Over the past few decades, it’s become increasingly important to workers that they feel engaged with the work they do. It can increase their job satisfaction, reduce their stress, and improve the quality of their work.
That’s right: the more engaged your team is, the better a job they can do. This makes improving employee engagement a priority for many workplaces.
Surveys are one of the most popular employee engagement strategies. Though they may appear simple, engagement surveys can help management create a more positive employee experience that provides benefits for employees and companies alike. You just need to know which questions to ask.
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Why employee engagement is important
Employee engagement is the engine that drives a company’s success. When team members feel an emotional connection with their work, company goals can become their personal goals. This can increase productivity, create desired business outcomes and improve office morale.
Employee engagement can also indicate other employee satisfaction factors, such as a healthy work-life balance, a positive company culture, and a work environment that makes them feel comfortable and empowered to use their innate skills.
Simply put: engaged employees work harder, do better work, and take pride in the work they do.
25 Top Employee Engagement Survey Questions
The questions you choose for an engagement survey greatly depend on what you’d like to know about your workplace. Keep in mind, it’s okay to phrase engagement questions as statements. Then, your team can either “agree” or “disagree” with those statements. How you phrase them is up to you.
Here, I’ve listed some top engagement survey questions, divided by what kind of information they help provide:
Job satisfaction questions
These are the questions/statements that focus on how your employees feel about their work in general. Such as:
- Do you enjoy working for this company?
- Do you have a “close colleague” at work?
- Do you take pride in the work you do?
- Would you recommend others to apply for work here?
- Are you satisfied with the growth opportunities provided to you here?
Management questions
These questions can help you gauge how your employees feel about the leadership provided by your management team:
- Do your managers provide you with the tools you need to succeed?
- Do you view your managers as role models?
- Do your managers effectively communicate expectations to you?
- Do your managers help you clearly understand company goals?
- Do you trust your managers to handle situations as they arise?
Alignment questions
These questions help you understand where your team’s thoughts, feelings, and goals align with you and your business:
- Do you feel you understand how to succeed in your role?
- Do you agree with the company’s goals?
- Do you take pride in helping the company meet its goals?
- Do you feel that your work is meaningful?
- Does the company inspire you to do your best work?
Wellness and mental health questions
These questions help you understand your team’s work-life balance, the quality of your workplace, and the effect the work might have on their well-being:
- Do you feel like the company cares about you?
- Are you provided enough time to comfortably complete tasks?
- Are you comfortable telling your superiors about personal problems you might experience in the workplace?
- Do you often partake in hobbies outside of work?
- Are you usually able to finish your work day at the regular time?
Benefits, recognition, and rewards
These questions help you understand whether your team feels that their efforts at work are “worth it”:
- Do you feel you receive adequate compensation for the work you do?
- Do your managers appreciate your work?
- Do you feel recognized when you’ve done your job well?
- Do you feel rewarded for reaching work milestones?
- Are you satisfied with the benefits currently provided by your workplace?
Employee Engagement Survey Best Practices
While engagement surveys are fully customizable depending on what you need for your workplace, there are a few things you can do to help improve your chances of implementing the survey effectively. Some of these best practices include:
Create trust
The more truthful the answers your employees provide are, the more helpful they can be. In order for your team to feel comfortable telling their boss how they feel, there must first be a sense of trust. This begins well before your team takes their survey.
As a team leader, that sense of trust begins with you.
Imagine things from your employees’ perspective: If they already feel like they can’t trust management, why would they trust the survey to be effective? Creating a work environment where employees feel they can trust their leaders to listen to their concerns can help them provide more honest answers as they fill out their surveys.
If they feel their manager cares, they might feel that truthful answers could enact positive change in the workplace.
Create a plan for survey results
In order for employees to engage in the survey, it might be helpful for them to understand the value of doing so. What stakes does the survey present? What kind of change could occur as a result?
Why does filling out the survey matter? If they don’t know how the survey can help them, they could be less inclined to fill it out. So, help them understand.
Let your team know how you plan to implement the results of the survey. Let them know when you plan to announce the results or how they can access the results themselves online or on the company portal. Help them understand what the survey can help change—and what effects they can have on the workplace by filling it out.
Use open-ended questions
Open-ended questions give your employees the opportunity to answer work-related questions in their own words. Think of it like the essay questions at the end of a school exam. (i.e., “What would you change about x?”) These questions can help you assess potential problems you might not already know exist within your workplace. They can also help provide potential solutions.
Your employees are on the frontline for you every day. They likely have a strong understanding of what works, what needs changing, and how to fix it. Open-ended questions help them convey those thoughts to you.
Put your finger on the pulse
Pulse surveys are a popular form of employee engagement survey. Instead of simple yes-or-no questions, pulse survey questions are answered on a scale—usually either from 0 to 5 or from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Using questions with scaled answers helps you build a more accurate idea of how your employees feel about their work environment, colleagues, and specific work situations.
And, because pulse questions offer a range of potential answers, they can give your employees a sense of freedom of choice in their answers.
Understand the drivers of employee engagement
It helps to have a clear understanding of what factors might drive your employees to engage with their work. These factors are based on your employees’ desires—both personal and professional.
When creating survey questions, it can help to understand what these factors might be within your specific workplace. For instance, if you work in the medical field, your employees might be driven “to do good,” or “to help others.” Knowing this can help you create questions designed to gauge whether the workplace engages your team the way they like—and make adjustments based on the results!
