Employee Engagement

As a team leader, you know that employee engagement surveys can give you invaluable insights into company culture, employee satisfaction, team well-being, and much more. You hold engagement surveys, follow all the best practices, and do your best to make sure everyone takes part.

You have the results; but what next? How can your survey results help you spot areas for improvement and map out potential action plans? Read on for ideas about how to use employee survey results to promote a healthier, more productive organization.

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Communicate the employee engagement survey process

Before you analyze engagement survey data and start your action planning process, take a moment to thank your team for participating in the survey. Answering employee surveys takes time and thought, and your team members deserve acknowledgment for their contribution. This hat tip can take the form of a brief email or even a verbal message.

This is also a good time to mention any employee participation rewards your company may provide for those who answered survey questions.

It's also useful to outline how the company intends to use its employees' feedback. For example, you can say: "Your responses will play a major role in our action plan to improve employee engagement levels and create a better company culture."

In short, a simple “thank you” goes a long way. Employees who feel their managers recognize their contributions are happier, more engaged, and more loyal to their organization.

Review and analyze the employee engagement survey results

What do your survey results mean? In-depth analysis is a vital step in moving from raw data to understanding employee engagement survey results and what they mean for your company. Choosing the right survey tools will make it easier to interpret your results and answer questions such as:

• What are some key themes in employees' responses? For example, do many of your employees point out difficulties in communication with their managers?

• How does employee feedback compare between different demographics? For example, a good percentage of employees aged 45 and younger may state that they are interested in flexible work hours, while those closer to retirement might prioritize their financial wellness.

• How do survey results differ between various departments or teams? Your survey may uncover that satisfaction levels are 15% higher in the research and development department compared to the marketing department, for example.

What changed since your previous employee survey?

If you have already run employee surveys before, comparing the current results with previous answers can show you changes in important metrics like staff engagement, satisfaction, and communication.

For example: "Our latest survey shows that compared to January last year, the number of employees who state they enjoy a positive work-life balance increased by 20%."

Once you distill the employee engagement survey results into a list of main points, you can present this data to company managers and discuss:

• What are our key takeaways from the survey results?
• Can we identify areas for improvement? (i.e. workflow, communication, cohesion, etc.)
• What action plan do we propose? (i.e. employee engagement initiatives, workplace wellness programs, etc.)

Consider influencing factors

As you analyze survey results, keep in mind that several factors can influence your metrics. These may include:

• Timing. Could an approaching holiday season explain a slump in motivation? Did you run the survey in August when half the department was on vacation?
• Changes in the organization's size. If your company grew from 10 to 100 employees in a year, this will naturally influence team dynamics and engagement.
• Context. Did your survey coincide with a big company triumph, like a successful product launch, or a turbulent period like changes in management?

Share the survey findings with your team

Now that you have your employee engagement survey takeaways, human resources can communicate results to the entire team, starting with company leadership and managers. The managers' involvement and cooperation in action planning will play a major role in using survey data to promote company goals.

The role of leaders and managers

Discuss results with managers and heads of departments from the unique perspective of each team. After looking at the macro-level results, it’s useful to zero in on the findings for different departments and teams.

For example, you might point out to a manager: "We see that your team members are happy with collaboration and teamwork within the department. However, your particular department's responses also point to a high level of workload stress. How do you think we can change these dynamics?"

It’s vital for leaders and managers to keep an open mind when looking at survey statistics. It's tempting to say, "I have been working extra hard with and for my team this quarter. I don't think it makes sense for my team's engagement scores to go down. Maybe the survey questions were unclear or something was wrong with the survey process."

With an empathetic, caring approach, the HR team can help managers take survey feedback in a positive direction and plan ahead for improvement.

Communication with employees

Once organization leaders and managers understand the survey results and have a broad idea of a workable action plan, it's time for open discussion with your employees. Each manager can give their team the result highlights, like satisfaction scores and other critical findings.

{highlight}💡Pro tip: Stories work better than numbers for engaging employees. Rather than saying, "Our engagement scores improved by 7.5% in the last 12 months," try: "We are proud to say that most of our team members are happy working at our organization. We hope to use the latest employee engagement survey results to create an even better and more supportive work environment in our company."{highlight}

Conduct follow-up team and one-on-one meetings

Following up lets employees know that the company leadership cares about their feedback. Follow-up meetings after a survey are like saying, "When we run a survey, we don't just gather the data and forget about it. We take the time to see what survey results mean for day-to-day teamwork and how we can grow together."

In large organizations, individual employees may often feel overlooked or disconnected. A department or team meeting to discuss survey results creates a more approachable, personalized vibe and allows employees to give their managers additional helpful feedback.

Managers can take this opportunity to initiate an open-ended discussion attuned to the team's needs: "According to the survey results, employee stress levels in our department are 40% higher compared to the rest of the organization. What do you think about this and how can we create a more balanced work environment?"

If possible, managers might also discuss the survey with employees in individual follow-up meetings that provide a safe space for workers to air their concerns, questions, and insights. A one-on-one meeting may help an employee open up about some issues that they wouldn't feel comfortable discussing in front of the team like mental health challenges that affect their productivity.

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Create action plans based on employee feedback

After you've analyzed survey findings, shared key data with managers, and promoted team meetings to discuss the results, you can start the action planning process. If this is your organization's first major survey, it might seem like every area needs improvement.

As you prepare for action planning, remember that successful long-term change can start small. A gradual but consistent reform may prove more effective than a dramatic overhaul. To put recommendations into action, we suggest that you:

• Choose a few areas where you can achieve improvement quickly. Let your action planning concentrate on these points to carry out change and gain momentum.
• Be specific in actions and timelines. For instance, rather than say, "We will assign a mentor to all newly onboarded employees," say, "All new employees will undergo an onboarding period of one month, during which their mentor will touch base with them daily."
• Appoint a leader responsible for carrying out the plan. For example, if your goal is creating a better workflow, assign a manager who will monitor workloads and ensure that important tasks get resolved when employees are at their most productive.

Act on the plan

Once you have a detailed plan, announce it to your employees. Doing this will promote transparent communication and team engagement. Here are a few examples:

• "To improve work-life balance for employees in our organization, we will limit all work-related communication to work hours, except in emergencies."
• "In an effort to promote better eating habits in our company, beginning next week, we'll provide all our employees with healthy snacks and beverages throughout the day."
• "We have purchased new task management software to improve efficiency, productivity, and communication. We'll provide tutorials and individual support."

Communicate progress regularly

Once you follow through on the first stage of your action plans, monitor their effects to see if the results match your expectations. Consider running targeted follow-up surveys that focus on the specific change you're implementing within the company. These surveys will let you know how well your plan is working and what you can do to improve it.

Above all, don't hesitate to fine-tune any plans that fail to meet expectations. A workplace initiative or a wellness program may look good on paper, but does it actually tap into your team's key drivers? Continue engaging with the people in your organization to gauge what actions can bring real and lasting positive change.

Continue surveying, tracking results, and updating the plan

Taking action on employee engagement survey results can help you increase engagement, boost employee satisfaction, and achieve an overall improvement in your organization. However, a single survey is just one link in the communication chain between company management, human resources, and employees.

To continue building an open dialogue between the leadership team and the rest of the organization, plan subsequent surveys to get real-time feedback and promote steady incremental change. To achieve more accurate results and amplify engagement for the next survey, you can:

• Ensure that you always use relevant employee survey questions
• Let your team know that you guarantee employee privacy in surveys
• Use proactive action planning to improve survey participation rates

Officevibe: Easily track employee experience with a user-friendly platform

Wondering how to approach employee engagement surveys? Not sure what questions to ask to figure out what your team needs? Officevibe simplifies the process of getting employee feedback and improving team engagement.

