Exploring Employee Surveys As A Valuable Workplace Tool

by Nicky Liedtke | September 13, 2022 | Reading time: 9 minutes

What Is an Employee Survey?

An employee survey is a tool that organizations use to get information on how employees feel about certain factors,structures and elements in a company. These surveys can be used to measure employee engagement, employee morale, performance, and commitment. To get a clear view of the employee's perception of workplace conditions, these surveys are usually taken anonymously as it is common knowledge that anonymous surveys fetch the most honest answers. Honest feedback directly translates to accurate data that can be used for your improvement.

The first ever employee survey was performed in the 1920s and was called an employee-attitude survey. Since its inception, employee engagement surveys have been used to get employees' opinions on how a company is running and if there are unsafe practices or abhorred work cultures. It is paramount to always take a staff survey if you want your company to move forward. At the end of the day, no one knows your company more than the people working there, which is why you need honest opinions; to get the insight that you may not have as a boss or manager.

Company surveys are not only for a company's progression but also for the company's betterment. Employee satisfaction surveys are also taken to ensure that workers are satisfied with the organization's condition. The results from a well-curated survey can be used to implement policies that better equip your workforce for everyday tasks. Your employee engagement survey questions should be geared towards clearly understanding what your employees think of how the company attracts, trains, retains, and rewards employees.

After ensuring that all the questions in the survey are befitting and have been carefully worded and reviewed, you get your honest, credible feedback. The next important part of a company survey is how the company reacts to the information obtained from the survey. If you do not take action or fail to interpret the information obtained from the survey correctly, you may be unable to get the desired results. A well-designed survey and the company's responsiveness to it leads to more excellent retention of workers, fewer absent workers, increased productivity, and improved morale.

In this article, we'll look into the following;:

1. 5 main types of employee survey

2. Tips for creating result-driven surveys

3. Employee Engagement: Example Questions

4. Pros of a good employee survey

5. What's the cost of an employee survey?

What Are The 6 Main Types Of Employee Surveys?

When people think about employee surveys, what instantly comes to mind is surveys that are taken for the betterment of the company. While this is true, other types of surveys give a better overview of all aspects of the employee's work life. These are the 5 types of surveys that will provide you with a holistic view of your company's most important asset- your workforce.

1. Engagement Surveys

Engagement surveys allow you a glimpse into your employee's minds and get their input. This survey significantly improves the workers' confidence in the company by giving them an outlet for their ideas. It also makes employees feel valued by the organization. Companies that engage their employees in this kind of survey have a higher employee retention rate. When the organization takes the results of these surveys and works on them, it increases job satisfaction as workers feel heard, seen, and truly a part of the company. Surveys like this help employees feel listened to and catered for.

2. New Hire Surveys

Once you hire a new staff or team member, you can use a new hire survey to ask questions about how the new staff perceived your company, the hiring procedure, and how you can improve the process. You can use feedback from surveys like this to give your interview process a better structure. You can let them fill out this type of checklist as part of the onboarding process.

3. 360 Review

A 360 review generally spans the whole organization. This survey gets the view of coworkers, managers, the employee so the information obtained can be reviewed and analyzed. An example of this type of survey is a self-evaluation survey for employees. However, you also have the option to let employees evaluate their peers, giving them a chance to address issues or praise related to their coworkers in an anonymous fashion.

4. Compensation and Benefits Surveys

Giving your employees what they want, need and deserve is the gateway to their hearts and, therefore, will earn you their loyalty and dedication. Compensation and benefits surveys inquire about the employee benefits and how the staff feels about them. Having a good benefit and compensation plan is a great way to retain hardworking employees.

5. Pulse Surveys

This survey is taken by employees to understand how they are feeling about their job; if they feel satisfied, burnt out, or unproductive. This will shed light on unpleasant workplace practices that you may not know. This survey allows management to see the company from the view of an employee. This is done regularly to ensure that the workplace remains healthy and highly functional.

6. Exit Interview Survey

This survey is done when an employee wants to leave an organization to get to know the employee's view of the job and the organization. This also helps an organization improve the specific job description/responsibilities for the role that is now vacant. An example of this type of survey is the employee offboarding checklist.

Tips For Creating Result-Driven Surveys

Companies should routinely conduct surveys to stay briefed about how employees feel about the company's culture and to also know how satisfied they are with their jobs. To conduct surveys that will yield results and provide insight, you need to make sure the surveys are well-constructed, analyzed, and later conducted. This is after knowing which type of survey you want to conduct so that you can plan ahead accordingly. These are some tips to help ensure that your survey will be a successful one:

