Did you know that organisations with highly engaged employees are more likely to outperform their peers? And that they can do so by as much as 147%?
As a people leader or business owner, keeping your workforce engaged and motivated sits high on your agenda. Among the numerous strategies at your disposal to enable you to do this, one tool stands tall above the rest: employee engagement surveys – and the art of asking the right questions.
In this article, we’ll explore how to leverage employee engagement surveys to boost organisational performance, including what to ask, how to use the results, and tips to effectively communicate them to your team.
What to ask
Asking the right questions is key for an effective employee engagement survey. You’ll want to gather data on the areas that will surface how your employees truly feel about your organisation and workplace.
For example, explore areas like job satisfaction, work-life balance, learning and development opportunities, thoughts on your leadership team, and work culture. Make sure to add in a blend of open-ended and multiple-choice questions to capture both quantitative and qualitative data which is essential for gaining a comprehensive understanding of your workforce’s sentiments and experiences.
How to use the results
Once you’ve closed your survey and have collected your all-important results, it’s time to put your data to good use.
Share your survey results with the whole organisation in a transparent and inclusive way. Highlight the areas where employees are showing as highly engaged, but also be honest about the areas that require some work. Sharing results of all manner with employees is crucial to foster trust as well as demonstrating commitment to involving them in shaping the way they work.
The next step is to collaborate with your teams to identify what actions should be taken to combat the not-so-strong areas. For example, your survey results could show that there’s a strong desire among employees for more flexible work arrangements. Embracing this with actionable measures could include:
Revising your flexible work policies – Develop more clear and inclusive flexible work policies and make them readily accessible to all employees.
Assess job roles – Analyse job roles to identify solutions for flexible work arrangements, then work to adapt roles or responsibilities where appropriate.
Keep open lines of communication – Empower and make employees feel comfortable to communicate their working preferences.
Reconsider your technology – Identify the gaps where improved technology could advance the quality of flexible work arrangements to be more seamless, for example what platform is used to hold virtual meetings, or how projects are managed online.
Tips from WorkBuzz for effective communication
As you begin to work with your employees to interpret and act on the survey results, it’s important to make sure the way you communicate is supportive and empathetic. This creates a positive relationship between your Senior Leadership Team and the rest of the organisation and helps to bring your data into further context.
Here are a few tips for effective communication when addressing your survey results:
- Make sure to practice active listening
- Demonstrate your commitment to addressing concerns that have been raised
- Follow-up on agreed actions within a reasonable timeframe
- Keep the lines of communication open on an ongoing basis
Use your data to drive culture change
As you send out employee surveys and collect more and more data over time, you can start to pick up on trends and more easily track the areas where improvements have been made.
Use this data to cultivate a culture of continuous improvement, which will lead to heightened employee engagement, elevated morale, and increased productivity – because when employees are content and engaged, they work better together, allowing for better organisational performance (just be sure to regularly review your data to help keep things on track).
Loved by the likes of companies like HS2, Whistl, and Shell Energy, WorkBuzz has helped hundreds of organisations get closer to their employees and build stronger businesses through its simple, flexible, and customisable survey platform.
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