How to Create an Employee Engagement Survey Effectively

Employees are the backbone of any successful business. Their dedication, skills, and effort facilitate progress, so keeping them happy should be a priority for any forward-thinking organization. How do you find out how invested your team truly is? Well, it can often feel like solving a puzzle without all the pieces.

Employee engagement is more than mere job contentment; it's about the deep emotional connection with a role and the organization. Engaged employees are not just performing tasks – they're striving for excellence, consistently delivering value, and fueling the company's success. However, relying on assumptions about contentment can lead to blind spots, resulting in reduced productivity, higher turnover rates, and escalating costs associated with recruitment and training.

The key to overcoming this challenge lies in gathering meaningful insights directly from your team. Employee engagement surveys are a practical tool to discover what people think and feel. By leveraging this data, businesses can create a workplace environment where everyone feels supported, valued, and inspired to perform at their best.

On this page, we'll walk you through how to conduct effective employee engagement and satisfaction surveys, while sharing a handy tool to help you nail them. 

How Often Should You Run Employee Engagement Surveys? 

When setting employee engagement survey goals, it's important to consider how often and why you're checking in with your team.

• Annual engagement surveys might seem like the standard approach, but they're rarely enough to keep up with your team's needs.
• Checking in more regularly allows you to stay connected and address concerns before they grow. 

However, it's important to strike the right balance as too many surveys can lead to fatigue, while too few can leave valuable insights undiscovered.

A good rule of thumb is to plan for 4-7 surveys throughout the year. This frequency provides enough opportunities to capture meaningful insights without overwhelming employees. The key is to design concise and relevant surveys that focus on specific issues or goals. 

Consistency matters, but follow-through is even more important. Employees need to see that their feedback leads to meaningful changes. Avoid asking questions you're not prepared to act on. Team members notice when feedback is ignored, and failing to respond can quickly break trust and engagement. Therefore, you'd better show your team that you're listening and ready to make their workplace better.

How to Create an Employee Engagement Survey

Employee engagement surveys offer a great way to understand your team's perspectives and strengthen your recognition culture. Let's take a closer look at the key steps for creating a survey that not only gathers valuable feedback but also leads to notable advancements.

Step 1. Plan Your Survey Strategy

Creating a solid design is one of the key employee survey best practices to ensure its success. You should keep things straightforward and easy to follow so that both employees and managers can quickly understand the questions and the results. Your ultimate goal is to make sure that everyone involved can engage with the survey and that the data you collect leads to meaningful action. Here's what you have to take care of.

1. Define the Survey Type and Scope

Deciding on the type of survey you want to create is the first step that will guide everything from the questions you ask to the overall length and approach to analyzing the results. So, take a moment to think about your survey's objective. There are a few different types, each with a unique purpose:

• pulse surveys (measuring employee sentiments on a specific subject);
• annual engagement surveys (covering a broad range of topics, from job satisfaction to leadership effectiveness);
• onboarding or exit surveys (focusing on employee experiences at key moments in their journey);
• team or departmental survey (assessing team dynamics, collaboration, or challenges).

2. Identify Key Contributors 

When planning a survey, it's crucial to determine who should provide input and who shouldn't and to be transparent about the reasons behind these decisions. For example, if you're conducting a health check to measure burnout or dissatisfaction levels, it would be strange to limit the survey to just one department, like IT. If you're looking to understand the overall well-being of your employees, it's important to involve a diverse cross-section of the company – marketing, design, HR, accounting, and other teams. 

On the other hand, there may be cases where certain groups should be excluded. For instance, you might choose not to include new hires who haven't yet had enough time to experience the company culture, or employees on extended leave, as their feedback may not accurately reflect the current workplace environment. 

3. Determine the Ideal Survey Length

The optimal survey length depends on the type you're conducting:

• for pulse surveys, which focus on specific topics, 5-15 questions work best to keep things quick and engaging;
• annual engagement surveys, which are more comprehensive, usually fall between 20-30 questions to gather detailed feedback without overwhelming employees;
• exit surveys and onboarding surveys are typically shorter, around 10-15 questions;
• team or departmental surveys tend to have around 10-20 questions. 

4. Ensure Anonymity for Honest Feedback

Keep in mind that if you want people to be open, making sure the survey is anonymous is key. You can do this by using tools that don't collect personal information and by being upfront with employees that their answers won't be traced back to them. 

5. Set Clear Deadlines

It's important to establish specific timelines from the start so that everyone is aware of when each phase is due. You might allocate a week for the survey design to be finalized, set the launch date (e.g., "Survey goes live on Monday, March 1st"), and specify a response deadline (e.g., "Survey closes on Friday, March 5th"). This helps stay on track and ensures timely execution without delays.

