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Engaged employees are your top performers, yet disengaged or dissatisfied employees are costing the global economy $8.9 trillion in lost productivity. This is according to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workforce report, where only 23% of employees reported being “engaged,” while 62% were “not engaged,” and 15% were “actively disengaged.”
To address this, organizations should seek regular employees feedback through employee engagement surveys. Here’s why employee engagement surveys are important, what questions you should include, and the steps you should take to conduct your own survey.
Why use surveys to measure employee engagement?
Employee engagement surveys serve several critical purposes. Employees can submit feedback anonymously, allowing frustrated or uninspired team members to express their real opinions. By serving as a channel for honest communication, surveys provide a true measure of your team’s engagement.
Here are a few reasons why you should use surveys to measure employee engagement:
- Using data to identify issues: Employee engagement surveys provide valuable feedback that can uncover issues you may not have been aware of, equipping you with the data needed to address concerns and foster a healthier, more positive work environment. Gathering feedback from your entire workforce allows you to pinpoint issues that may be specific to certain roles, teams, or management groups, as well as those that are widespread across the organization.
- Tracking key metrics over time: You can also compare responses to the same questions over time and see how key metrics change as a result of your actions. Through a combination of relatively brief but frequent pulse surveys and more in-depth questionnaires, problems can be identified and addressed before they affect your business.
- Showing commitment to employee well-being: Finally, the very act of conducting employee engagement surveys is a tangible demonstration of your interest in your employees’ well-being. Simply asking questions and providing employees with the chance to make their voices heard can lead to more positive behaviors and improve engagement.
What can you measure with employee engagement surveys?
Engagement surveys help measure and provide valuable insight into the factors that reflect your workforce’s overall well-being, morale, and job satisfaction.
Some of the key metrics to keep in mind are:
- Employee commitment: This measures an employee’s dedication to the organization, as well as their role.
- Motivation: This assesses the drive and enthusiasm that the employee has to contribute positively to the organization.
- Job satisfaction: This evaluates the contentment that the employee has with their work, compensation, and work environment.
- Connection to the company mission: This gauges how aligned the employee is with your organization’s goals, strategy, and vision.
- Career development opportunities: This reveals the employee’s perception of growth potential within your organization, and the likelihood of retention.
- Cultural fit: This identifies how comfortable the employee feels within the organizational culture, and whether their efforts are consistently recognized.
Keeping these metrics in mind will help HR leaders develop effective engagement and retention strategies.
What questions should you ask in an employee engagement survey?
Employment engagement surveys are a powerful way to gauge how motivated, connected, and satisfied employees feel within their roles and your organization. To gather meaningful insights, you should ask questions that prompt detailed responses.
It’s also best practice to ask for suggested actions the organization can take to address employee feedback. This will help you understand what needs to be done to improve the employee experience in specific areas, and also receive more favorable survey responses in the future.
Here are some examples of questions to ask across various categories of the employee experience:
1. Workplace culture and environment
- Do you feel a sense of belonging within the company?
- Are the organization’s core values reflected in daily work?
- Do you feel respected and valued by your colleagues?
- Do you receive recognition for your work?
2. Leadership and management
- Do you feel supported by your manager in your role?
- Do you feel like your manager is invested in your success?
- Is leadership transparent in sharing important company information?
- Do you feel that leadership listens to and values employee feedback?
3. Job satisfaction and motivation
- How satisfied are you with your current role and responsibilities?
- Do you feel motivated to give your best effort at work?
- Do you believe your work is appreciated and recognized by the company?
- Are there professional development opportunities available to you?
4. Work-life balance
- Do you feel you have a healthy balance between work and personal life?
- Are your workload and responsibilities manageable within your work hours?
- Does the company offer flexibility (remote work, flexible hours, etc.) to support work-life balance?
5. Engagement and retention
- How likely are you to recommend this organization as a good place to work?
- Do you see yourself working here in the next two years?
- What would make you consider leaving this organization?
How to design your employee engagement survey questions
When creating employee engagement survey questions, it’s essential to design them in a way that genuinely captures how employees feel about their work experience, as well as the energy and effort they invest. A balanced approach often includes a combination of both quantitative and qualitative questions to provide a well-rounded view of employee sentiment.
What’s the difference between quantitative and qualitative questions?
