequency: Onboarding engagement surveys are conducted daily during the first week at work and are gradually reduced to weekly, monthly, and quarterly surveys. Exit surveys often happen on the last day after the employee finishes all exit formalities.

Ideal survey questions: Refer to these articles to gain a comprehensive understanding of how to conduct onboarding and exit surveys to gather tangible insights.
For specific question examples, check out our detailed guides on the Best Onboarding Survey Questions and Best Exit Interview Questions.

What are the Benefits of Employee Engagement Surveys

Understanding employee engagement levels is crucial for managers and company leaders to assess how they are faring in retaining the company’s most important asset - the employees. Staff engagement surveys give some of the most accurate insights that help companies take action to prevent any unforeseen calamities for the company’s smooth progress.

Here are some of the tangible benefits that companies witness through employee engagement surveys:

1. Improved Employee Morale and Satisfaction

Surveys are tools for employees to voice their opinions and concerns regarding job satisfaction without fear of judgment. Employees feel empowered when the company values their responses by incorporating their suggestions in future initiatives.

2. Better Retention Rates

One of the most visible results of periodic engagement surveys and corresponding revisions by the company includes a reduced number of turnovers. Surveys help detect areas of concern and suggest companies with necessary rectifications before employees think of quitting.

3. Stronger Leadership, Trust, and Communication

Employee engagement surveys from top leaders and team managers show that they are concerned about employees working with them and are putting effort into resolving genuine concerns. Surveys often act as channels for employees to communicate their concerns without fear, with increased trust in their leaders.

4. Early Detection of Disengagement

Periodic pulse surveys or eNPS scores can often work as warning alarms for companies, alerting them that they must take immediate action to address growing resentment among their employees.

5. Positive Employer Branding

Companies that pay heed to employee engagement from the team-level to the company-level are often some of the best places to work for, with employees bringing in more referrals and peers who wish to stay.

6. Identifying Training/Development Needs

Feedback collected from engagement surveys reveals the exact aid and support they require to help them improve their workplace productivity. Such feedback helps companies organize relevant training and workshops for employees to upskill themselves during work hours.

How to Create and Run an Employee Engagement Survey

While the primary purpose of employee engagement and involvement surveys is to understand employee commitment and satisfaction levels, the necessity to conduct such surveys may stem from various situations. These situations can fall under several categories we discussed earlier.

So, how do companies schedule the right engagement surveys at the right time to take necessary corrective steps to improve employee engagement? Let’s understand the steps below.

Step 1 - Define Objectives

First and foremost, it is crucial to understand the survey's essence and objective, the metrics you require, and then formulate the survey structure.

For instance, if your company has noticed a sudden increase in turnover after their performance appraisals and salary revisions, it likely hints that employees are not satisfied with their compensation.

If there are no other routine surveys scheduled at the moment, you could run an impromptu pulse survey with many questions on how employees feel after the performance appraisal sessions, with a wide variety of questions.

In general, cover the following parameters in your engagement surveys.

• Be clear with the metrics or parameters you wish to understand through the survey, such as team bonding, leadership, work culture, peer bonding, and more.
• Highlight the frequent issues that are reported about the topic.
• Clarify the surveys' target audience: grassroots workers, managers, group heads, leaders, or all of them.

Step 2 - Decide the Survey Frequency and Format

The frequency of an engagement survey varies with the criticality of the influencing factor. For instance, work-life balance and team dynamics surveys need to be conducted more frequently than career-development feedback surveys.

Also, it is possible to combine one or more survey categories in a single survey to get accurate insights. However, taking too many surveys regularly can stress the respondents, sometimes making them fill in their responses for the sake of it.

Surveys can be short pulse surveys, annual, or follow a hybrid approach. The idea is to plan a clear timeline for routine surveys while also providing buffers for any sudden surveys that companies must float during any warning periods.

• Ensure your surveys are well spaced to avoid monotony.
• Avoid scheduling surveys of the same format in rapid succession; for example, follow a pulse feedback survey with an eNPS-style survey.
• Clearly communicate the purpose, frequency, and expected outcomes of the survey to employees at the outset.

Step 3 - Craft the Right Questions

Preparing the survey questions is integral to every small or big engagement survey. It is equally important to shortlist the right questions, which you can act upon, depending on the employees’ responses.

The number of questions is decided by the type of survey and the ideal time employees must spend on the survey. For instance, pulse surveys can have questions for which employees can give emoticon-based ratings or scores on a scale from 0 to 5.

Similarly, culture-based surveys can have multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions where employees share their personal views and opinions. In general, it is best to prepare the entire set of questions that would be part of surveys all year round and then split them based on the survey timeline.

• In every survey, ask only the questions that you can act upon.
• Frame your questions based on the common concerns or any area-specific concerns. Relevant questions have more participation.
• Be clear with the types of questions that will be part of your survey.

Step 4 - Decide on Anonymity vs. Confidentiality

The main aim of surveys is to ensure complete employee participation in sharing their views and opinions, which can be tough face-to-face. Surveys are not meant to be biased toward any employee; they are output-focused rather than seeing who it comes from.

