Good Employee Survey Question , “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers,” says Voltaire.
Since a successful survey program would require time and energy from your staff, you should concentrate on measuring only the items that are meaningful and valuable to your company.
Pulse is yet another way to pay more attention to workers. There are no set guidelines for what you can ask, so your questions will be entirely determined by your objectives. We recommend beginning with the organization’s strategic priorities and then moving on to the HR department’s objectives.
Focus your attention on each area by asking questions about how your success in each area is changing over time. Asking the right questions at the right time will ensure that your surveys are a success rather than a failure.
Make sure that every question in your survey relates to your target in some way – exclude any “nice to have” things and resist the urge to include irrelevant questions.
Above all, make sure your survey is heavily weighted for execution. Consider if you still need an answer to a particular question if you can’t move on to it.
Getting the right combination of result, driver, and open text questions is the best way to accomplish this.
The Types of Questions Outcome, Driver, and Open Text
The thing you want to measure – for example, engagement or eNPS – is the outcome, also known as a tracker item.’ In most cases, you want to see this item’s scores trending upwards over time.
These are the business activities or behaviours that affect the item you’re monitoring, for better or worse.
For example, whether workers have the appropriate level of training or whether their boss supports them in managing their workload could be a driver of eNPS.
This can be difficult to spot – you may have an idea of what main drivers affect a particular object, but without statistical analysis, it’s just a guess.
Using open text, your workers will write their replies, adding depth to your findings. Using the previous example, you might ask an open-ended question like, “Why would you recommend this company to family and friends?” or “What preparation do you believe is lacking for your role?” The qualitative data you receive can be extremely helpful in putting the quantitative data from your item and driver questions into perspective.
Open analyses were difficult to analyze in the past, but artificial intelligence and natural language processing have come a long way to help text analytics tools mine the open text for insights.
The majority of outcome items aren’t actionable, while driver items should always be. Any pointers on how to
good employee survey questions |
You must ask your questions in such a way that you receive the best possible answers in response once you know what kind of information you need and who to ask.
Here’s a quick checklist to help you get started with conducting good employee surveys:
Question Structure for a robust Survey
We suggest using the 70:20:10 rule of thumb when planning the layout of your survey.
Consider this scenario: if you know that employees’ willingness to try out new things that interest them in their job is a key driver of people endorsing the company as a place to work to family and friends, which is more useful to you: employee survey questions , knowing your score for the result or finding the changes you can make to the key driver?
For an annual engagement survey, this can all happen over one year across an entire organization. Whereas Pulse, this is a smaller loop, and typically happens at a smaller scale (i.e., within smaller workgroups) and more frequently.
Be diligent and honest if the workers are feeling uncomfortable about their employment. Building confidence with your team requires open and honest communication.
Discuss your situation with your staff transparently and honestly. Attempt to establish secure communication channels and solicit feedback regularly.
Is it easy for your workers to find new jobs?
The ease at which your workers can find a comparable (or better) job can have a significant impact on your turnover rates. One of the most important aspects of work embeddedness is sacrifice. If your workers can find a new job without putting in a lot of effort, they are less likely to stay with your company. As a result, their work embeddedness decreases, and employee turnover can increase.
Keep in mind that if your employees become bored, you will lose them. People get bored of repetitive routines. So pay attention to their responses and see if you’re providing enough diversity in your employees’ jobs.
While it might not seem like much money, if an employee is dissatisfied with their job or believes they are being underpaid, they would gladly quit for a small raise.
If the percentage is too high, it indicates that the pay is not competitive enough and that employee morale is declining. So keep an eye on employee engagement and make sure you’re compensating your workers fairly.
Employee satisfaction is dependent on transparency. So, figure out a way to improve your communication with your workers and make them feel like they’re working in a trustworthy atmosphere.
Check to see if any factors are causing the company to collapse. This is important for detecting threats that are only visible to the employees.
People want to be noticed at work, and two weeks without it will make an employee feel unappreciated; this question can tell you if this is the case. So, find the right resources to boost employee recognition in your business, and make sure to regularly sing your team’s praises.
Arrogant leaders also refuse to accept new ideas. Make sure the organization’s leaders are approachable and open to criticism. This question will inform you of the current situation.
Both the job environment and the roles assigned to you play a significant role in this. A drab work environment will make the hours pass quickly. However, a fun work environment (i.e., getting great and helpful coworkers) can inspire people to go above and beyond. So you’ll get an idea of what keeps your workers engaged in their jobs by asking this question.
This will help you out in collecting, managing, analyzing, and interpreting the feedback of the employee survey. Surveys will enable you to manage your employees more effectively and efficiently so that the company can function smoothly.