Our Pulse Survey tool makes it easy to assess employee experience, track your team's progress, and promote higher staff engagement levels. Try it for free!

It’s no secret that the rise of remote work has changed the way many organizations operate. Some managers adapted with ease, implementing swift and efficient new communication channels to keep the pulse on how their people feel, while others found it challenging to maintain regular contact with their newly distributed workforce.

If you’re feeling disconnected from your remote or hybrid employees, it’s important to check in often to ensure your teams feel supported. Sending your employees tailored survey questions is a great way to measure engagement levels and nip any potential issues in the bud.

Why survey your remote workers?

Most companies have realized that happy workers are productive workers and have started investing in creating a positive employee experience in the workplace.

One fundamental way to understand the employee experience is by collecting information directly from the employees themselves. Whether through one-on-one feedback sessions, team meetings, or anonymous surveys, creating a feedback culture allows managers to gather details about how employees feel about working for their company.

The rise in remote work has created specific challenges that affect employee engagement and productivity. As the trend of remote work shows no signs of slowing down, understanding how remote employees feel about their situation is vital to their continued productivity and success.

Survey questions to ask your remote, hybrid, or distributed employees

Despite offering great benefits, remote working survey questions can be tricky to formulate correctly.

A major challenge facing many remote employees is the blurring between their personal lives and work. You need to tread the fine line of asking personal questions that impact productivity, mental health and well-being, and unique difficulties without delving into specifics.

It's a good idea to keep these surveys anonymous, as this allows employees to feel more comfortable in sharing potentially personal concerns. It also prevents retribution from unhappy managers, giving employees the confidence to provide honest, genuine feedback.

Remote lifestyle questions

Some people thrive in a remote work environment, while others may need additional support. Finding out how employees have reacted and adjusted to their new situation offers valuable insight into how you can help them make the transition.

Some question examples include:

1. What's your favorite part about working remotely?
2. Do you have a set routine?
3. Have you ever worked remotely before, and what's different about your current situation?
4. Do you have many distractions during the day?
5. Are you able to stop working after hours?
6. What do you do for fun and to recharge from work?
7. What are your main productivity barriers, and how can we help address them?

Information dissemination questions

Many decisions happen spontaneously during office discussions, and remote work can make team communication challenging. It's harder to have insightful conversations as a team, but it's also harder to keep everyone in the loop. Here are some questions to hone in on common communication issues:

8. Do you feel included in major team decisions?
9. Have you been blindsided by any news or information during a team meeting?
10. Are our current remote working tools good enough?
11. Do you often have technical difficulties with remote communication tools?
12. Are our on-site meetings remote-friendly enough to encourage your participation?

Connection questions

Many people struggle to engage with text-based or video-based communications, leading to missed contexts and increased conflict between remote team members. It's vital to build strong bonds between employees, even if they don't share the same space.

13. Do you feel you get into the office enough?
14. Who do you go to when you have a great idea?
15. Do you feel that you can approach anyone on the team with a problem you have?
16. Are there enough opportunities for small talk and bonding? How do you think we could create more?
17. Do you feel like you're a valuable member of the team?

Remote work planning questions

As more organizations move towards remote working and hybrid models, consulting employees is a great way to get ideas on how to implement these strategies effectively.

18. How many days do you need to be in the office, based on your current workload and responsibilities?
19. Are you confident that your managers are willing to promote alternative, flexible working practices?
20. If you had total flexibility, what days work best for in-office work (if any)?
21. Which arrangement do you prefer: hybrid, 100% remote, or 100% office?
22. How can we make the transition between remote work and office work seamless for you?

Remote work productivity questions

Various aspects of working from home will affect employees differently. However, some practices will make everyone's life easier, and it's vital to implement them as early as possible to keep productivity high.

23. Do you understand the company's work-from-home policies?
24. Do you have clear work objectives?
25. Do you feel that your manager trusts you to do your work at home?
26. Are you satisfied with the quality and quantity of communication from leadership?
27. Can you reach your team or your direct reports easily when you need them?
28. What are your preferred communication channels when working remotely?
29. Would you like to return to the office? Why or why not?
30. Do you have a dedicated working space at home?

What are the struggles of remote employees?

It may be tempting to assume that managing a remote team works the same as managing people in the office. However, the shift to remote working has raised new questions and challenges for employees and managers alike.

According to Officevibe's State of Employee Experience report, almost 30% of employees have to deal with unmanageable stress levels, despite having the flexibility to work from home.

Understanding the challenges of working remotely can be tricky, especially if managers and executives remain in an office environment. That's why employee feedback is essential in providing the proper support necessary to address the specific concerns of a distributed workforce.

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance

The biggest challenge for managing remote employees is supporting a good work-life balance. Many people don't have a dedicated office space at home, leading to a blurring of lines between their personal life and job.

It can be very tempting to "just finish up this one task" before logging off. Some people also struggle to get going in the morning simply because they don't have the clear transition of going to work that gets them in the working mindset.

Loneliness

Even if your team members aren't best friends, the office fosters constant small-scale social interactions. Even simple banter between team leaders and colleagues is enough to create a feeling of camaraderie and social well-being.

Working in a remote environment eliminates almost all of these social interactions. Many remote workers find that they can spend an entire day working without speaking to another person, leading to feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Difficulties communicating and collaborating with remote team members

People communicate in a whole host of ways, including body language and other non-verbal cues. These cues give everyone context for communication and can dramatically alter the meaning of spoken words.

Text-based communication lacks the ability to accurately convey these non-verbal cues. You may think you're writing an informal, casual email, while the recipient may think you're being sarcastic or too informal. Since you can't adjust your tone on the fly, both parties lack the necessary context for effective communication in the workplace.

While video calls may alleviate some communication issues, they lack the spontaneity and real-time insights that make for a successful team.

Household distractions

Working in a dedicated office space fosters an environment without distractions where employees can focus on their work. Working remotely opens up a host of distractions, from pets to household repairs and even administrative tasks that interfere with an employee's concentration.

Many people have started going to coffee shops or renting coworking spaces to work remotely while avoiding household distractions. Unfortunately, these may not be the right solution for every team member working remotely, and it's vital to provide the right support to help hybrid or remote employees focus on their tasks.

Staying motivated

An isolated remote environment can make it incredibly difficult for people to self-motivate. Usually, an entire team will motivate itself to push harder, but the lack of constant communication can lead remote staff to feel like their contributions aren't important. While it's up to the team leader to ensure that their team stays motivated throughout a project, working remotely can make the task significantly more difficult.

Working across different time zones

Another major barrier for any distributed team is when individuals log in from different locations. Different time zones introduce a layer of administrative challenges, and getting remote teams together requires a lot more planning than simply calling an impromptu team meeting.

Having the right equipment

Not everyone that starts remote working has the resources necessary to work from home. Some people may rely on their work laptops, while others need high-speed internet access. Ensuring that everyone has what they need is a key component of helping remote teams get up and running as quickly as possible

Pulse Survey for remote workers

The goal of any short-form Pulse Survey is to get a snapshot of employee engagement in your organization. To get the most out of the survey, stick to topics that:

• Require employee feedback. Avoid asking about topics where employee opinions don't factor into the decision-making process.
• Are actionable. Only raise topics that you can change in a reasonable timeframe to show off visible results.
• Address general concerns. Pulse Surveys aren't the place to ask about individual employees' job satisfaction or personal issues and should target broader challenges facing remote employees as a whole.

