Employee engagement is the measure of how employees feel about their work and the company as a whole. How motivated are they to do more than the bare minimum on a day-to-day basis? How committed are they to the organization? How much do they care?

This may feel nebulous, and in a way, it is. However, a well-thought-out employee engagement survey is the perfect way to measure engagement and learn what needs to be improved.

In this blog, we’ll go over everything you need to know about engagement surveys, why employee surveys are important, how to roll them out, and what to do with the information after you’ve gotten it.
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Benefits of employee engagement surveys

In short, the benefit of effective surveys is understanding employee sentiment. A good survey will give employees a voice and lead to actionable data that, when acted upon, will actively make the workplace better.

No, you won’t be able to meet everyone’s needs or make everyone happy, but responding to survey feedback is the easiest way to create a workplace employees love. Other benefits include:

• Learn how satisfied employees are with the workplace
• Identity key areas of improvement
• Foster employee trust by actively listening and reacting to feedback
• Enhance company culture by improving what employees truly value
• Lower turnover by as much as 43% by raising engagement scores

A good survey is the perfect blueprint for building your workplace. By uncovering pain points and taking steps to improve, you’ll build a culture of engagement, trust, and loyalty.

Six different types of employee surveys

Employee engagement surveys

This type measures and diagnoses factors that influence overall engagement, such as recognition, clarity of expectations, personal growth opportunities, etc. These are typically longer and are sent at least annually.

Pulse surveys

These are shorter and more focused on a single theme, such as engagement, culture, satisfaction, benefits, professional development, etc. Pulse surveys are perfect for monitoring trends on a monthly basis.

Onboarding surveys

These capture the first impressions of new hires and help narrow down how to improve the experience of new employees. And considering over one third of new hires quit in the first year, these surveys are vital.

Company culture surveys

These assess broader, company-wide elements of the workplace, such as inclusion, activities, or communication effectiveness. Like engagement surveys, these are best sent once or twice a year.

Wellbeing surveys

This type of survey is perfect to gauge how healthy employees feel. Ask about their stress levels, whether they’re feeling burned out, and how they’d rate their work/life balance. The tweaks you make based on this feedback, more than any others, show employees you care about them as people, not just as productivity machines.

Exit surveys

No matter how long an employee stays at your organization, when they quit, they’ll have an opinion about it. Use exit surveys to gather that data and see what is driving turnover. If you uncover certain factors that push employees away, take action to reverse that trend.

Questions to help you prepare an employee engagement survey

Engagement surveys seem simple, but to maximize your results, there are a few considerations you don’t want to overlook.

Should you use a survey tool?

Short answer, yes. Third-party survey tools are purpose-built to make surveys more official, fun, and seamless. They also allow you to collect and analyze data and feedback in a clear and organized way.

Awardco’s employee listening tool allows you to build your survey, reward participation, and gather data on a single platform. It’s custom-built to make surveys more fun, effective, and rewarding in every way.

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How long should surveys be?

To balance getting impactful results with keeping employees interested, you have to build a survey that’s just the right length. Here’s how:

• Aim for 30-60 quick, digestible questions that will take 15-20 minutes to complete
• Focus on a few clear themes (leadership, development, alignment, enablement, etc.)
• Lean heavily into the Likert scale (five-point scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree)
• Include a few open-ended questions for more specifics

Many leaders assume the shorter the survey, the more responses they’ll get, but the opposite is actually true. Surveys with 50-59 questions get the highest response rate, and surveys with 30-39 questions have the shortest response time.

As you’re planning your questions, try to hit somewhere in that ballpark.

For a full walkthrough on which questions to include, check out this employee survey question guide. 

How often should you send out surveys?

The vast majority of organizations survey their workforces once a year or more. Wait longer than a year, and you most likely won’t be able to keep up with changing work circumstances and evolving employee needs.

A common practice is to send out an annual survey that’s much more robust, and then supplement that with quarterly, monthly, or even weekly pulse surveys that are much shorter and more focused.

What about survey fatigue? The truth of the matter is this: when leadership responds to surveys quickly and fairly, employees will be more likely to respond to any survey because they know their opinions are being taken seriously. 

So instead of worrying about survey fatigue, figure out the best method and channels for responding to the feedback you receive. (More on this later.)

What day is best to launch your survey?

What day is best to launch your survey, and does it even matter? Research shows that surveys launched on Thursday and Friday get the best participation rate for sending on weekdays—but Sunday is actually the best, netting an 84% overall response rate (the hope is that employees will open it first thing Monday morning, and the data shows it works).

Send your survey late in the week or schedule it to go out on Sunday to maximize your chance of a high response rate.

Should surveys be anonymous?

Yes, it’s best to make employee surveys anonymous so that people can share their honest thoughts. Plus, research shows that anonymous surveys get better response rates and more accurate data.

Emphasize the fact that employee answers are completely anonymous, and use a survey tool that ensures this privacy of information.

How to respond to employee survey data

1. Thank employees and share next steps

A simple thank you goes a long way in helping employees feel like their time is valued. Afterward, communicate the timeline employees can expect to get a response on their feedback. Stress that not every piece of feedback can be addressed, but that common threads will be touched on.

2. Analyze and segment your data

Look at how specific departments and teams score in each section of the survey. For example, if Marketing gave communication a 85% favorability score, but engineering and sales only gave it a 40% score, you know that department-level improvements need to be made.

3. Identify trends

Do older employees regularly score lower for engagement? Are managers happier than direct reports? Is there a constant difference in scores between salaried and hourly employees? If there are clear trends in your data, or if the majority of your people feel similarly about a particular issue, you know you need to focus on those patterns.

4. Focus on a few key items

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by every piece of feedback you get, but by identifying trends and then focusing on the few items that will have the most impact, you’ll boost employee trust while also keeping changes manageable. Prioritize changes that are the most closely tied to engagement or business outcomes.

5. Share feedback to the feedback

Once steps are in place to respond to employee feedback, share the organization's response with the company. It’s a great idea to meet with individual managers, as well, to share relevant results and responses for their teams. Then, those managers should meet with their teams to share the response.

6. Plan a follow-up survey

While company leaders may feel great about their response to survey feedback, employee feelings are what matter. So set up a follow-up survey a few months after changes have been implemented to gauge how employees feel about the matters they scored low in the initial survey.

Employee feedback—your key to building a winning culture

Employee engagement surveys are one of the best ways to tailor your company culture to fit employee needs and preferences. By learning what’s going well, what could be improved, and which employees are struggling in what areas, leaders can make the changes necessary to keep employees engaged, productive, motivated, and loyal.

Learn more about Awardco’s engagement survey tool here and request a demo to see it in action!