Purpose of the Employee Engagement Survey

What is employee engagement survey?

An employee engagement survey is a set of survey questions that are asked to gauge the levels of engagement amongst the employees in an organization. These surveys used to a pen and paper affair until a decade ago, however, these days the surveys are deployed using online survey tools.

What makes a successful organization stand out from an averagely performing organization is its culture. This is because these organizations understand the value of employee engagement and that is critical.

It is a known fact that engaged employees are more productive at work, come up with better ideas and suggestions, are less likely to quit and are of course are happier than their teammates. Needless to say, since there is a better employee retention rate, organizations save a lot of money.

Therefore, it is important to understand how engaged are your employees and what is their feedback on the entire process. Employee engagement survey and the analytics obtained thereby are the keys to creating a positive workplace culture, increase employee productivity and create a happier and satisfied workplace.

Learn more: employee engagement survey examples

Purpose of the Employee Engagement Survey

Engaged employees are the foundation of any organization. According to a study conducted by Gallup, 51% of employees are disengaged at work, 17% are actively disengaged and only 32% of employees are known to be engaged at work.

If these statistics were to change then there is something in the organization that needs to change- How seriously do you consider employee engagement? When employees are engaged they are the brand ambassadors of the organization, they successfully influence the employee Net Promoter Score and positively influence customer satisfaction.

To understand the levels of employee engagement, an organization needs to deploy an employee engagement survey at regular intervals. These survey not only collect responses from your employees but also are the first-hand source of data that leads to actionable insights. Here are the top 5 purposed of the employee engagement survey:

1. Voice of employee

Using the employee engagement survey is essential for giving employees a voice. It makes it possible for the employees to give honest feedback to the organization/manager/supervisor about the things that are working fine and also things that are genuinely not going in the right direction.

You cannot simply barge into your manager’s cabin and recite a list of things that are not working fine. Most of us wouldn’t do this, however, it is important that the organization is aware of your trouble. Hence, these surveys act as a great tool for the voice of employees.

2. Measures employee engagement

The one very important reason to deploy this survey is to measure employee engagement levels in your organization. This is one of the key drivers of success in your organization and you should consider this seriously if you are not already.

While there are no standard drivers to measure success and it differs from one organization to the other there are some common drivers of success that are common for most organizations and these drivers of employee engagement should be a part of your engagement surveys. Ask the right questions to get appropriate responses.

3. Organizational growth

When you know that the organization measures on areas like employee satisfaction, leadership, workplace culture you are sure of receiving tangible objectives of change. Assessing engagement will also help you identify the best practices within your organization. Within the organization, there are multiple departments that either work in tandem or independently.

Irrespective of their functionality, there might be some departments that would highly rate engagement and then there will be some departments that rate it poorly. This survey will help you reach the root cause of employee dissatisfaction and help an organization direct their energy to improve the system, thereby leading to organizational growth.

4.Benchmark results

Conducting these surveys will help you benchmark your results. Surveys are one of the most systematic ways of collecting and recording data. This data can be used to benchmark results year-on-year. Also, you can look at particular survey results and compare it with industry-specific data to gain an understanding n how your organization is performing.

Benchmarking will also allow you to understand if a problem persists only in your organization or is common industry-wide. If only 25% of your employees are engaged then you can check with the industrial standard to check if other organizations are facing the same issue and what are they doing to improve the levels of engagement.

5. Increase employee engagement

Once you have assessed how engaged your employees are, now is the time to create the right engagement plan for them. The data obtained by deploying the employee engagement survey will give you a clear understanding of how your employees’ purview engagement.

Based on that data you can develop an organization-wide engagement program and focus on objectives that will help you achieve business success. Identify the changes that you need to bring about and successfully implement these changes.