Pulse Surveys give the best results when limited to a specific topic. For instance, if you want to get an idea of how employees feel about returning to the office or a hybrid model, a short Pulse Survey may look like this:

• How can leaders foster a safe working environment?
• I feel that I have the necessary resources to safely return to the office. Y/N
• I feel that leadership has taken the right measures to protect employees when we return to the workplace. Y/N
• I know the procedures and policies in place that will keep everyone in the workplace safe. Y/N
• I don't feel pressured to come to work if a family member or I feel sick. Y/N

Combining surveys with one-on-one meetings

Managing remote employees requires identifying general problems of working remotely while also helping individuals deal with specific challenges. Surveys are great at detecting general trends but may feel impersonal, leading to greater feelings of isolation and lack of communication.

Combining a wide range of surveys with one-on-ones and active listening will allow employees to feel connected and managers to set expectations. These meetings allow employees to bring up personal concerns affecting their well-being that aren't suitable as remote working survey questions.

How to optimize your survey questions for remote team members

Asking the right remote working survey questions is as important as sending out the survey in the first place. The questions you ask have a huge impact on the quality of the survey data and participation rates.

As remote working raises unique challenges, it's important to focus on these aspects. You can still use other anonymous surveys to monitor employee engagement for on-site workers or hybrid workers, but remote work surveys for fully remote employees should focus on their needs.

When optimizing your employee survey questions, remember to:

• Ask questions that identify personal concerns that may affect productivity without bringing up specific personal feelings or family situations.
• Constantly monitor employee mental health and well-being without asking generic questions where answers may change daily.

It's also important to use the survey results effectively, which means understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for remote working. Short surveys will reveal trends with remote work that you can explore further in one-on-one meetings with individual employees.

Get the most from your remote employee engagement surveys with Officevibe

As employee spaces and work practices change, organizations need to adapt to keep up. Officevibe offers a host of useful employee engagement tools and resources to help you establish a feedback culture in your organization. From short Pulse Surveys to long-form questionnaires, we'll help you keep your employees motivated, happy, and productive.

Ensuring your distributed workforce is happy and engaged can be a challenge at the best of times; throw a pandemic into the mix and you have your fair share of work cut out for you.

Bragi, a Munich-based software company with employees around Europe, sought to make sure its personnel remained satisfied and motivated despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic.

Determined to keep their finger on the pulse of their far-reaching dynamic teams, Bragi introduced Officevibe to their employees in the summer of 2021. After several months of using the software to gather anonymous feedback from their teams, Bragi was able to launch an array of successful initiatives to boost employee happiness including additional vacation days and a home office spending budget.

We sat down recently with Dr. Franziska Grassl, Bragi’s People and Culture Manager, and Ipek Sümer, Talent Acquisition Associate, to learn more about her experience with Officevibe and how they were able to make meaningful changes based on the employee feedback they collected.

Why did Bragi decide to use Officevibe?

It was important for us to measure employee engagement to see people not only as resources, as is often implied in HR, but like actual rounded individuals. It’s so important for us to be to able to tap into our employees’ full potential.

I think having a tool like Officevibe allows us not only to gather direct feedback on particular topics but lets us dive deeper with pre-set questionnaires where you can look into specific feedback on specific themes. It also allows us to take note of how we are doing overall as a company when it comes to the different Officevibe engagement scores. We take [employee well-being] very seriously.

What did you like the most about Officevibe?

We examined different metrics, most notably we did a “deep dive” into the happiness metric four times so far. It seems to be a recurring topic that we really try to keep our eye on so that people can work productively and happily from home or at the office.

We also looked quite a lot at the analysis and reports offered by Officevibe. The feedback we gathered from the questionnaires and direct feedback features were so valuable in guiding current and future HR initiatives.

What did you learn while using Officevibe?

Home office topics and remote work challenges were frequently brought up. Of course, we can provide a nice environment at the office, but it’s equally important that our employees have that at home, too. We are a software engineering-focused company, so we are trying to establish an environment that will remain mostly remote moving forward.

I think with Officevibe we were more able to look at specific challenges and explore adding things that may be missing from their home office environment. Thanks to the feedback we gathered from Officevibe, we introduced a home-office budget to ensure that people have the work environment they wish for.

What changes have come about at Bragi as a result of using Officevibe?

These HR initiatives, like additional vacation days and a home office budget, are a start, but we are also introducing an encompassing performance management tool that will involve not only a performance review but also coaching and disciplinary features among other elements.

For example, when we looked at our fairness and transparency scores, we received constructive feedback to take into consideration. We now try to tackle these problems not only by trying to improve the manager-employee relationship through team-building events but by really trying to establish an accountability structure where managers are not only encouraged to be nice but are also accountable and responsible for the people they are leading.

With the insight from Officevibe, we have guidance on where the focal points should be for these kinds of initiatives. The software is easy to use and has quite a lot of templates and questionnaires that are extremely useful.

{highlight}Officevibe is the incredibly friendly people-first employee experience platform— the fresh, new way to engage, recognize, align, and enable world-class leaders and teams. Easy to use and super powerful, it creates an environment that encourages genuine conversations, with conditions that inspire a better vibe for all, no matter where you work.

Officevibe is the ideal way to show employees the big picture and how they can best be a part of it. It equips managers with the right tools to lead, tackle tough situations and guide important conversations, the human way.

See how Officevibe’s intuitive features can help you collect invaluable feedback from your employees and develop deeper connections with your team members.{highlight}

If you want to tap into what drives employee satisfaction and engagement in your organization, pulse surveys can help you do exactly that. However, to use them successfully, you'll need to develop a pulse survey strategy that avoids lack of action, survey fatigue, and other common issues with employee survey initiatives.

At Officevibe, we specialize in employee surveys that help managers keep track of their team's engagement levels using intuitive reports that provide valuable insights with trend data and real-time feedback. 

Read on as we dive into the best practices for pulse surveys so you can use them effectively and promote the continuous growth of your company.

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What's the main purpose of a pulse survey?

Pulse surveys are quick and easy check-in surveys for getting frequent insights on employee engagement, strategic initiatives, and other workplace topics. Companies will typically send them out weekly, monthly, or quarterly to follow up on annual engagement surveys or receive instant employee feedback on changes in the organization.

Employee pulse surveys are flexible tools for getting continuous, actionable data you can use to implement changes that will benefit your employee experience. Pulse surveys let your team members know that you want to hear their thoughts and opinions more than once a year, which improves their job satisfaction and engagement.

When your employees are more engaged and happy with their work, they're more invested in helping the company succeed. Thanks to an effective pulse survey strategy, you'll see higher productivity, lower turnover, and more profitability.

Creating a pulse survey strategy for your team

While more and more companies are implementing pulse surveys in their employee listening programs, many aren't getting the most they can out of them. To get the full benefits that engagement surveys can provide, you should aim to gather meaningful insights and use them to make better decisions for your employees and help achieve your company's objectives.

Define a clear purpose

Defining your purpose involves two things:

• Asking questions about a specific topic or initiative
• Choosing the right audience

When choosing your employee survey questions and audience, you should have a specific objective in mind. Do you want to measure employee engagement? Do you want to see how employees feel about a recent change in the company?

Depending on your goal, you may only need to target a specific team or department. Selecting and narrowing down your audience helps you get relevant feedback for your strategy.

Informing your employees of the pulse survey's purpose when giving it to them increases the likelihood that they'll take part in it. Your team members will be happy to know that their employer is actively listening and planning to take action to improve their employee experience.

Ask the right questions

Once you have your purpose, think about how you will be able to use the results afterward. Based on that, you can design questions that will get you the actionable feedback you need for your strategy.

Keep in mind that pulse surveys are meant to be simple. The survey should be short and easy to complete so that you'll get a workable amount of data. Typically, pulse surveys are fewer than 15 questions.

The questions should focus on your specific topic, and the outcome should be meaningful data that you can use to create an action plan.

Set a survey frequency

A part of your strategy is deciding how often you'll send pulse surveys to your employees. Business leaders often worry that sending too many surveys will cause survey fatigue. The truth is that it's not the number of surveys that tires your employees; instead, they feel frustrated when their management doesn't take action after conducting surveys.

