By: Kim Moshlak on September 20th, 2017
What You Need to Know About Employee Engagement Surveys
Take a minute to imagine all of the different generations working together in today’s society…with so much diversity…from Traditionalists (born before 1946) to Generation Z (1997 – today) to employees from different cultures, religions, and the like. This begs the question, how can these employees work together and be successful as a team and what do we need to do as employers, to ensure these individuals all feel respected and included in their work environment?
As my mom always said, “If you want to know the answer to a question, you just ask.” And you can do that in this case, by using a tool called an Employee Engagement Survey. Engagement surveys measure any number of areas of an employee’s work experience, and allow an organization to learn more about the strengths of the organization, and what the employees truly want out of their work experience.
What Do Employee Engagement Surveys Measure?
In general, these surveys ask for information from employees (stakeholders) regarding their experience at the workplace. Questions asked in the engagement survey may revolve around the areas of:
- leadership
- logistics
- benefits
- compensation
- organizational culture
- training and development
- employee satisfaction
- job satisfaction
- retention
- performance management
- and any other area on which the company wants to gather data.
This data is usually gathered anonymously (sometimes with an option to self-identify). The data is then analyzed, the findings are determined and a plan of action is developed to address those findings.
What Are the Pros Vs. Cons of Employee Engagement Surveys?
The benefit of an Employee Engagement survey is that you get a tremendous amount of information and the opportunity to gather candid and anonymous data from employees, which regularly results in an increased level of trust in the organization, as employees feel they are being heard and that their voices matter.
On the other hand, organizations that fail to act on the findings, many times just add to the problem of having a workforce that may already be disengaged. With that said, an organization needs to be prepared to act on the findings if it chooses to do the survey.
Once the survey has been conducted, and the organization has established baseline results, an HR best practice is to establish a regular administration schedule, and repeat the same survey to gauge the effectiveness of the plan of action that was developed as a result of the initial data analysis. This process allows for adjustments and/or course corrections to be made to the plan of action to obtain the desired result.