• Your surveys should be created with a goal in mind. Each survey should have a topic it focuses on so as not to confuse your employees. If they get confused, this may leave you with results that are not actionable. For more relevance, the topic should be related to what is currently happening in the company or what directly affects the employees.
• Surveys should be precise, simple, and direct, avoiding ambiguous sentences. At the same time, the questions should be something they have had time to reflect on. According to Eric Stites, CEO of Franchise Business Review (FBR), an organization that researches employee engagement and satisfaction, this is the best way to conduct an employee survey.
• Don't ask questions that won't yield actionable results. One of the most important factors of an employee survey is asking the right questions to get the information that you need. Focus on one topic at the time and do not overload the queries. You could, for example, discuss the progress of the company, or inquire about particular event in the company such as a just concluded training.
• Avoid survey fatigue and space out the time between surveys. Longer surveys should be conducted annually, while shorter surveys can be conducted more regularly. According to Sarah Skerik, the head of marketing at the employee engagement platform Engagement Multiplier, a quarterly survey that doesn't exceed 10 minutes is a great idea and will prevent survey fatigue. The briefness of it will encourage more participation and interest.
• Select a format for your survey. As important as it is to ask the right questions, you also have to understand that asking the right questions in the wrong way would give you poor answers. Know your workforce to figure out if they prefer multiple-choice survey questions or if they prefer open-ended questions. Also, the fit of the questions determines how you would analyze the answers, so you need to also pick the best question format that supports your analysis.

Employee Engagement Survey: Example Questionnaire

Employee engagement is one of the most important elements within a company and can be supported by a well thought out survey. If you ask the right kinds of questions and actually take your employees' ideas, wishes and requests into account such surveys help make employees feel like a part of the system. It also helps get information on how enthusiastic employees are about their jobs. You can ask questions or give statements that need to be voted for on a sliding scale from 1-10 along the line of:

• "I love being a part of [Company]."
• "I think [Company] is a great place to work and would recommend it."
• "I do not consider applying for a job at another company."
• "[Company] keeps me encouraged so I can work beyond what I would in a similar role elsewhere."
• "The management at [company] always keeps people in the loop about what is happening."
• "My manager is a great role model for employees."
• "I have all I need to do my job well."
• "Most of the systems and processes support us effectively getting our work done."
• "I feel seen when I do good work."
• "Daily decisions prove that high quality and progress are top priorities."
• "Are there some things we are not doing so great here?"

What Are The Advantages Of A Good Employee Survey

It can be challenging for workers to share their opinions with managers. Likewise, it may be hard for managers to get to know what their employees think with the meetings, deadlines, training, and work they must do. A powerful and reliable tool you can use to fill in this gap is the survey for employees. It helps if you question employees about their ideas, opinions, and suggestions. Such engagement shows caring and yields many positive outcomes, amongst them:

• Employees feel safe and heard as they can express how they feel about their job with no backlash. This is because these surveys are anonymous and help the company improve the quality of its work culture.
• It boosts employees' morale as they know their company is willing to understand what's wrong and fix it to create a better working environment.
• It helps managers get new ideas that they can work on to elevate the business or company.
• It makes managers aware of the problems they may not know of.
• Your biggest asset is your workforce; therefore, it's imperative to stay tuned to how they feel about their job, as this can make or mark your company. They are the best at noticing and solving problems within the company.
• One of the reasons why employee engagement surveys are important is how they may encourage more productivity as it increases employees' motivation.
• Staff surveys encourage better relationships between management and employees.
• Effective company surveys lead to less absenteeism, more focused leadership, and increased growth.

How can you efficiently and effectively carry out employee satisfaction surveys for a big company? It's easier when it's a small establishment, you can easily pass around the survey questions, and they all turn it in when done. But when it's a big multinational company, it is best to make use of online surveys. Online surveys are arguably preferable to paper surveys, and here are some reasons why:

• Online employee satisfaction surveys are easier to conduct.
• Online employee engagement surveys are often less costly as you do not have to research too much. There are ready-made templates readily available for use.
• The chances of making mistakes are narrowed down when it's an online survey.
• With online staff surveys, it's easier to analyze the results.
• Employees also find it easier to fill in online company surveys as they can easily devote some time to the survey from wherever they want, which is especially relevant, considering that many workplaces are now remote.
• Digital surveys easily transfer data to spreadsheets and decrease time spent on analyzing data which leads to increased productivity.
• It is easier to opt for an online survey for employees as you can easily customize your survey to have your logo, fonts, or images.
• With an online survey for employees, you can select the few to take the online survey.

What's The Cost Of An Employee Survey?

The cost of an employee satisfaction survey depends on how many employees you have, how many questions you plan to ask and the data you want to collect. So it may be impossible to give an accurate estimate of how much an employee survey will cost you. Some federal agencies mandate companies to conduct annual employee surveys, so make sure you research the requirements for your country. If your data needs to be extremely accurate, it may be worth considering outsourcing your surveys.

According to research outsourcing employee surveys costs between $3,000 and $15,000. Although there are several benefits of outsourcing your employee survey, there are also many upsides to simply doing everything yourself, using different survey templates.

If you decide to opt for online surveys like this, you would be cutting costs and conducting effective surveys at no price. There are many resources online that you can make use of these templates that you can easily customize to serve your purpose. These templates help you easily collate the results and analyze them.

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Nicky Liedtke

Nicky is a content writer and researcher for Lumiform. With her content writing and copywriting experience, she creates high-quality content across a variety of relevant topics. She aims to promote workplace safety, sustainable operational excellence, and continuous improvement in her articles. She is passionate about communicating how technology can be used to have a positive impact on the environment and helping organizations reduce paper waste and achieve their business goals.