Share the results

You do not need to go at it alone; involving your team in the process by sharing the results of the pulse surveys will make them feel like an integral part of the organization. You can inform them of your objective and demonstrate how the results show areas that need improvement.

Together, we suggest working with your team to create a plan to achieve your goal. Accomplishing something positive with your employees based on their feedback will significantly improve company morale. It will also improve your chances of success with similar initiatives in the future.

Create an action plan

When you get the survey results back, you can start analyzing them. Look for trends and clues that point to concerns you can address, such as low employee engagement, low satisfaction with a specific topic, or negative responses to a change.

Once you've mapped out the feedback and have a clear picture of your employees' opinions, you can share the results and work on an action plan. Decide on the objective, assign tasks to your team members, and begin to implement the changes. It's best to check in regularly during this process to discuss what's working and what isn't.

Keeping your employees in the loop during this process empowers them. With this pulse survey strategy, you're giving them a voice and bringing them together to work on a goal they care about. This increase in positive engagement will help your employees feel happier with their job, increasing their job satisfaction and productivity.

What's the ideal pulse survey frequency?

The ideal survey cadence primarily depends on what's best for your organization. Every company is different, and what works for one may not work for another. How often do things fluctuate in your company? Do you work in a large organization that makes frequent adjustments that affect employee experience?

The most crucial rule of thumb in deciding the best pulse survey frequency is only to conduct surveys as often as you can take action. One of the pulse survey best practices is to create a plan for your survey. You must have an objective and use the survey results to work toward achieving that objective.

You can also use pulse surveys to check in after more in-depth annual or bi-annual company surveys. This strategy will allow you to check your employees' feelings and reactions to how your company followed up on the annual engagement survey.

With Officevibe Pulse Surveys, you can check on your employees every week with five questions that measure engagement. Our pulse survey software allows you to easily take action on employee feedback, share the results with your team, and track the progress of your changes.

Annual surveys vs. pulse surveys

Annual employee engagement surveys are generally 50-100 questions on various workplace topics that target everyone in the company. These questions usually focus on identifying what drives employee engagement in the organization and collecting data on trends that appear over time.

On the other hand, pulse surveys are short and simple. Their topic, frequency, and audience can vary to suit your needs. Rather than replacing annual surveys, you can use pulse surveys to supplement and follow up on your company-wide surveys. Pulse surveys give you continuous feedback, allowing you to keep your fingers on the pulse of your organization.

Characteristics of an annual engagement survey include:

• 50-100 questions
• company-wide scope
• a purpose to gauge employee engagement levels
• general topics

Characteristics of a pulse survey:

• 5-15 questions
• higher frequency
• specific audience and topics
• real-time feedback

Read more about the differences between pulse surveys and Annual engagement surveys.

Communicating pulse survey results to your team and creating an action plan

Sharing the results of pulse surveys with your employees will increase transparency and build trust within the organization. By promptly following up on surveys, you show your team that you value their time and opinions.

Seeing the results of their efforts will encourage them to continue giving honest feedback and can improve the data you'll receive (and relationships!) in the future.

Communicate with your employees

It's essential to communicate the purpose of pulse surveys before you launch them so your employees know what to expect and will be more inclined to take the time to share their thoughts and opinions.

These employees have a better awareness of how their work contributes to the organization and are more likely to work toward achieving the company's goals.

You can keep your employees engaged by sharing pulse survey results, your conclusions about the data, and the steps you'll take in response. It's important to give yourself enough time between surveys to communicate with your team and enact a plan. If you ask your employees to share their feelings but don't act on them, it can hurt employee engagement.

Talk about successes as well as areas for improvement

While the goal of pulse surveys is to use the data collected to make improvements, bringing up positive feedback helps you work toward a better company culture. A meeting where you only talk about where the company is falling short might not be enjoyable to sit through, but celebrating your achievements cultivates a better vibe.

While the mood is good, you can identify areas that need improvement. Explain to your employees how you came to your conclusions and why it's important to make positive changes in those areas.

For example, if your pulse survey data revealed that most employees are unsatisfied with your business's employee benefits, discuss your strategy for improving them. Involving your employees empowers them to make decisions that will help the company succeed.

Create your action plan

After gathering feedback from your employee pulse survey questions, it's time to use those actionable insights to create a plan. At this point, you should have an identified goal for improving a specific area based on the feedback from your pulse survey. You can begin working on steps toward that goal and assigning tasks to your team members.

It's essential to communicate your plan to your employees to let them know you're addressing their feedback. It sets an excellent example for future initiatives when you show your employees that you value their concerns and motivations. They'll feel more comfortable being open and honest with their feedback when they know their employer actually listens.

Check in on the plan's progress regularly

If you want to ensure that your plan succeeds, check its progress and hear how your team feels about it. After all, you're making changes based on their feedback. If they aren't happy with how the plan is going, you need to address their concerns and make adjustments.

Officevibe's Pulse Survey tool is perfect for weekly checkups. It helps you come down from your bird's eye view as a manager and get into the details of how your employees are feeling. You'll receive real-time feedback that tells you how successful your changes are, so you'll know when to back off and make modifications.

Once your plan comes to fruition, you can start another cycle of employee pulse surveys. The goal of collecting pulse survey data is to continuously improve your organization, making it a fantastic place to work. This strategy will help you keep your talented employees, increase engagement, and become more successful.

A report by Gallup found that companies with high levels of engagement are 21% more profitable, making pulse surveys a worthwhile endeavor.

Fuel employee engagement with Officevibe Pulse Surveys

Regular pulse surveys allow you to keep up with your employees' experience in the workplace and address weak points in your organization. However, following pulse survey best practices is crucial for the program to succeed.

We understand that you might struggle to fit employee surveys and action plans into your busy schedule. Fortunately, you can let Officevibe's effective Pulse Survey software do all the heavy lifting. You can focus on supporting your team, and we'll provide easy-to-read reports on engagement levels so you can quickly identify where to act.

Discover how pulse surveys can build trust in your organization and increase team effectiveness with Officevibe.

They say that you get a silly answer if you ask a silly question. So logically, you're bound to get quality answers if you ask great questions. This theory is especially true when asking for honest employee feedback through survey questions.

To help take out the guesswork and set you on the right course, we've put together our top 33 questions about managers' performance and productivity that you can use for your next employee engagement survey.

Questions like these are a helpful way to get valuable feedback and take positive action.

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Asking the right feedback questions about managers

Managers play a vital role in every organization, so it’s just as important to get employees’ feedback on the job performance and skills of the management team as it is for them to assess their direct reports.

Since it’s imperative to ask the right survey questions to get the best feedback on management, we’ve broken the questions down into distinct sections for you.

Questions about a manager’s communication skills

🔑 Communication is key, especially between managers and their direct reports.

To offer outstanding leadership, managers must be great communicators and make their team feel comfortable being open and straightforward with them. This way, they open the door to healthy conversation and the ability to solve problems effectively.

Asking these survey questions can be an excellent tool for receiving feedback about how management and supervisors interact with their team:

1. How comfortable are you communicating with your direct manager?
2. How frequently do you receive recognition from your manager?
3. How satisfied are you with how often you get direct feedback from your manager?
4. Does your manager clearly communicate their performance expectations with you?

Questions about managerial and leadership skills

⚖️ When it comes to leadership, not all managers are created equal.

Some take to it more naturally, while others need more development in their role to be influential leaders.

Employees should feel encouraged to share their thoughts on their manager's performance as a leader within the organization so they can adequately fulfill their management responsibilities.

5. How confident are you in your manager’s leadership abilities?
6. Does your manager have the right expertise to help your whole team succeed?
7. Does your manager have high standards for their role as a leader?
8. Would you consider your manager a good role model?

