Employee Engagement Survey Questions

Improving employee engagement is one of the most powerful steps you can take to enhance your business. So why wouldn’t you be looking at ways to boost employee engagement?

This can be a problem due to the nature of employee engagement. This is because engagement is a bit of an abstract concept, which makes it difficult to measure your employee’s engagement.

This is where employee engagement surveys come in. They’re a common way to measure engagement. It is important to know how to set these up, so when your employees complete the survey, you can analyse the survey results effectively.

Let’s look at what makes employee engagement so powerful, what a survey is and sample employee engagement or satisfaction survey questions you can use.

What is employee engagement and what makes it so important?

The people who work for you are the most important asset of your business, so if you focus on them and your company culture, they will be more motivated to drive success.

Employee engagement is hard to quantify, but easy to define. An engaged employee will be one who wakes up in the morning and is excited to go to work, knows what they’re doing and is keen to do well in their job.

If employees feel more engaged and satisfied, their productivity increases and there is an overall increase in business output.

If you want to develop employee engagement, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. It will be highly specific to your workforce and employees. So you need to understand what your employees think and would need.

This is where employee engagement surveys come in.

What is an employee engagement survey?

This is a survey which looks at the levels of employee satisfaction and levels of engagement. It allows the business and management teams to get anomalous feedback from employees on the employee experience.

You do this through a mixture of:

• Simple yes or no questions
• Questions using the Likert scale - a scale which has answers from one extreme to another - e.g. strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree
• Open-ended questions

A popular and effective type of employee engagement survey is the Pulse Survey. They can track the engagement index, KPIs, and other topic areas more regularly than full census surveys.

Before you ask questions

First, you should communicate with employees why you’re doing the survey. You can do this with a sample employee engagement survey introduction letter.

It can be hard for employees to trust surveys, especially digital ones, as they worry about anonymity. There is a worry that there will be consequences to honest answers.

If you communicate to employees why you’re doing the survey, you will build trust. You are showing them how decisions are made in the company and will feel included.

Make sure you communicate the following:

• What you want to learn
• Who is being asked to take part
• Why the survey is (or isn’t) anonymous
• When you will share results with the team
• How it might affect policy.

Let’s look at some sample employee engagement survey questions.

Effective employee engagement survey questions

Here we’ll give you some employee engagement survey questions for managers and other stakeholders.

Questions will differ depending on the type of business you run and the point of the survey. However, some employee engagement survey key questions include those relating to work-life balance, teamwork, feedback and growth opportunities.

Consider the following employee engagement survey example questions for each category. besides the open-ended questions at the end.

Yes or no questions

This allows simple analysis of basic issues. For example, if you are asking a question where one answer is negative, you can easily see if you are handling this aspect well or not.

Work-life balance

• Is the organisation supportive of a healthy work-life balance?

Teamwork/cooperation

• Do you collaborate well with other team members?
• Would you say you have too many team meetings or not enough?

Personal growth

• Do you feel challenged in your current role?
• Do you feel that the organisation makes full use of your skills?

Communication

• Are you kept up to date with the latest changes in policies and procedures?
• Do you feel the company maintains a two-way communication process?

Wellbeing

• Does the company have a wellness policy or assistance programme?
• Are you provided with healthy eating options at work?

Recognition

• Do you feel that you receive enough recognition for the work that you do?
• Do you receive meaningful rewards for exceptional work?
• Do individuals receive recognition for their contributions to group projects?

Likert scale questions

Employees should answer these questions on a scale of 1 to 5 or 10. This allows a more quantifiable dataset to be developed than open ended questions but allows more expression than simple yes or no questions.

Work-life balance

• How often do you take work home?
• Is the organisation supportive of a healthy work-life balance?
• How satisfied are you with your current work hours?

Teamwork/cooperation

• How professionally do the members of your team behave?
• How well does your team members share responsibilities?
• How often does your team meet deadlines?

Personal growth

• Does your role provide you with the freedom to decide how you do your work?
• Do you feel that the organisation makes full use of your skills?
• On a scale of one to five, how would you rate the level of support offered to you by the organisation?

Communication

• How satisfied are you with communications in the company?
• There is honest communication in this company, from top to bottom
• How effective are your managers are communicating within teams?

Wellbeing

• Does the company care about your physical and mental wellbeing?
• How valued is a healthy lifestyle at the company?

Recognition

• Do you feel that you receive enough recognition for the work that you do?
• Do you receive meaningful rewards for exceptional work?
• Do individuals receive recognition for their contributions to group projects?

Open-ended questions

These questions allow for the employee to explain themselves fully. Having open ended questions allows for a deeper dataset to be developed on employee engagement. Due to the nature of engagement, this is often the best way to get a big picture.

Work-life balance

• How long is your daily commute?
• What can we do to give you a better work-life balance?

Teamwork/cooperation

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how connected do you feel with your coworkers?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how much respect do your coworkers show with each other?

Personal growth

• How long do you imagine yourself working for this company?
• Do you feel challenged in your current role?

Communication

• Do you feel like you can share your honest thoughts with your manager?
• Do you feel like your organization encourages you to give your opinion?

Company

• What’s your favourite thing about your job/workplace?
• If you could change one thing about your job/workplace, what would it be?
• What is the company’s greatest weakness?
• What is the company’s greatest strength?

Wellbeing

• What can the organisation do to further support employee wellbeing?
• Is there anything preventing you from doing your job well?
• What’s the best thing that happened to you at work this month?

Recognition

• Do you feel that you receive enough recognition for the work that you do?
• Do you receive meaningful rewards for exceptional work?
• Do individuals receive recognition for their contributions to group projects?