6 Best Practices in Creating Employee Engagement Surveys
In the VIDEO: 6 Best Practices in Creating Employee Engagement Surveys I cover six ways to form questions in order to create a survey that will obtain the best and most accurate responses possible. By creating a powerful employee engagement survey you will accurately measure your organizations levels of engagement like never before.
Join the WEBINAR: “Employee Engagement Survey Best Practices” and get HRCI or SHRM credit
-
Use a subset of anchor questions to measure overall engagement.
The most accurate way to measure employee engagement is to use the average score from a subset of validated anchor questions. We then use the score from the anchor questions to place employees in one of four different groups from Fully Engaged to Fully Disengaged.
-
Use a variety of questions to measure employee perceptions regarding their work, their team, their boss, and the organization overall.
These items will be used to determine unique perceptions among the different engagement groups of employees. Also include items to measure the five major drivers of employee engagement, which are: Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact, and Connection.
-
Use proper question structure and formatting:
Good questions are actionable, meaning that it is obvious what actions to take based on the item. So avoid vague or general statements that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Also, don’t use double-barreled questions which are items that contain two ideas in one question. Finally, use questions that are positively worded with a consistent rating scale.
-
Customize the survey so that it is relevant to your organization.
Every organization is unique, so make sure to include items that evaluate recent changes, alignment with company values, or other pertinent issues. But don’t go too far. If you customize too much, you won’t be able to utilize industry benchmarks on similar questions.
-
Use two or maybe three open-ended questions.
We recommend asking: “What are the areas that need the most improvement in our organization?” and “What are the greatest strengths of our organization?” These two items will generate good qualitative feedback that provides context to the scores on the other survey questions. Don’t use too many open-ended questions because it makes the survey run long and it doesn’t provide any additional feedback.
-
Use between 40-60 questions total.
A survey with 50 questions takes about 8 minutes to complete. If your survey is too short, then it doesn’t provide enough information to make specific conclusions and it becomes in actionable. If it is too long, employees will not finish it and you could also end up with too much information with leads to data paralysis.
Want to learn more? Download our whitepaper, “10 Questions to Consider Before Your Next Employee Engagement Survey” to learn more about building the most effective survey possible.
Take a look at more videos to assist in building a better organization:
VIDEO: 5 Employee Engagement Best Practices
VIDEO: Employee Satisfaction and Engagement. What’s the Difference?
VIDEO: The Influence of Managers on Employee Engagement
VIDEO: The Impact of 360-Degree Feedback Coaching
Thanks for reading or watching and best of luck in your efforts to create an engaged workplace.
