… given that a 200-question survey in search of meaning is probably a bad idea.
If you don’t start right off the bat by determining your overall employee survey objectives, you won’t know what areas of the employee experience you need to explore to get the results you need to take action.
Every aspect of the employee survey needs to feed your objectives, which then feed the results. Not the other way around. (On a closely related topic, we’ll review “how to avoid survey design by committee” later.)
To do that, first get a sense of how much they use and appreciate the programs you offer now. HR teams use their budgets to introduce and maintain programs meant to help and engage employees, and usually without any ROI data to determine if things are working. A survey can be a great way to find that out.
Areas to explore?
- Is the employee experience what you want it to be – what employees want it to be?
- Is there anything else employees might want from you, like more or different learning opportunities, flex time, volunteer opportunities?
- Are employees recognized for their efforts?
- Do they feel appreciated?
- Do employees receive enough feedback and coaching?
- Is their manager available? Are they supportive? Are they sharing company updates?
- Do employees trust leadership? Do they think leadership is positioning the organization for success?
- Are employees inspired?
- Are employees proud to work for the company?
- Do they understand the company mission, vision and values? Are their own values and goals in alignment?
There are so many aspects to the employee experience that COULD be explored, but you really need to hone in on what’s most important to you and your organization right now – otherwise you’ve got yourself a 200-question survey that no one will fill out.
So once you’ve got the objectives sorted out, that’s when you can start developing questions that will pull out the information you will need to take action to improve the employee experience and increase engagement.
Stay tuned for our next blog post, “Avoiding survey design by committee”.
