15 Key Employee Survey Questions

What are employee engagement survey key questions?

Employee engagement surveys are considered one of the most effective ways how to measure engagement. There are various forms and types of surveys you can perform from more complex employee surveys addressing the overall performance of your business to shorter and more regular pulse surveys that only continuously measure a certain aspect of your organization such as employee satisfaction.

In this article we bring to you a list of 15 key employee engagement survey questions to ask in order to evaluate the levels of engagement in your organization.

Employee engagement drivers

According to a report by institute for employment studies, there are 4 main drivers of employee engagement:

1. Involvement in decision making
2. The extent to which feel appreciated and listened to by their managers
3. Clear career development opportunities
4. The extent to which companies care about employees’ health and wellbeing

These areas should be covered in the employee engagement survey questions you ask your workforce.

How to measure employee engagement

An engagement survey will provide you with a chance to ask key engagement questions and evaluate the perceptions and attitudes of your company among your employees.

Key employee engagement survey questions

Before you send out your employee engagement survey you should take time to plan your employee engagement survey communications, familiarize yourself with the industry best practices and answer the following questions first:

1. What is you want to find out from the survey?
2. Who is the survey for? (Teams, departments, whole organization)
3. Is the survey anonymous?
4. What for and how will the results be used?

In addition to the main drivers of employee engagement, engagement surveys should address areas that directly influence employee engagement. These include factors such as; happiness, pride of working for a company and likeliness to recommend it (employee net promoter score), commitment and motivation.

Another thing to consider when developing an engagement survey is whether you are after qualitative or quantitative data.

While qualitative surveys with open-ended questions such as what 3 words would you use to describe our company culture, enable you to explore the individual perceptions and opinions of your employees, quantitative data is more coherent and easier to analyze and measure. One of the best techniques to measure how your employees feel about something is Likert Scale. With that in mind, here are key areas and 15 essential questions to include in your employee engagement survey;

Individual perceptions

On a scale 1 to 10…

• How happy are you at work? Simple and to the point. Employee happiness is one of the key contributors of employee engagement. Scoring low score on this question should motivate you to further explore why your employees are not satisfied at work and what actions should you take to improve it.

• How likely are you to recommend the company to others? Your employees are your best ambassadors and if they feel proud and happy to work for your organization they are also likely to spread the good word and recommend your business to others.

• Most days I look forward to coming to work? This question will shed some light on the motivation levels of your workforce. Happy and highly engaged employees are likely to enjoy their jobs feel challenged by them and want to feel motivated to do their job well.

Leadership

On a scale 1 to 10…

• I understand the company vision Getting all of your employees on board with the company vision is a key to actually peruse it. This question will also enable you to evaluate how well you are communicating the organizational strategic goals and objectives and creating an inclusive work environment.

• I feel my job is aligned to the company goals Employees want to have a sense of purpose at work. They want to feel their work is contributing to overall success of the company, and indeed if they feel that way they are also likely to improve the performance of your business.

• I know what is expected of me This question will provide you with further understanding of whether or not your leadership and management does good job sharing the company objectives and aligning the individual efforts to them.

Management

On a scale 1 to 10…

• I feel valued by my manager This will provide you with understanding how effective your management. It willl provide you an insight into how each of the team members percives your organization.

• I feel my work is well recognized We all need a pad on a back from time to time. This question will enable you to evaluate the culture of recognition and development in your organization.

• I enjoy working with my team Teamwork is a key to running a successful business. Collaboration is a key to innovative and creative workspace which proved to be fundamental to keeping up with the competition and implementing change in a company.

Career development

On a scale 1-10…

• I can see the positive results based on my work Sense of achievement will motivate your employees to do their job well and continue to improve in order to improve the overall performance of your business.

• I have access to resources and information I need to get my job done Your employees might feel they need more time, training or direction to perform well at their job.

• I can see myself working here in five years’ time This question will give you an overall idea of your employees’ perception of the company and whether or not they see a potential space for development and future with you. The question can help you develop strategies to lower the churn rates and low scores are a red flag on further exploring employee satisfaction in your organization. The issues might arise in areas such as work life balance and how the work day to day affairs affect your employee's personal life.

Areas to improve

In addition to the quantitative questions which will enable you to measure and evaluate the employee level of engagement in your company, you can include open ended questions that will provide you with understanding of what you should improve;

• Theoretically, if you would be to leave the company what would be the reason behind it? Straight to the point. The answers of this questions will give you a list of areas of improvement you should tackle to improve employee retention.

• If you could change one thing about your job what would it be? Opening up a discussion on what needs to be changed in the organization will give you valuable insights from different perspectives. Although, the key to this question is not only to ask but also implement some of the suggestions to improve the employee engagement.

• How would you describe the company culture in 3 words? This will not only make you understand how your workforce feels about the company but also how well do you communicate your vision and mission to your employees.

Based on your survey results, you might want to further explore specific areas such as employee motivation,wellness, relationships at work or run an employee satisfaction survey.

There are different options how to deliver your employee engagement survey to your employees; you can choose a free option such as Google Forms or invest in one of the many survey software providers on the market.