{emphasize}Learn more about different leadership styles (and how and when to apply them on your team).{emphasize}

Questions about trust and respect for management

🤝 Much like any relationship, whether professional or personal, if you don't have trust and respect, there's not a lot of ground to stand on.

These are the foundation for functional, healthy relationships and are essential qualities for leaders to have with their team.

Employees feel valued when they know they are respected and their manager cares. In turn, these qualities also build greater employee-management trust within the organization.

9. Does your manager create an open and trusting environment? How?
10. How does your manager make you feel like you are a valued team member?
11. Does your manager treat everyone on the team fairly and with the same level of respect?
12. Do you feel like your manager values your ideas and suggestions?
13. Does your manager listen and take action when you address an issue with them?

Questions about effectiveness

🎯 A great manager is an effective leader. They can solve problems, see different perspectives, consistently make effective decisions, and set clear goals for their team.

An effective manager will help employees identify and use their strengths to their advantage, giving them even greater confidence in themselves and their roles.

Manager performance should be assessed from all levels of the organization, including from each direct report. Here are some key questions to ask about management effectiveness:

14. How confident are you in the overall effectiveness of your immediate manager?
15. Does your manager have the expertise and ability to help you and your team succeed?
16. Does your manager maintain high standards for their conduct?
17. Has your manager worked to improve on issues in the last year?
18. Does your manager make consistently effective decisions?

{emphasize}Want to brush up on the benefits of employee feedback? We've put together a comprehensive guide for managers.{emphasize}

Questions about support from management

👐 It’s so important for employees to feel supported by their managers both inside and outside the workplace.

Supportive communication is vital, whether it's to support their development, encourage productivity, identify areas of improvement, or tell an employee they're doing a great job.

These open-ended questions can help identify if managers are providing their employees with the professional (and personal!) support they need:

19. Do you feel supported by your manager?
20. Does your manager give you a reasonable workload and realistic deadlines?
21. Does your manager react quickly and efficiently when you request support?
22. Does your manager care about your life and well-being outside of work?

Questions about mentorship

👩‍🏫 Managers can be great mentors for employees looking to grow in their roles and advance professionally.

Career development is valuable, so when managers take the time to lead their employees in the right direction, it can make a world of difference.

Many employees count on their organization to help them get the kind of mentorship they need to maybe even step into a manager position down the line.

23. What do you value about mentorship as an employee?
24. How does your manager act as a mentor to you?
25. Does your manager offer you other mentorship opportunities?

Questions about professional development

⛰️ Career development is valuable to an employee's growth and a great way to prevent employee turnover and increase employee engagement.

Leaders should be in tune with their team’s skills and identify how they can develop them even further.

Here are some on-point survey questions for organizations to ask their employees to get actionable feedback on professional development:

26. Do you and your manager discuss the status of your career within the company?
27. Do you see yourself advancing your career at this company?
28. Has your manager helped you identify the steps you need to take to grow within the company?
29. Are you satisfied with the learning opportunities available to you?

Questions about work-life balance

🧘 Now more than ever, there is a greater focus and importance on work-life balance within the company culture. A balanced life doesn’t just create more happiness outside of the workplace, but it also contributes to greater satisfaction within the company.

In today’s modern business world, constructive feedback on these questions can help assess whether managers are placing enough importance on the human side of the employee experience:

30. Does your manager recognize the importance of your personal and family life?
31. Do you feel like your manager cares about your mental health and well-being?
32. Does your manager encourage you to take personal time when needed?
33. Do you get a sense that your manager cares about you as a person?

Open the communication with Officevibe

Employee engagement and feedback are essential for healthy company culture.

While taking note of these survey questions is a great way to initiate communication between employees and managers, Offcevibe is a helpful platform for automating the entire employee feedback survey process (with no technical expertise needed!).

Access all the tools

Officevibe offers sample survey questions, templated surveys, easy-to-understand reports, and a range of other valuable feedback tools to take you beyond the big picture, to help keep communication open, and even determine whether a manager change is needed.

Managers, employees, and entire teams will find great value in what Officevibe can bring to the table!

There are no two ways about it: the landscape of the modern workplace is changing. Companies that prioritize employee engagement and employee satisfaction above the bottom line are poised to reap the benefits of increased productivity and reduced turnover. 

But what are the driving forces behind employee engagement and satisfaction? The answer lies in the employee experience. 

In this article, we dig into what it means to measure employee experience by providing leaders like you with 25 examples of employee experience survey questions.

The importance of employee experience

Employee experience refers to every tangible and intangible aspect of the employee lifecycle, including:

• The employee's role in the organization
• The employee's relationships with management
• workplace culture and employee morale
• The centrality of diversity and inclusion in the workplace

When you measure employee experience, you view your organization from the employees' perspective. You gain insights into how your team members feel about various aspects of their jobs, their daily needs, and how your company could improve for its employees.

Managers can use the employee survey results to create action plans, the goal being to improve the employee experience and employee satisfaction within and among their teams.

Elevating the employee experience is a gift that keeps giving. When you take care of your employees, you can expect benefits like:

• Increased productivity
• Higher employee engagement
• Greater employee satisfaction
• Reduced employee turnover
• Better company performance

Differences between employee experience and employee satisfaction surveys

Employee experience may sound similar to employee satisfaction, but the two are not interchangeable. Surveys that measure employee experience are looking for feedback on how employees perceive the organization and how their perception affects their engagement, motivation, and so on.

On the other hand, employee satisfaction surveys seek to measure employee happiness. It is now well documented that a better employee experience results in higher employee satisfaction, so managers may send out short employee satisfaction survey questions every other week or every month to keep their finger on the pulse of their team's emotional well-being.

Employee experience surveys can be longer and less frequent, or they could be short Pulse Surveys for quicker employee feedback. They measure things like employee engagement, job satisfaction, and alignment with the company's culture and values.

25 employee experience survey questions

With the availability of easy-to-use employee survey software like Officevibe, you don't have to sit around a table with other leaders and guess what your employees need. You can ask them for feedback through employee survey questions, which will help you identify roadblocks and develop action plans to overcome them.

The questions you ask should seek an accurate overview of the employee experience in your organization. You can get a combination of qualitative and quantitative data by asking open-ended questions as well as those that use a scale or choices. The goal is to gather actionable feedback that you can use to make improvements.

Questions about an employee's role in the company

Most of an employee's experience with your company comes from their daily responsibilities and interactions with managers and other team members. You can ask survey questions that gauge an employee's experience in their role. These employee surveys relate to management, work environment, personal growth, and overall job satisfaction.

Just a few examples of what employees can answer about their role on a scale of 1 to 10 include:

1. How much do you feel that your company values your role?
2. How supported do you feel by your manager?
3. How well does your company maintain a work-life balance?
4. How would you rate your current pay?
5. How happy are you in your current role?

You can also ask open-ended employee satisfaction survey questions, such as:

6. What is your least favorite aspect of your job?
7. What is one thing that could make your job easier?

Questions about management and leadership

According to research by Gallup, half of adult Americans have left a job to get away from a manager. Leadership quality has a significant impact on how employees feel and overall job satisfaction. A genuine employer-employee relationship can improve the employee experience by creating a safe place for employees to provide constructive feedback and address their needs and concerns.

You can use employee satisfaction and engagement surveys to judge how management affects the employee experience by asking questions assessing how well a manager performs leadership tasks. These questions can help gauge how an employee feels toward their management team.

8. How satisfied are you with the frequency of feedback from management?
9. How happy are you with the quality of feedback from management?
10. Are you satisfied with how your manager handles conflict?
11. How satisfied are you with your manager's response to your issues and concerns?

