Employee engagement surveys are essential tools for organisations to assess the level of commitment, satisfaction, and motivation of their employees. These surveys allow employers to gather feedback on all sorts of aspects of the workplace, such as company culture, leadership, communication, and work-life balance. This blog will address some of the steps you should take to set up employee engagement surveys and focus groups.
Determine the purpose and objectives of the survey.
Before you start creating the survey, it is really important to identify what your goals are. What information you want to gather from your employees, what issues do you want to address, and how do you plan to use the survey results?
Choose the right survey type.
There are various types of employee engagement surveys, such as pulse surveys, annual surveys, and departmental surveys. Each type has its own benefits and limitations, so it is important to choose the right survey type that aligns with what you are trying to achieve.
Identify the key themes and topics.
Identify the key themes and topics you want to cover in the survey, such as job satisfaction, work-life balance, wellbeing, leadership, and communication. Ensure that the questions are relevant to your organisation and its employees, don’t just pinch a generic one off the internet!
Create clear and concise questions.
The questions in the survey should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Avoid using technical jargon or complex sentences. Use simple and direct language with no room for error.
Use a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions.
A mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions provides employees with the opportunity to express their opinions and feedback in their own words and in different ways. Closed-ended questions will be easier for you to analyse and obtain quantitative data from, while open-ended questions provide more detailed responses.
Use a Likert scale.
A Likert scale is a popular and effective way to measure employee engagement. It involves a series of statements that employees rate on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, depending on the survey design.
Test the survey.
Before you distribute the survey, test it with a small group of employees to ensure that the questions are clear and the survey is easy to complete.
Think about confidentiality and anonymity.
Will your employees be more likely to be honest if they are anonymous? Or is it important that you identify where the response is coming from. There are other ways of identifying that, perhaps using departmental markers for example. If it is anonymous, ensure you communicate to your employees that their responses will be kept confidential.
Analyse the results.
Once the survey is complete, analyse the results and identify key areas for improvement. The sure fire way to switch off your employees after a survey, is to do nothing with the results. Ensure you communicate your findings to them and form a plan of action for immediate improvements you can make.
A focus group can be a great alternative to an employee survey, if you would like to read about how to set up a focus group, click here.
By following these steps, you will be able to obtain valuable insights about your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses. If you need any support in setting up an engagement survey, at A Life More Mindful we are skilled at helping businesses like yours to conduct successful surveys and focus groups. Email me at laila@alifemoremindful.com for more information on how we can work together.