- Quantitative questions: Allow for easier data comparison across the organization and over time, offering valuable metrics to track progress and identify trends. Examples of quantitative questions include rating scales or multiple-choice options.
- Qualitative questions: Qualitative questions give employees the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings in greater depth, offering insights that numbers alone can’t capture. These questions often explore key aspects of the employee experience, such as recognition, job satisfaction, and career development opportunities.
It’s important to ensure that your survey questions are clear, direct, and free from any leading language that could influence responses. Conducting a pilot test with a small group of employees can help fine-tune the wording and structure, ensuring the survey effectively gathers the insights needed to improve employee engagement.
22 employee engagement survey question examples
Asking the right questions in an employee engagement survey is key. A survey should touch on important components of engagement like employee satisfaction, alignment, and future goals. To put together a questionnaire that fits your organization’s needs, you’ll need to incorporate questions in each of these areas and understand how to implement them in your surveys.
Employee satisfaction survey questions
What does employee satisfaction mean in your organization, and how can you measure it? We all know what a truly satisfied team member looks like, and how they act: eager to come to work, overdelivering, always seeking out more than their individual role requires. But dissatisfaction can be harder to detect or measure.
The following questions explore how your employees feel about your organization and whether they are satisfied with their place in it.
1. How do you feel about work today?
This question gets to the heart of the matter by inquiring about each employee’s attitude, with a focus on the present moment. It opens the door to a broader conversation and reminds your employees that your company actually cares about how they feel. It’s also valuable to find out if employees in a particular group or role are unhappy. This may be the symptom of a larger issue beyond the individual employee, which you’ll want to thoroughly investigate.
Consider using graphics with a range of happy to sad faces and allowing your employees to choose which best represents their current mood. This makes it easy for employees to answer and may get at feelings they are less comfortable expressing in words to their supervisor. You can still provide an optional comments field for employees who would prefer to describe their mood.
2. Would you recommend [organization] to your friends as an employer?
As the saying goes, a happy customer will tell a friend, but an unhappy one will tell 10 friends. That goes double for employees.
People who work for your organization are the single best source of word of mouth for recruiting. Whether a current employee would recruit their friends or warn them to stay away is a revealing measure of how your organization is doing overall and the employee’s feelings about the company. This is a good question to include regularly, so you can measure results against those from past surveys.
3. Do you feel excited about coming to work?
This question is designed to elicit strong responses as well as nonresponses. Employees who are excited about their jobs spread that excitement. For employees who are less engaged, a neutral answer provides the opportunity to go deeper and ask what would make them excited about coming to work.
4. Are you proud of working for [organization]?
This question centers on employee accomplishments as well as the employee’s role in the organization. Proud employees project their achievements. They represent your brand, both to customers and to the people they know. For employees who aren’t especially proud, offer an optional comments field so they can tell you why.
5. Are you satisfied with your current compensation and benefits?
Compensation is only one measure of employee satisfaction. However, employees who believe they are underpaid — or that others are overpaid — are more likely to express dissatisfaction. In addition, asking about benefits will help you learn which benefits are meaningful to your employees and which benefits they would consider valuable if offered.
6. Do you enjoy working with your team?
Team engagement is contagious. Happy team members feel valued and communicate that deep satisfaction to colleagues.
This is another question where you might offer a text field to allow employees to explain their answers, possibly identifying team members who deserve particular acclaim.
You may also receive complaints about other workers or managers. This is a good opportunity to direct employees to other channels if they need to resolve an issue or want help with a specific complaint.
Organizational alignment employee engagement survey questions
Questions about alignment in an employee engagement survey take the personal feelings from the first section and apply them to the overall environment in your organization. Do employees feel like what they do matters and that they are appreciated by management? Motivated employees with high engagement experience strong alignment — that is, their personal goals mesh with their role in the company at large.
7. Do you find your work for [organization] meaningful?
Employees who consider their work meaningful work harder and are happier. They are more likely to weather bumps in the road and stay committed to your organization over the long term. Engaged employees can clearly see the impact of their work and the work of the organization.
8. Does [organization]’s vision and values inspire you?
The purpose of this question is to find out how employees relate to your mission and goals. Do they see themselves as active participants and standard bearers, embodying organizational values to customers and other employees? Some employees may not be clear what your organization’s vision and values are. You might include them on the page with the question, or you might offer a response that indicates “I’m not familiar with our organization’s vision and values.”