Open-ended employee satisfaction survey questions on leadership include:

12. What is one way that your manager could improve communication?
13. How would you like management to recognize your achievements at work?
14. What do you wish your manager would be more transparent about?

Questions about company culture

Company culture includes the values, beliefs, and vibes of the organization. A well-cultivated workplace culture leads to engaged employees who feel an emotional connection to their job and organization. Slack's State of Work report found that 84% of employees who clearly understood their company's strategy felt aligned with its vision and values.

Employee experience surveys can provide feedback on whether your company's values coincide with how your employees perceive them. Ideally, your employees should feel connected to the organization and believe they're doing meaningful work. When this is true, you'll have higher employee engagement levels.

The following are questions you can ask in an employee experience survey about company culture:

14. Which three words would you use to describe the culture of the company?
15. Do you see professional growth and a clear career path with the company?
16. How would you rate employee morale (on a scale of 1 to 10)?
17. If you could change one thing about the organization, what would it be?
18. How likely are you to recommend working here to a friend (on a scale of 1 to 10)?
19. Do your beliefs align with the company values?

Questions about diversity and inclusion

An employee engagement survey is a crucial tool for determining how your team members feel about diversity and inclusion in your organization. Most surveys are anonymous, allowing you to get genuine feedback from employees who might feel uncomfortable voicing their concerns about how the organization treats people of different backgrounds and identities.

Employee feedback will help human resources and management identify issues in the workplace and quickly address them. Asking these questions and, most importantly, acting on them, will improve employee well-being, employee retention, and employee satisfaction.

To measure employee satisfaction and experience regarding diversity and inclusion, you can ask questions like:

20. How diverse is the company regarding age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, disabilities, sexual orientation, etc. (on a scale of 1 to 10)?
21. Have you had a negative experience at work due to your identity?
22. How comfortable are you expressing your cultural and social beliefs in the workplace (on a scale of 1 to 10)?
23. What is one thing the organization could do to become more inclusive from now on?
24. Do you feel that the company provides equal opportunities for career growth to every employee?
25. How well does the company accommodate those with disabilities (on a scale of 1 to 10)?

How to measure employee experience

Employee experience surveys use an amalgamation of workplace metrics, such as:

• employee satisfaction
• employee engagement
• employee recognition
• employee retention

In other words, you are measuring different aspects of how the organization affects employee happiness and vice versa. Primarily, these survey questions should focus on determining what the company might do differently to provide its employees with a fantastic place to work. You can also track the success of your employee engagement efforts.

You should ask employees to rate their answers on a scale of 1 to 10 to get quantifiable data for your employee experience records. If you categorize the questions using the parameters you want to measure, you'll be able to track trends for each one.

{emphasize}If your plate is already full, don't worry: you have options to make this process quicker and easier. Officevibe's survey platform can do the heavy lifting for you!

Our surveys use 10 metrics along with 26 sub-metrics of employee engagement to give managers a detailed view of their team's experience at work.{emphasize}

Key benefits of employee experience surveys

At Officevibe, our employee experience surveys are customizable for capturing feedback in different areas of the organization, allowing you to analyze overarching trends in employee satisfaction throughout your company.

By conducting employee experience surveys, you can:

Find out how your employees are feeling

One of the benefits of this comprehensive survey is gaining a clear understanding of the overall employee experience, including work environment, relationships with their team and direct managers, and whether they feel included in the organization's culture and values.

Solving issues in these areas will lead to happier employees and better company performance. Depending on the employee feedback, you might find that you need to improve career development or how you approach employees with experience gaps.

Obtain actionable feedback

Remember why you're asking questions in the first place: to make improvements. Employee experience surveys give you employee feedback that you can use to develop new initiatives.

For example, your employee satisfaction survey might reveal that over half of your team want leaders to recognize them for their work more often or differently. You can devise a plan to implement a structure for more recognition from management.

Survey any location, department, or team

Employee experience includes everything that affects the team members in your organization, which means your surveys can ask questions related to any team or department. The survey can be a general questionnaire for the whole company or a quick Pulse Survey for fewer people.

Make employees feel valued and heard

Asking for your employees' new ideas and opinions and acting on their concerns makes them feel empowered. Because of your survey and subsequent actions to improve based on the results, they'll see how giving honest feedback and participating at work can lead to change. This can boost employee engagement, productivity, and performance.

Employee experience surveys best practices

You've learned the types of questions you can ask, so we'll share some employee survey best practices:

Identify the purpose

Before you begin, answer these questions:

• Why are you conducting this survey?
• How are you going to use the feedback from this survey?

For example: "The survey aims to identify the most important factor in high turnover in the sales department. We'll use the results to pinpoint the problem and develop a plan to correct it."

Communicate your strategy

Employees are more likely to participate in the survey and give sincere feedback if they know the purpose of the questions and what they plan to do with the results.

If you send an email with the survey link, try to include the following details:

• the purpose
• whether it's anonymous
• how long it should take
• the deadline
• results from past survey-induced initiatives

Avoid survey fatigue

Besides communicating with your team, you can avoid survey fatigue by keeping the length short enough to complete in 10 to 15 minutes. Ensure that your questions focus on a particular topic to keep it concise. The length and cadence of your surveys will depend on your organization, but it's best not to overwhelm your employees with long, weekly quizzes.

Create a follow-up plan

Show your employees that you're listening by using their feedback to create an action plan. Once you have the data, you can generate a report to show your team the survey results. From there, you can discuss key issues and develop strategies to improve.

Find out how you can enhance employee experience with Officevibe

Every company is unique, and the things that factor into employee experience vary, depending on the type of organization, industry, number of employees, etc. Officevibe is an employee-centric platform that works wherever your team is. We provide a simple way to gather anonymous employee feedback that you can use to increase employee satisfaction and keep your employees happily engaged at work.

At Officevibe, we provide an innovative employee experience platform to help business leaders like you see the big picture regarding the relationship between employee engagement and your company's overall performance.

Officevibe's Pulse Surveys give managers real-time feedback on the employee experience with easy-to-read reports that you can share.

Sign up and try Officevibe for free today!

You may think that you have a happy and motivated team, but then one day, your star performers hand in their resignations, citing unhappiness for months before seeking new opportunities.

According to Officevibe’s 2022 data report, a jarring 53% of survey respondents admitted to having searched for new professional opportunities in the last year.

With record-high resignation numbers and leaders and managers starting to feel the stress of high employee turnover, understanding why employees leave is more important than ever. It has become clear that retaining employees requires more than just offering a livable paycheck, but modern executives still find themselves scratching their heads over how to improve employee retention.

Why you should improve employee retention

Employee turnover is expensive. According to a 2019 Gallup study, employee turnover costs American companies up to $1 trillion per year. The same study estimates that replacing a single team member can cost up to twice the exiting employee’s annual salary. Investing in employee retention efforts can help mitigate costs and save your company expenses in the long run.

Not only does turnover have a tremendous impact on costs, but it also has a significant impact on team performance and employee morale. It can take some time for a new hire to build up the skills necessary to feel comfortable in their position and keep up with existing workloads, which can lead to frustration and conflict within a team.

Top reasons why employees leave

Understanding why employees leave is crucial for creating a workplace with strong employee retention. That's why exit interviews are super important — getting to the bottom of what is causing employee turnover can help you improve employee satisfaction.

Some common reasons why employees might decide to move on include:

1. Lack of career growth opportunities

When employees feel stuck in their roles without a clear path for advancement, they may start looking elsewhere for opportunities that align with their aspirations. Offering development programs, mentorship, and regular performance reviews can help address this concern.

2. Poor management or leadership

A bad boss can be a deal-breaker. Managers play a pivotal role in shaping employees' experiences. If employees feel unsupported, micromanaged, or undervalued by their supervisors, they might consider seeking a healthier work environment.

