10 Jun 2021

Employee engagement surveys - a path to recognition

As an employer, you have a duty of care to the people who work for you. Some employers deal with this by implementing an employee assistance programme. Some put together a series of options, like remote working, flexible hours and extended breaks. Some do all of the above—and it’s great that they do.

But the best way to get in tune with the things your people need in order to be happier, healthier and more engaged?

Ask them what they want.

It can be a little daunting, opening up your processes and programmes to honest, direct feedback. But it’s more than worth it – both you and your employees will learn a lot about your business. And you might find some solutions to problems you didn’t even know existed.

Recognition and reward, after all, are impossible when you don’t know how your employees truly feel about their work, their environment, or the rewards on offer. When you’re offering benefits and rewards, people rarely complain – at least, openly. Running regular, anonymised engagement surveys will likely reveal a lot about your rewards and recognition. And while it may not be exactly what you want to hear, that feedback will help you steer your organisation on to the right course.

At its most basic, conducting an employee engagement survey is about:

recognising that you could work to improve employee engagement
figuring out the questions you want to ask
getting everyone involved in answering them
reading the submitted results carefully, and making the right changes.

Again, possibly a little daunting. But there are a number of reasons why it’s worth putting in the effort to get this right.

Employee engagement is about workers feeling positive, enthusiastic, committed to and involved in every aspect of the business. This enthusiasm and positivity leads to a few things you’ll notice in your workforce:

People work harder, better and for longer when they’re engaged with their work. This is a simple fact – if you’re interested in your tasks, then effort comes naturally.
Your employees develop loyalty to your company when they feel like a valued, positive contributor – engagement is vital here. This leads to great retention, meaning less spent on hiring and training newcomers.
The overall wellbeing of everyone improves – when people are happy with their work, they’re happier in every other aspect. And that happiness is contagious.
You’ll make more money – higher productivity, happier, more loyal staff, and better wellbeing equal a stronger bottom line.

How to prepare

So, you’ve decided you want to get proactive, and ask your employees what they might want out of their working day. That’s great! But now, the hard work starts. There’s a lot to think about. Here are a four hints on best practices for employee engagement surveys to get you on the road:

Get as many people as you can on board – this is the most important part. The more data you have the more useful it is. Get everyone to fill out your surveys. But make sure the data is kept private and anonymous – otherwise people may feel like they can’t be honest.
Report your findings regularly – if people put the effort in to respond, they deserve to know what the prevailing opinion is. After all, if people hear nothing back, they’re likely to disengage with the survey – and that’s completely the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.
Select the most pressing points, and act on them – don't tie yourself in knots trying to solve every problem. Look for common themes, and figure out what you can do to make them better.
Promote it well – a few good engagement survey promotion ideas are sending out interesting emails about the survey and its purpose, emphasising how quick and easy it is to make an impact by answering the questions, or making engagement with the survey rewardable by a prize draw.

Once you’ve got a strong grasp of what you want to achieve, it’s time to write the survey itself. We’ve covered this in detail previously, but as a recap, here are some good subjects to tackle: