Simple Guide for Engagement Surveys

Just like your customer survey (or net promoter score), the engagement survey allows you to collect valuable information to help you in your business decision-making.

In particular, the engagement survey offers the opportunity to get a feel for the general climate in the office. In other words, it measures your employees’ commitment and to assess their satisfaction with management’s approach.

Used properly, it can be a remarkable catalyst for change. Its strategy and implementation are essential to ensure success, but it can produce disastrous results if its orchestration is neglected.

1. Define Your Goals

Before you even choose the format of your survey, you should clearly define your objectives. Are you looking to clarify a particular problem? Gather your management team and engage in the discussion to highlight your priorities and values. The survey must be able to meet your real needs to help you in a concrete way.

2. Be Transparent

As soon as you and your management team have started the process of setting up your survey, consider involving your employees. Clearly communicate the reasons why you want to probe them and keep them informed as steps are taken.

3. Consider Using a Third Party

Setting up an engagement survey requires a lot of rigor, time and energy. It may be advisable to entrust the realization and execution of the survey to a specialized firm. You will then receive advice based on unbiased points of view and have access to tools that have already been proven to be effective. 

4. Ensure Anonymity

Anonymity is a crucial criterion for the success of your survey. For this reason, the questions must be written so that the answers do not in any way compromise the confidentiality of the results. Avoid any questions that may highlight the identity of the respondent.

Furthermore, it must be clear to your management team that the survey is not an opportunity to guess where the answers and comments are coming from. Rather, it represents an opportunity to better understand the general feeling of your employees and to trigger positive changes.

5. Only Discuss the Area in Which you are Willing to Change

If you do not intend to change offices, it is not necessary to ask your employees where they would like new offices to be located. Do not create false hopes or doubts through questions not related to the objectives defined in your first step.

6. Make Sure Every Question is Impartial

The questions in your survey should be clear, concise and perfectly objective. Because they should be written without any bias, it is a recommended to use an external advisor.

7. Limit the Length of Your Survey

Your employees are most likely very busy. If you want their attention, make sure your survey can be completed in 15 minutes or less. Also, pay special attention to the length of the questions and make it easy for them to quickly understand and answer.

8. Interpret Results

After compiling the survey results, the work is far from over. Now you need to understand results in order to highlight the main trends. Never give feedback or rough poll results to the people involved in some of the questions asked. Don’t hesitate to consult industry studies to compare your results with existing benchmarks.

9. Present Results

Once the results are analyzed and formatted, only bring up relevant and constructive information. You can gather your team and present the results to initiate a discussion.

10. Take Action

If you wanted to probe your employees, it is certainly not to waste time and money. Make your survey results translate into positive and progressive changes. To do this, you need to develop an action plan that results from your goals and achievements. Earn the trust of your employees by putting in place small, simple actions quickly. You will be able to get feedback and adjust as you go.