Build a more productive workplace with employee engagement surveys

Engaged employees make the world go round. When employees feel happier and more satisfied in the workplace, they’re more productive, are more likely to stay at your company for longer, and improve your bottom line. 

Employee engagement surveys are a phenomenal way of measuring employee satisfaction and engagement over time. By harnessing these surveys, you can identify actionable insights that help you create a better workplace for all. 

Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel valued and involved in their everyday work. There’s plenty of debate among human resources professionals and researchers about the particular dimensions that make up employee engagement. But at its core, it comes down to whether employees feel invested in their company’s mission and success. 

Running an employee engagement survey doesn’t just measure employee happiness—it measures their dedication to your company's mission and outcomes. 

Measuring employee engagement, then, is even more crucial: It’s an important indicator of your business's health and an excellent way to spot areas for improvement.

There are four distinct levels of employee engagement that can help establish a benchmark for future recurring surveys:

When employees feel engaged with their work, they’re more fulfilled and more motivated. Gallup studies have long demonstrated that employee engagement influences performance, retention, productivity, and customer loyalty.

Employees with higher levels of engagement typically have a forward-thinking disposition about their company. They’ll think of ways to improve work operations, demonstrate a team-oriented mindset, and show strong leadership skills that help elevate moderately engaged employees.

With a vast range of benefits, employee engagement is vital to the success of your organization. An engaged workforce results in a more productive — and profitable — organization. We’re not talking about tiny increments here, either. The Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023 report suggests a 23% increase in profitability for companies with highly engaged employees.

Performance like this shows that businesses not only should measure employee engagement but can’t afford not to.

What’s the difference between employee engagement and employee satisfaction? While there’s an overlap between the two, far more dimensions define employee engagement than employee satisfaction. In other words, an engaged employee is most likely satisfied, but not all satisfied employees are engaged. 

A good employee engagement survey would measure the following factors:

Effective management can make or break your employee engagement. It’s not just whether your senior management treats employees well or whether they act ethically (of course, that’s important, too!). 

Effective leadership at every level of the organization is crucial. That means managers who articulate company values, communicate well and follow up with appropriate actions. 

A good employee engagement survey will gauge these habits, from managers to C-level.

Related: Management performance survey template

Most people don’t want an easy job. They want to be challenged and tested in their day-to-day work. Challenging work can be immensely motivating for employees as long as they can clearly see how their work relates to the company’s performance. 

SurveyMonkey research from December 2023 reveals that around 90% of employees say that their work is meaningful to them. Helping your employees find reasons for self-motivation or points of connection between their interests and your vision can help improve this metric.

Use your employee engagement survey to ask your employees how challenging (and motivating) their work is—and whether there’s a connection between their performance and the company’s.

Ambitious employees are a good thing. They can be your team's most self-motivated and productive members—as long as it’s clear how you can help them advance in their careers. If it’s not, you’ll risk losing them. 

Clarity around career goals is important, but you need to offer a helping hand. Are your employees getting support from educational and mentoring opportunities? 

Running an employee engagement survey can help you determine if your employees can see a clear path forward and have the support they need to get where they want to go.

When employees are proud of where they work, it shows. They’re true believers in your mission and want to see your company succeed, and that attitude translates to their performance.

When people take pride in their company, they’ll take pride in their work. Fostering this feeling of pride isn’t just about making employees feel good about themselves. It makes them show up to work focused, aligned with their peers, and ready to tackle problems with commitment.

We spend a lot of time interacting with our coworkers. In companies of every size, it’s important to consider working relationships between employees. How they interact, how they view each other’s abilities, and what they see as the strengths and weaknesses of the workforce all impact company morale. 

How employees view their colleagues can greatly impact their morale and faith in meeting company goals.  

Employee survey questions aimed at these issues should be a huge part of any employee engagement strategies you implement.

An employee engagement survey measures employee satisfaction, motivation, and perceptions of the workplace. Businesses can use these surveys to better understand their employees' feelings about their jobs and identify areas for improvement.

Related reading: Employee engagement survey template

Employee engagement is a central metric that will help you determine how happy your employees are in the workplace. These surveys allow employees to voice concerns, ideas, and questions. By monitoring employee satisfaction over time, you can create a data-driven plan to improve the employee experience and increase employee morale.

Here's a 5-step list of the advantages of employee engagement surveys:

Employee engagement surveys can help you better understand how your employees feel about their job, management, and company. It shows them you care about their thoughts and that their opinions matter. 

Sending out employee engagement surveys frequently tells workers you listen to them. This approach can make your employees feel valued and appreciated. 

Surveys can also help you assess each person's level of employee engagement. These figures allow you to highlight high-performing employees who may have gone unnoticed.

Providing a platform where employees are encouraged to voice their thoughts, concerns, and opinions about their organization can create a culture where people are more comfortable. Comfortable employees are happier ones. 

Employee engagement surveys also clarify communication to avoid misunderstandings and provide constructive criticism. This improves everyone’s work performance and the overall success of the organization.

Employee satisfaction is directly related to employee morale. If you want to maintain high employee morale, it’s a good idea to try to keep your employees happy. Surveys can help you gauge employee satisfaction by asking about their jobs and future with your company. 