9. Do others provide you with recognition for your accomplishments at work?
Recognition is the leading driver of employee engagement. Most people crave recognition and appreciation, especially from managers and other leaders, even if they don’t express it. And employees who don’t feel appreciated are likely to seek that recognition elsewhere. Recognizing employees on a frequent basis is a key practice for improving employee appreciation and engagement.
11. Does [organization]’s culture foster a comfortable, supportive work environment?
Answers to this question reveal lessons about your managers and whether employees are set up to succeed. Managers have a strong effect on their entire team’s engagement. Demonstrating an interest in each individual’s work and career goals is a first step to building a culture among leadership that supports employee engagement.
12. Is leadership invested in and contributing to your culture initiatives?
Your organizational culture starts with a shared mission and how your leaders communicate that sense of purpose to members of your team and to customers. Unfortunately, 45 percent of employees say leadership is “minimally” or “not at all” committed to improving company culture. Organizational leaders must champion and reinforce cultural values to show employees they care. It’s essential to communicate openly about company culture, including what employees feel is working, what isn’t, and what changes should be made as you move forward together.
Future orientation employee engagement survey questions
Did you know 64 percent of employees may leave their jobs this year? Checking on whether your employees plan to stay with your organization in the long term is a critical part of any employee engagement survey. The questions in this section help surface areas where your organization needs more outreach to talented but frustrated workers.
13. Do you see yourself working here in a year?
3.5 million Americans quit their jobs every month, and a full one-third of U.S. workers considered leaving their jobs in the past 3 months. Consider including a text field with this question so that employees who feel comfortable sharing why they’re considering leaving can do so.
14. Does your work challenge you and aid your development?
This question seeks to find out how interested employees are in their work. Recently, 43 percent of employees stated “career advancement” as one of the top reasons they are looking to leave their company, followed by “lack of recognition”. Don’t create artificial difficulties as a substitute for genuinely engaging tasks, though, as employees whose work is overly challenging for reasons beyond their control may feel frustrated or not sufficiently supported.
15. Do you see a path for career advancement at [organization]?
Employees who see their current position as a dead end are unlikely to remain around long. This question also reveals whether employees perceive your organization as rewarding skilled workers with promotions and new opportunities.
16. Do you have the tools needed to maximize your potential here?
This question allows the employee to evaluate what is holding them back and provides a chance to identify ways to improve. Consider asking what resources would better support the employee in their work, accompanied by an optional text field for comments.
17. Have you recently thought about leaving [organization]?
You may want to reassure employees that this survey is anonymous or provide ambiguous choices for answers like “Not sure.” It’s better to find out the truth, so you can avert systemic issues before they affect productivity and morale.
18. Has anyone at the company asked about and expressed support for your career goals?
This question shows whether your company’s leadership is actively reaching out to employees about career development. You might include a recommendation to make an appointment with HR or a manager to discuss career aspirations.
Open-ended employee engagement survey questions
Open-ended questions provide an opportunity for employees to express what’s really on their mind, in their own words. Always include a few open-ended questions in each survey, tailored to your organization. It’s also good practice to include a text field for entering optional comments on some other questions, as indicated above.
19. What practices do we need to change?
This question asks employees to look outward and share their recommendations. Employee engagement increases significantly when employees feel like active participants in a responsive organization.
20. Are there any problems with our culture?
Encourage employees to identify discomfort or ways in which your corporate culture doesn’t feel like a good fit. See their feedback as opportunities to improve areas within your organizational culture.
21. How can we help improve your engagement at work?
Ask employees for direct input on how to engage them. They’ll appreciate you listening, and they’ll be proud to see their recommendations put into action.
Is there anything else you would like to share that you find important to your employee experience here at [organization]?
It’s important to include this question to ensure you aren’t missing out on feedback that could improve your organization. Keep your door open. And when employees begin to share their vision for a more powerful, effective organization, listen carefully and be grateful they trusted you with the truth.
Find out how a workplace chatbot can drive the new engagement conversation
Employee engagement survey best practices
There are some basic best practices every organization should follow when creating and conducting employee engagement surveys:
1. Keep questions to the point
Each survey question should be simple, to the point, and guided by your organization’s engagement objectives. Think about your goals in administering each survey. Are there areas of employee engagement that are of particular concern in your organization? Have you made recent changes in incentive programs that you would like to measure the effectiveness of?
