It’s imperative that you have a sense of how your employees are feeling. In other words, you need to know whether they’re happy. If they aren’t, you certainly want to make that determination before the organization’s performance is deleteriously affected. And what better way to do so than by going directly to the people? An employee survey is in order here, but how you craft it and how to measure employee engagement is the key. So, here’s what you should know about developing an effective employee survey – and more.
The Issue
We’re in a bit of flux right now, in terms of the business environment. The pandemic is not quite over, yet its effects linger. Hybrid worksites are the norm, as many employees continue to work from home, while some offices are reopening. Add to that a collective rethinking among people about how they foresee their work lives, plus an uncertain economy.
An important way to gauge your employee’s experience is through the employee engagement survey, which basically assesses the extent to which employees feel valued by their employer.
What is the Meaning of ‘Employee Experience’?
Essentially, the employee experience is a crystallization of what an individual observes, perceives, and encounters during their organizational tenure.
Explain Employee Engagement
Employee engagement ultimately reveals the relationship your organization has with your people. In other words, it speaks to the level of enthusiasm and dedication an employee feels about their work.
How Can Employee Engagement Surveys Benefit Us?
There are solid reasons for administering an employee engagement survey, including:
- To measure employee engagement. You certainly need to know how engaged your people are, and how they feel about, say, leadership, the work environment, training and development opportunities, recognition, and pay and benefits.
- To allow employees to express themselves. The survey allows your people to basically speak directly to management, which makes them feel more invested in the company.
- To increase employee engagement. The survey can be used to identify where you’re successful in addition to what needs improving, where employee engagement is concerned.
- To spark organizational growth. The survey garners invaluable data that you can use for growth. After all, your people are at the center of your enterprise.
- To compare results. You can use survey results for benchmarking – discovering how your industry rivals are faring. For example, if results show that only 30 percent of your people are happy with advancement opportunities, you can see how that compares with other companies to find out whether you should make changes.
How Do We Develop an Effective Employee Survey?
It’s important to say up front that if you’re going to go to the trouble to craft and conduct surveys, you must respond to results. If your people sense that you’re merely going through the motions, you run the risk of losing them.
In terms of survey development, yes, it’s vital that the questions are well thought out, as opposed to being put together willy-nilly.
To have a better understanding of your people and generate good business outcomes, you must get into the nut and bolts of the employee experience. That means broaching issues such as organizational culture, leadership, team effectiveness, and yes, employee engagement.
What’s really needed is a “listening program” that contains the right mix of methodology, content, and agile technology. For an employee engagement program to be effective, it must produce integrative analytics and actionable insights. For that, you need pulse surveys in addition to employee engagement surveys.
Pulse surveys are brief, quick surveys of no more than 15 easy-to-answer questions that are conducted periodically and offer a snapshot of work relationships, employee satisfaction levels, work culture, etc. Unlike engagement surveys, they typically home in on a specific topic or a few related ones.
Ultimately, developing an effective employee survey is integral if you wish to understand your workforce and establish measures to boost recruitment and retention. If you need assistance measuring and improving the employee experience, we recommend the leading consultant Mercer, which has tons of experience and credibility in these areas.