6. Prepare Follow-Up and Reminders

You shouldn't just sit back and wait for responses, though. Employees may often put off filling out surveys, forget about them, or get distracted by other tasks. That's why it's significant to think through how you'll nudge them. For instance, some send regular reminders to ensure the survey gets completed on time. You can craft notification messages in advance to send them a few days before the survey deadline or once it's live.

Step 2. Gather Opinions from Decision-Makers

After outlining the survey type and ideal length, it's time to start putting your questions together. At this point, you shouldn't be worried about making it perfect just yet – this is all about getting your ideas down. So, you can just open a Google Doc or spreadsheet and start brainstorming the questions that will help you gather the insights you need.

Who decides which questions to ask? That really depends on who's leading the employee survey process. Whether you're the CEO, a department head, or an HR manager, connect with the key decision-makers. HRs are great at understanding the technical side of surveys, while managers have a direct pulse on what's happening with employees every day. The company leader, on the other hand, will likely want the survey to tie into bigger business goals.

This information will guide you in shaping the survey questions and may also prompt you to include demographic data, such as department (e.g., Sales, IT, or Marketing) or location (e.g., New York vs. remote employees), to ensure the survey yields the most valuable and insightful takeaways for your organization.

Step 3. Organize Your Survey for Clarity and Impact

Creating a clear and engaging survey structure is vital for achieving the objectives of employee engagement survey outcomes. A well-structured survey doesn't just improve participation rates – it ensures you gather reliable data that reflects the true employee experience.

For starters, you should group your questions based on the themes you've chosen. Thematic grouping helps the survey flow naturally, making it easier for employees to provide meaningful responses. This could look like:

• Engagement ("How likely are you to stay with the company for the next year?")
• Career Growth ("Do you feel you have enough opportunities to grow in your role?")
• Teamwork and Leadership ("How well do you feel your team works together?")
• Recognition ("Do you feel recognized for your contributions?")

To keep things simple, ensure the instructions are clear and concise. You want employees to understand what they need to do without any confusion. A quick line like, "Please answer the following questions honestly. Your responses are anonymous, and we appreciate your feedback" will set the right tone.

Lastly, save demographic questions for the end. This way, employees can first focus on sharing their experiences before they're asked to provide personal details. Questions like, "What department do you work in?" or "How long have you been with the company?" should be short and non-intrusive.

Step 4. Craft Questions That Reveal Employee Engagement

Once the decision-makers regarding the employee engagement survey are on the same page about the goals, it's time to focus on the right questions. The purpose of your survey is to not only find areas for refinement but also celebrate what's going well.

Asking the right questions helps you understand how people feel about their day-to-day work and the company as a whole. The best part about designing your own survey is that you can tailor the questions to fit your company's unique culture, making them more relevant and easier for employees to answer. Plus, it helps you keep the survey short. What should you focus on when crafting your questions?

Start by getting a sense of how engaged your team really is. This typically involves asking about things like their plans to stick around, how invested they feel in their work, whether they're proud to be part of the company, and if they'd recommend it to others. It's helpful to mix up the types of questions you ask. 

• Open-ended questions, such as "What inspires you in your work?" or "How would you describe the culture of our company?" are valuable because they let employees share their thoughts and feelings in more detail. The downside is that these answers can take more time to go through, but they're definitely worth it.
  
  
• On the flip side, multiple-choice questions like "How likely are you to recommend our company to others?" or "How proud are you to be part of the company?" give people clear options to choose from. This makes it easier to analyze the responses and spot any trends over time.
  
  
• Then there are rating scale questions, like "On a scale of 1 to 10, how invested do you feel in your work?" or "How likely are you to stick around for another year?" These are great for checking in on specific aspects of engagement and give you quick, consistent data that makes it easier to see how things are changing over time.

Step 5. Choose the Right Survey Tool and Set Up Recipients

Next, you need to pick the right tool for your survey to collect responses. There are plenty of options out there, each with its own perks, so select one that suits your needs:

• Google Forms (ideal for small teams or less complex surveys);
• SurveyMonkey (offers both free and paid plans with more advanced analytics and customization options, great for detailed reporting); 
• Typeform (user-friendly, engaging surveys that work well for mobile users);
• Culture Amp or Officevibe (specialized HR tools with pre-built templates);
• OrgaNice (a great tool for Slack users to create surveys without leaving the workspace).

As you make your choice, think about accessibility as well. You should ensure it's as convenient as possible for everyone to jump in and share their feedback. The smoother and more intuitive the process, the more likely you are to receive diverse and meaningful feedback.

Once you've selected your tool, put together the survey and add your questions. The next step is to set up the recipients for your survey. Depending on the tool you choose, you'll need to either manually enter employee contact details like email addresses, upload a CSV list of contacts, or otherwise. You should carefully review the recipient list to make sure the right people are getting the survey.