3. Inadequate work-life balance

When employees constantly feel overwhelmed by excessive work demands and unrealistic expectations, it can lead to burnout. Implementing flexible work arrangements and promoting a healthy work-life balance can go a long way in employee retention.

4. Lack of recognition and rewards

Feeling appreciated and recognized is a fundamental human need. When employees believe their efforts go unnoticed, they might lose motivation. Recognizing and rewarding achievements, both big and small, can boost morale and foster a culture of appreciation.

5. Ineffective communication

When employees are left in the dark about company updates, changes, or their own performance, they can become disengaged. Encouraging open communication channels and regular feedback sessions can bridge this gap.

6. Cultural issues within the organization

If there's a lack of trust, respect, or inclusivity, employees may seek out companies that align with their values. Nurturing a positive and inclusive culture where diversity is celebrated can make a big difference.

Understanding the reasons for employees leaving can guide your efforts in crafting strategies that promote employee retention. You can create an environment where employees feel valued, supported, and motivated to stay.

10 Effective employee retention strategies

The link between employee engagement and employee retention is clear. According to Gallup, low-engagement teams suffer significantly higher turnover rates (between 18% and 43% higher) than their happier and more highly engaged counterparts.

From a practical standpoint, managers should combine their employee retention strategies with efforts to increase employee engagement. High engagement reduces turnover, boosts productivity and overall work performance. In many cases, employee engagement is the key to your company’s success.

Here are some of the best strategies on how to keep employees engaged, improve employee retention, and boost productivity and morale.

1. Build a positive company culture

Investing in a positive company culture fuels employee engagement and retention. When employees feel a strong connection to their company's values, they're more likely to invest their time and energy into their roles. Here's how you can foster a positive culture:

• Define a sense of purpose and align values: Define your company's core values as guiding principles. When employees resonate with these values, they feel a sense of belonging and shared purpose.

{emphasize}Discussing the company's values during team meetings and incorporating them into performance reviews is a great way to highlight how employees' actions align with these values, reinforcing the importance of shared principles.{emphasize}

• Promote diversity and inclusion: Embrace diversity and promote inclusivity within your organization to create an environment where everyone's perspectives are valued. This not only enhances creativity but also shows employees that they are appreciated for who they are.

{emphasize}Hosting workshops that celebrate different cultures or sessions that address unconscious bias sends a message that the company values diversity and creates an open space for learning and understanding.{emphasize}

• Establish a supportive and respectful environment: Encourage an environment where employees support one another and treat each other with respect. Bullying or negativity can erode morale and drive employees away, while a respectful atmosphere promotes trust, collaboration, and job satisfaction.

{emphasize}A good way to do this is by implementing psychological safety practices, where employees are encouraged to share ideas without fear of criticism. As a manager, you can lead by example, admitting mistakes and asking for input to cultivate a culture of mutual respect.{emphasize}

• Encourage strong relationships: When employees feel connected, they're more likely to stay. Host team-building activities, encourage cross-functional collaboration, and provide opportunities for employees to interact outside of work tasks.

{emphasize}Try organizing "lunch and learn" sessions where employees from different departments can interact and share insights.{emphasize}

By building a human-generated culture, you're not only enhancing employee engagement and retention but also fostering an environment where individuals thrive and contribute their best.

2. Ask employees what they need

Disengaged employees are readily apparent in companies where managers don’t ask their employees for feedback — and it’s this disconnect that results in managers getting blindsided by top employees leaving.

The best way to know what your employees need is to create feedback channels for employees. They help managers become better listeners and be proactive with issues. Employee feedback can encompass everything from the work environment to management styles and goal setting — and can impact everything from performance to retention.

{emphasize}A great way to get honest feedback from employees is to use anonymous feedback tools like surveys. Surveys can range from five-question pulse surveys to long-form questionnaires that cover the four corners of the employee experience.{emphasize}

Establishing a positive feedback culture in a company can help managers build relationships with their staff members, leading to higher engagement and improved employee retention.

{emphasize}Weekly feedback box

Old school, but it works! Place a physical or virtual feedback box in common areas where employees can drop in suggestions, concerns, or ideas anonymously. Managers review and address submissions in a weekly meeting, showing that they value employee input and are responsive to their needs.{emphasize}

3. Follow through on employee feedback

If you’ve asked employees for feedback, make sure to follow through. There’s nothing worse than asking employees for feedback and then ignoring it completely. This can tank morale as it becomes clear that you’re just paying lip service to employee engagement.

{emphasize}For example, establish a Feedback Action Board, whether physical or virtual, showcasing recent employee feedback and the resulting actions taken? Complement this with a Monthly Feedback Roundup to discuss feedback themes and proposed solutions. This ensures transparency, demonstrates the seriousness of feedback implementation, AND reinforces a culture of open communication and accountability.{emphasize}

By taking feedback seriously, you show employees that you value their input and are willing to put in the time and effort. Listening to them can help your team achieve its business goals faster and more effectively.

{emphasize}Shift from sporadic feedback to a structured continuous feedback loop. By engaging employees in ongoing conversations, you create a workplace culture where their voices are consistently heard and valued. It's a great feedback system that easily feeds into other human resource management activities like performance reviews.{emphasize}

4. Set clear expectations

Setting clear expectations is foundational for a positive work experience. Employees that have clear objectives and know how to achieve them are usually more motivated and productive.

{emphasize}Here are some general guidelines to help you set expectations that get everyone on the same page:

• Develop goals collaboratively.
• Make expectations as clear as possible and confirm understanding with all involved parties.
• Foster excellence by encouraging creativity and asking for more than the bare minimum.
• Individualize expectations according to employee strengths.{emphasize}

5. Celebrate successes

Almost two-thirds of employees feel that they don’t get enough recognition at work. Even worse, employees who don’t feel appreciated are twice as likely to quit.

Employee recognition can be a powerful incentive. When someone is recognized by their peers or manager, it makes them feel valued and can encourage individuals to up their performance.

{emphasize}Implementing employee recognition programs may lead to gains in employee engagement and employee retention. Some tips on celebrating success in the workplace include:

• Taking time to thank team members for their contributions and providing a platform for their peers to do the same
• Tailoring rewards for important milestones to the individual or team
• Highlighting successes during performance reviews and other formal occasions{emphasize}

Recognize employee success and make it genuine. Trying to encourage employees with traditional and potentially outdated rewards such as gift cards or “employee of the week” posters often feels more condescending than motivating.

6. Focus on professional development

The key to strong employee retention is to focus on their development. High-performing employees may become bored with their work, especially if they aren’t feeling challenged or don’t see a path forward in the company.

It’s vital to talk about professional development during one-on-ones. Find out what the employee wants from their job as well as their future goals. Some employees may need leadership development opportunities that will transform them into successful business leaders. Others may benefit more from mentorship programs or formal training that fosters professional growth and expertise.

Continuous development ensures that employees stay motivated and engaged with their work and are ready to meet any new challenges.

The role of performance management in professional development

Performance management practices play a pivotal role in fostering employee development. There are many ways to ensure your performance management process is as effective as it can be. We suggest starting by building a strong performance management plan.

It's essential to remember that regular performance evaluations offer a structured platform for managers and employees to assess progress, identify strengths, and pinpoint areas for growth. Frequent constructive feedback aligns with that, and fuels improvement by addressing specific behaviors and providing guidance. Clear goals that are re-established at need give employees the direction they need to feel motivated and achieve tangible outcomes.

{emphasize}Setting SMARTER goals: You should always collaborate with employees to set SMART goals. Collaboration on this foundational element gives employees clarity on expectations and empowers them to track their achievements and growth, with a view on milestones across a timeline, even more.{emphasize}

Ultimately, these should all help create individualized and adaptable career development plans to empower employees to align their aspirations with organizational goals, paving the way for continuous growth and advancement.