However, employees may still feel anxious about the outcome of their survey results. For such reasons, surveys must always carry a confidentiality notice, where survey results will be conveyed to the corresponding leaders without any mention of names.

If the survey consists of questions about highly sensitive areas, the surveys can be taken anonymously. Surveys on sexual harassment, workplace biases, team conflicts, and others are some areas where employees may wish to remain anonymous.

• Confidentiality messages should be declared along with the survey description before an employee starts a survey.
• Mention whether the survey has options for anonymity or how the survey responses will be processed and shared.
• Above all, convey the importance of the survey, and not answering the survey despite confidentiality measures is a loss for the employees.

Step 5 - Distribute and Collect Results

Several survey-collection online tools and software make floating surveys easier than ever. Any leader or manager can initiate a survey and gather responses for further analysis.

Before sending a survey, the survey administrator must send reminder messages and emails to the target audience regarding the purpose of the survey and its deadline. Similarly, word-of-mouth reminders by team leaders and managers for company-wide surveys help employees take up surveys way before the deadlines.

If using any new tool to collect surveys, make sure your employees have sufficient tutorials to learn about navigating the survey. You can also mention the contact of the survey in charge whom employees can reach out to in case of queries and concerns about taking up the survey.

• Ensure your surveys do not ignore employees on leave or business travel.
• Send repeated reminders for surveys that require mandatory participation.
• Mention the significance and impact of the survey to ensure timely responses.

Step 6 - Analyze Responses and Segment Data

Several survey tools come with built-in analysis and scoring rules that help surveyors easily analyze their survey results. You can also set custom scoring rules and scales to segregate your responses and classify your employees.

Then, compare your survey responses with industry trends or similar surveys published by your competitors and peers. For instance, you can segregate culture-survey responses based on teams and groups in your company. Find out which team has employees reporting the best culture scores, and use them as a benchmark for other teams.

Although most surveys ask for employee details, the published survey results must ideally not carry any names or personal details of employees. This shows that the surveys are result-oriented rather than mentioning who they come from.

• Make use of analysis tools to get accurate data-powered insights from surveys.
• Leverage visualization tools to clearly understand areas of concern.
• Publish results in comparison with appropriate standards and metrics that anyone can decipher.

Step 7 - Share Findings with Employees

Employees gain trust in the company when the company shares the responses and actionable insights from the survey with the employees who participated. Results of comprehensive surveys or surveys with critical importance are best conveyed through company leaders, group heads, team leaders, and managers.

Most survey results are accompanied by the steps the company plans to take to address existing survey findings. This information is best conveyed in a form that employees understand through reports, infographics, informative videos, and statistical charts.

Sometimes, survey results can be followed up with short satisfaction feedback forms to understand if employees feel heard and their opinions are considered for action.

• Communicate the survey findings in several formats and have word-of-mouth discussions to ensure all participants know about the outcomes.
• Find ways to ensure 100% participation in the survey and analyze the hindrances to participation.
• Get the participants’ feedback through online or offline forms to learn if their views have been reflected in the survey.

Step 8 - Take Action and Communicate Changes

The whole point of conducting employee engagement surveys is to find the right direction for progressing towards an employee-friendly workplace. Along with the survey results, companies must communicate the timeline of initiatives and actions they plan to take in response to the survey.

A survey without actionable insights and implementation loses employees' trust in the necessity of surveys. Unless employees see companies taking necessary steps to respond to their opinions, they lose interest in participating in future surveys.

So, the success of surveys lies in how the company comprehends the results and takes necessary steps to echo employees' voices.

• Before floating any new surveys, ensure that the findings of previous surveys have been incorporated into your company’s policies and initiatives.
• Periodically reemphasize to your employees the importance of surveys to engage with company leaders.
• Publish the actions taken by your company in response to surveys on your company’s newsletter or media journals to show responsible ethics.

How Revaluate180 Helps with Employee Engagement

Several automation tools have made conducting surveys and publishing results easy for company leaders and HR professionals. However, platforms that aid professionals in deciphering survey results and taking the right course of action are always appreciated.

Here is where platforms like Revaluate180 provide AI-driven insights to uncover the fundamental engagement drivers from your survey results. Our proprietary data-driven model helps uncover potential challenges related to employee disengagement. Detecting warning patterns and providing actionable insights is one of our core services.

Furthermore, we assist leaders in creating optimal action plans that work for long-term engagement and retention. We can help curate the best engagement surveys, whose insights can yield some of the best retention and development strategies.

Our feedback and insights helped teams with cultural diversities, work challenges, and disengagement become their most productive selves.

Final Thoughts

We have seen the importance of employee engagement surveys and how their results are highly beneficial for companies in the long run. Surveys must be planned and framed depending on their needs and doable actions. That is why it is essential to know how to run successful employee engagement surveys that benefit both employees and companies.

Revaluate180 has been helping companies identify their employee engagement challenges through assessments and workshops. We uncover several blockers that teams must work on to ensure smooth functioning and productivity.

Connect with us to understand how you can improve employee engagement levels with actionable insights and accurate predictions.