Step 6. Making Your Employee Engagement Survey Live

Now that your survey is ready, it's showtime! To get the best insights, you'll need as many employees as possible to participate. Thus, you'd better make sure the invitation to take the survey is clear, encouraging, and sent to everyone in the company.

Highlighting why their feedback matters and connecting it to the employee survey objectives can significantly boost response rates. When employees see how their input contributes to meaningful changes, they're more likely to participate.

Keep an eye on response rates while the survey is live. If participation is lagging, send out friendly reminders like, "We value your input! Don't forget to fill out the survey and share your thoughts." You could also ask managers to personally encourage their teams, saying something like, "Your feedback helps shape the future of our workplace, so please take a few minutes to complete the survey." 

What Happens After Employee Engagement Survey Launch?

Remember to thank your employees for their honesty and time. A simple "thank you" email or a shoutout in a team meeting can go a long way in showing that you appreciate their input.

What's next? You've got the survey results and now it's time to see how you measure up. Benchmarking is your secret weapon here as it illustrates what employees expect from great workplaces. 

Spotting gaps between your scores and the best in the biz can help you figure out what's holding your team back and how to fix it. For example, if scores on your employees' intent to stay or work involvement are lower than you'd like, it might be a sign to revisit growth opportunities or team dynamics.

It's also a chance toefine your employee value proposition – basically, what makes your workplace awesome. Knowing how you stack up lets you double down on what sets your company apart and use that to attract (and keep) top talent.

To get the full picture, calculate your overall employee engagement score based on these factors:

• intent to stay (how likely your team is to stick around);
• work involvement (the energy and focus employees put into their roles);
• discretionary effort (how much they're willing to go above and beyond);
• pride in the company (how great they feel about being part of your team);
• willingness to recommend (whether they'd tell their friends your company rocks).

Now that you know where you stand, the next step is to figure out what the data is really telling you and leverage it to make big changes. As you analyze the results, take your time to spot trends and patterns. What's working great? Where are the pain points? This is your opportunity to see the bigger picture and understand how people truly feel about their experience. Jot down any questions or interesting observations that come up – these will guide your next steps.

When you've made sense of the results, you can share them with your team. If you decide to be transparent about the results, break the findings into digestible pieces that everyone can easily understand. Emphasize the good, acknowledge the areas for improvement, and use visuals like charts or graphs to make the data more relatable. 

Finally, turn insights into an action plan. Be clear about the next steps you'll take and involve employees in shaping those changes where possible. Let them know what they can expect moving forward. 

Enhance Feedback Collection with Slack Surveys

Now that you're familiar with how to conduct effective employee surveys, you may be looking for a way to streamline the process. While there are countless survey tools available, getting people to actually complete a survey can be a challenge. Asking them to click a link, sign up, and fill out a survey on an external site just adds extra steps, and often leads to lower participation.

However, if your team uses Slack for communication, you can streamline this by running surveys directly within the platform using a tool like OrgaNice. This allows you to gather feedback right where your team is already working, eliminating the need to juggle multiple tools. As a result, both managers and employees can stay engaged with the feedback process in a seamless, hassle-free way.

What's great about this team survey Slack bot is its customizable survey templates. You can easily tailor your questions to get the specific feedback you need, whether it's general impressions or more detailed insights.

Creating and distributing surveys is quick, and the collected data is organized in a user-friendly dashboard, providing you with clear, actionable insights. This saves you time on analysis and manual processing, making tracking trends and monitoring employee sentiment more efficient.

Adding OrgaNice to your workspace is really simple. With a quick setup through the admin panel, you can customize profile fields, notifications, announcements, time-off requests, and more. Once integrated, the bot will begin automatically collecting employee data through Slack, allowing you to stay on top of feedback and engagement. In no time, you'll have a full employee management system right within your Slack workspace, ready to optimize your team's workflow.

The best part? OrgaNice is completely free for small businesses with up to 36 team members on Slack. For larger teams, there's a free two-week trial to explore all the core features. After the trial, you can continue using the tool for just $1.25 per person per month, with the added benefit of saving more through annual billing.

Final Say on How to Conduct Employee Engagement Survey

To wrap things up, creating an employee engagement survey is all about asking the right questions and actually listening to the answers. When you set clear employee survey goals, they give you a real peek into what's going on with your team – what's working, what's not, and where you can improve. It's a chance to show everyone onboard that their opinions matter and that you're committed to making things better. 

And if you're not sure where to start, OrgaNice has an easy integration into Slack. You can launch surveys in minutes, with no complicated setups or extra tools needed. Moreover, it's packed with other handy HR tools like an org chart builder, a time off tracking solution, a kudos bot, and more to make managing your team a lot easier. If you're ready to take your employee engagement to the next level, feel free to reach out to us!