How to Nail Your Employee Engagement Survey

The employee engagement survey has long been a staple of culture-savvy businesses — and for good reason! Engagement is key to employee productivity, morale, and retention — in short, good for the bottom line. And when it comes to taking the pulse on employee engagement, regularly checking in with employees to see how they’re doing, an engagement survey is really a no-brainer.

As a leadership speaker, I visit a lot of companies that do annual or semi-regular employee engagement surveys. I know that business leaders and HR executives see the value in these surveys — but sometimes; they don’t know exactly what they should be asking. They worry that their surveys aren’t providing them the kind of insights they need.

The Roots of Employee Engagement

It’s all too easy to ask the wrong survey questions when you don’t truly understand what motivates employees. So that’s a good starting point: To nail your employee engagement survey, you have to understand where engagement really comes from. Study after study confirms that engagement is locked into three basic concepts:

• Employees who understand their role and their fit within the broader organization;
• Employees who feel like they learn in the workplace, and develop their professional skillsets; and