Knowing what metrics are important for your organization makes survey results that much more valuable. Ideally, you’ll ask the same questions over a period of months or years, so you can assess progress on particular KPIs.
2. Keep questions open ended
You should also be sure to include a few open-ended questions, or the option to leave a comment with a multiple-choice answer. Not every respondent will need this, but it provides an opening for employees with concerns to express them.
3. Conduct surveys regularly
Many companies perform annual surveys, often in connection with performance reviews. This is good practice, but annual surveys alone aren’t enough when it comes to measuring employee engagement. Employees change jobs, and you can’t wait months to find out you have a department-wide problem or someone who’s deeply dissatisfied. Conducting pulse surveys on a regular basis lets employees know their concerns matter and keeps you up-to-date on your workforce’s engagement level.
4. Keep surveys anonymous
Remember to administer engagement surveys anonymously, so your employees can be direct and honest about workplace concerns without fear of reprisals. You may choose to allow respondents to identify themselves if they want a follow up, and you can also remind them to use confidential channels like HR for serious issues that require immediate attention.
5. Give employees space to work on surveys
Make sure employees have a quiet, private location to submit their survey responses. They may be less forthcoming in an open office surrounded by peers and supervisors, or if they are expected to complete an engagement survey between regularly assigned tasks or after hours. Set expectations for how long the survey will take to complete.
6. Leverage the Likert Scale
The Likert Scale is an essential tool for employee engagement surveys, helping you assess the strength of employee feelings on various issues. Typically ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” this scale offers a more nuanced understanding of employee perspectives. It also transforms subjective opinions into quantifiable data, making it easier to identify patterns and address concerns effectively.
This method also helps identify areas of strong agreement or disagreement, shedding light on critical issues that may require attention. The Likert Scale’s simplicity encourages high completion rates, making it ideal for regular pulse surveys. Including a mix of positive and negative statements in your questions can further deepen insights, prompting employees to think more carefully about their responses.
How to get the most out of employee engagement surveys
Automated follow-up
Reviewing survey results thoroughly and forming an appropriate response can take considerable time. Fortunately, this is an area where technology can assist you. Automated tools, such as Allie, Achievers’ workplace chatbot, are available for conducting prompt follow up to explore issues raised by employee feedback. The chatbot starts by asking simple, friendly questions, and the anonymity of an automated tool can make it easier for employees to express themselves.
Timely follow-up ensures that employees feel heard after completing a survey. It’s not uncommon for employees who’ve just reported dissatisfaction or frustration to feel deserted after answering survey questions and failing to see any response. Using a workplace chatbot improves employee satisfaction and provides additional information to analyze.
After the survey
77% of employees say that they’re more likely to answer honestly in a survey than in conversation with their manager, so it’s important to analyze the survey results and act to address employee feedback.
Organizations need to respond to feedback to demonstrate that they’re listening. For example, if employees report they don’t see a career path at your organization, managers could identify and promote career development and training opportunities. This helps employees grow and improves your organization’s chances of retaining top talent. Similarly, if employees don’t feel their efforts are appreciated, you might implement a recognition program.
It’s also important to share survey results with your company at large, while preserving participants’ anonymity. Completing the feedback loop reinforces that you care about honest results and measuring progress.
Understanding engagement questions vs employee feedback questions
Employee engagement questions are designed to measure overall engagement and satisfaction with an organization. The questions can vary, but often focus on work-related topics such as:
- Motivation towards the organization’s goals
- Feelings of fit within one’s role
- Coworker relationships
Employee feedback questions tend to be more tactical and focus on gathering feedback on specific issues or topics, such as:
- Communication
- Work-life balance
- Manager support
Employee engagement survey vendors give employees a voice by delivering, collecting, and analyzing employee sentiments around key areas of their experience working within an organization.
These types of vendors typically offer a full-service employee engagement survey that typically include features like:
- Customized research-based surveys
- Robust online reporting
- Industry benchmarkss
- Analysis and action planning tools
- Consulting to optimize data capture
Take employee engagement to the next level
Now that we’ve explored a variety of survey questions, you can start building your next employee engagement survey using an expert solution like Achievers Listen. Achievers Listen helps you construct employee engagement pulse surveys, easily segment results to hone in on individual problem areas and highlights, and track KPIs and progress over time.
Request a live demo for Listen to see how fast and rewarding measuring employee engagement can be.
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