You can learn about their feelings toward their coworkers and management— and whether they'd recommend your business to others. High recommendation rates typically suggest that employees are satisfied with their jobs.

Ensure quality workers feel appreciated with recognition and rewards. Employees who feel valued are more likely to refrain from finding employment elsewhere. 

Employee engagement surveys can help you detect employees who might be dissatisfied with their jobs. These insights empower you to implement reward incentives and team-oriented exercises that can make employees more engaged in the work culture.

An employee engagement survey benefits company culture by offering insight into your operations' inner workings. The feedback you receive allows you to detect pain points that may require restructuring. 

Closing the feedback loop will show your employees that you’re listening to their wishes and ideas. Over time, using these surveys and responding to the feedback they generate will help contribute to a healthier, more positive company culture.

The employee experience includes everything from workplace satisfaction to contentedness with job compensation. You can use various surveys to measure employee engagement effectively.

Here are the most useful types of employee engagement surveys:

The employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS) measures employees' overall satisfaction and engagement. This survey is straightforward, needing only one main question to begin to generate useful data.

Employees answer the question, “How likely is it that you would recommend working at this company to a friend or colleague?” They can answer on a scale of zero to ten, with ten being extremely likely.

Based on the responses, you can categorize your employees into promoters, passives, and detractors. A higher proportion of promoters in your business signifies more satisfied employees. 

Our employee Net Promoter Score survey template lets your business rapidly collect employee engagement and satisfaction insights, starting your journey toward improving these metrics. 

Remote working has become a worldwide trend, with companies around the globe adopting remote or hybrid workplace models. Our employee engagement survey template for remote workers allows your business to monitor the engagement of these employees, no matter their location.

The survey asks questions like:

Respondents can then select an answer that closely aligns with their opinion from a range of responses. The remote work survey allows businesses to monitor and improve remote worker engagement, helping to boost productivity and improve revenue.

A Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion survey aims to better understand the people who make up your business. These surveys will help you survey your workplace, helping to identify areas where you lack representation or where your internal practices could better align with the needs of your workforce.

Your business can use an employee diversity survey to understand additional needs that specific individuals from certain religious groups may need, identify further opportunities to promote inclusion and celebrate the diversity you already have.

Businesses that emphasize the importance of diversity enjoy higher cash flow per employee and often experience higher team performance. Here are a few sample questions from an employee diversity survey:

One of the leading factors contributing to high employee engagement rates is great compensation packages. Your business can use an employee benefits planning survey to identify areas for enhancement.

By tracing satisfaction rates across different areas of your benefits plan, you will encounter potential improvements you can make. With these enhancements come an increased sense of satisfaction at work, higher engagement, and boosted productivity. 

Here are some typical questions from an employee benefits planning survey:

Another important aspect of enhancing the employee experience is ensuring your business creates an enjoyable and supportive workplace culture. A culture pulse survey will help you measure overall workplace satisfaction, generating data on employees' feelings about workplace safety, dynamics, and compensation.

Your business can use culture pulse surveys to monitor whether or not your employees are happy with the workspace you’ve created. They will also signal areas you can improve, contributing to a better workplace culture for everyone.

Here are a few standard questions you’ll find on a culture pulse survey:

Related: Employee feedback survey templates

Simply measuring employee engagement isn’t enough to foster an engaged workforce. You’ve got to read the results, uncover areas for improvement, and implement employee engagement strategies to meet them. 

SurveyMonkey workforce survey data shows that around 85% of workers are satisfied with their jobs. Using surveys, you can boost this average figure in your organization even more and enhance the overall employee experience.

Maybe you’re interested in measuring and improving only a few of the factors of employee engagement. For example, you may only be interested in how management performance affects employee engagement in your company. In that case, you may want to use the management performance survey template or extract only the portion of the employee engagement survey template that deals with management performance.

But if you’re truly focused on using surveys to develop employee engagement strategies, this probably isn’t the best approach. When you hone in on a specific topic from the beginning, you may miss out on other areas for improvement. 

What if career development opportunities—not management performance—are a bigger factor for employee engagement in your workforce? If you’re developing an overarching employee engagement strategy, it’s best to be comprehensive first and focus on specific parts second.

Here are some KPIs that are useful track when tracking employee engagement with surveys:

Whatever metrics you choose, it’s important to communicate your plan to your employees and ensure they understand how and when you’ll carry it out. Transparency is crucial to this process. 

Here’s a step-by-step plan for outlining and launching an employee engagement survey scheme:

How can you tell if your plan is having a positive effect? By continuously monitoring employee engagement and satisfaction and tracing any changes that occur. You're likely on the right track if your employee satisfaction rates are going up,

At first, receiving a large quantity of survey responses can be overwhelming. Here’s how you can review, analyze, and create data-driven insights from your survey responses:

A continuous culture of data will allow you to improve your employee experience over time. It’ll also display to your employees that you’re working to make your company the best possible workplace for them.

Measuring employee engagement with online surveys allows your business to identify actionable insights to improve satisfaction. 

Build a more productive workplace using SurveyMonkey templates to increase employee engagement. Select a plan that matches your marketing strategy or sign up to get started today.

NPS, Net Promoter & Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.