7. Support a healthy work-life balance to reduce employee turnover

Company culture that encourages employees to devote 100% of their attention to their work at all times, even requiring working outside of office hours, risk creating a burnout culture that will ultimately result in an unhappy workforce and higher turnover rates.

It's vital to prioritize your employees' overall well-being and provide support beyond work tasks. So how do you, as a manager, promote a productive work-life balance, especially as 47% of people say they regularly feel overwhelmed at work?

{emphasize}Here are some of our top tips to help your employees find a comfortable work-life balance:

• Offer flexible schedules and remote work options
• Use one-on-one meetings to review workloads
• Lead by example; don’t email employees outside of work hours
• Make sure employees take mandatory time off
• Increase parental support for both mothers and fathers{emphasize}

In 2023, work-life balance also translates in promoting well-being, to support employees in their physical and mental health.

This can come alive through initiatives like wellness programs, offering resources for managing stress and workload, and fostering an environment where employees feel safe seeking help when needed.

These actions can create a workplace where people are not just productive but also truly thriving — and link back into building a positive work culture!

{emphasize}Host stress management workshops: With the help of HR experts, organize workshops on stress management techniques, time management, and resilience-building. As a manager, you can encourage participation and set the tone by attending.{emphasize}

8. Implement effective leadership and management practices

Good leaders aren't just bosses — they're the coaches who always have their employees' backs. They cheer them on in their successes, and help them surmount performance struggles.

As a manager, you'll figure out what your management style is over time. Just remember that when leaders communicate clearly, offer regular feedback, set realistic expectations, empower their teams, and proactively address challenges, it creates an environment where employees are valued and feel motivated to stay.

{emphasize}Great managers regularly engage in open dialogue with their teams. This can include weekly check-ins to discuss progress, concerns, and successes, fostering an environment of transparency and engagement. Showing you are available to talk is also crucial. You've probably heard of the open-door culture. When employees know their leaders are accessible, this also builds trust and confidence.{emphasize}

Conflict resolution is also an important skill to hone because difficult conversations don't have to be difficult. Effective leaders should create a safe space for employees to express concerns, mediate conflicts, and find solutions collaboratively.

9. Have a clear onboarding process

A haphazard onboarding process can drive a new employee away from your company. According to SHRM, your company can lose up to one in six new hires due to poor onboarding within the first three months.

A good onboarding strategy should:

• Create and reinforce a good first impression
• Set clear guidelines for the first week
• Establish expectations for the first month as well as for the new employee’s future in the company
• Connect new employees with their team and mentors and foster strong relationships
• Provide opportunities for feedback on their new employment, company culture, policies and procedures, and even the onboarding itself

{emphasize}

Creating an engaging onboarding journey with softstart

Onboarding is like the first level of a game — you want new players to feel excited, not lost. A well-structured onboarding process lays the foundation for a long-lasting relationship between the employee and the company.

A tool like Workleap Onboarding can help supercharge your onboarding process by automating tasks that are easily forgotten and making onboarding activities more interactive. The software can help you elevate onboarding fundamentals, like:

• Warm welcomes via video to make day one memorable, even remotely. Being greeted by the team the team with personalized messages helps employees be made to feel special and considered.
• Having a pre-set buddy system so new recruits have somebody to show them the ropes. It's like having a co-op player to help them navigate the game.
• Prioritizing feedback by regularly asking for their input on their onboarding experience. Softstart sets up automatic 1:1s and pulse surveys so that feedback is never deprioritized.{emphasize}

10. Pay a fair salary

Paying employees fairly isn't just about numbers — it's about showing that you value their hard work.

{emphasize}How to ensure you're paying your employees a fair salary:

1. Stay up to date: Regularly review industry standards and salary surveys to make sure your compensation aligns with the market.
2. Transparency matters: When employees understand how their pay is determined, it builds trust. So, demystify the process and show how their salary is calculated.
3. Performance bonuses: Link bonuses to achievements and performance. It's like getting extra points for acing a level in a game!
4. Benefits package: Offer a robust benefits package that includes perks like health insurance, retirement plans, and wellness programs.
5. Regular reviews: Conduct periodic salary reviews. It's like leveling up — an acknowledgment of growth and dedication.{emphasize}

Competitive wages are essential in the recruitment process, especially for new employees seeking out financial stability. But what about long-term employee retention?

Interestingly, increasing pay has diminishing returns as an employee retention strategy. Once you’ve reached a point where employees can be financially stable, extra benefits and pay do little to alleviate other factors that affect employee retention.

Simply increasing pay is like putting a plaster over an open wound: it may stop some of the bleeding, but it’s much better to address the underlying causes of employee turnover.

Monitor and measure employee engagement for successful employee retention strategies

Employee engagement is like the heart of a solid retention strategy. And for that, the best managers have a trick up their sleeves — engagement surveys and collecting important metrics to help them understand how engaged their team is and how to improve engagement even more.

Tools like Pulse Surveys help peek into how employees are doing. They reveal all the good stuff and any hiccups too. Armed with these insights, managers can adjust their plans to keep everyone happy and excited to stay in the team.

We have to agreed that employee engagement is hard to quantify, as there are so many different layers that can impact employees, and each experience is unique. But there are a key metrics you can look at, including peer relationships and employee wellness, which are the pillars of employee retention.

Work smarter, not harder with the right employee engagement tools

Higher engagement can reduce employee turnover and boost your employee retention rate, but it requires a lot of work and buy-in from all levels of the company.

Having an employee engagement solution like Officevibe will make it easier for managers to connect to their employees, collect honest feedback on company issues and employee concerns and get the most out of their employee retention strategies.

{emphasize}With Pulse Surveys, anonymous feedback tools, and one-on-one meeting features, Officevibe helps develop relationships, improve employee retention and engagement, and streamline the implementation of employee retention strategies. Make the move to a feedback-focused workplace today!{emphasize}

Most businesses understand that high employee engagement corresponds to better productivity, lower turnover, and improved profitability. According to Gallup, engaged teams are 21% more productive and 23% more profitable with significantly lower turnover than their less engaged counterparts.

However, gauging genuine employee engagement and motivation can be trickier than you think. You may spend a lot of time developing a great employee survey, only to receive a tiny percentage of completed surveys after sending it out.

Even the act of sending out a survey can increase engagement and morale. Implementing methods to increase employee survey participation rates can help you get actionable data that spark positive change in the company while fostering happier employees. Let's explore some of the best ways to increase employee engagement survey participation.

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1. Use anonymous employee surveys

Employees often express concern about giving constructive criticism to their managers, especially if the organization hasn't implemented a feedback culture. Many fear retribution that can create a hostile work environment and lower their morale and engagement.

Anonymous employee surveys make it easier for individuals to give honest feedback on what they enjoy about their jobs and what they think could be improved. It's important to let employees know that their responses are private and anonymous.

Many employees assume that their responses aren't private if they complete them on a company computer. Some will avoid taking the survey completely, while others will only provide answers they think their managers want to hear.

Expressly anonymous surveys often increase survey response rates, as participants feel safer and more comfortable when answering their questionnaires.

2. Send regular pulse surveys instead of yearly

Getting your right survey timing right can be an art form. Constant surveys may get annoying, especially if they disrupt an employee's workflow.

Similarly, surveys that are sent too spread apart may feel disingenuous rather than a sincere effort on the part of HR leaders to understand their employees.

A good idea is to use a combination of shorter surveys on a weekly basis together with longer surveys at the end of every quarter, for example.

At Officevibe, we recommend sending out short, two-minute Pulse Surveys at the end of the week. These surveys are a great way to measure the current mood without disrupting employee productivity.

3. Communicate the value and importance of engagement surveys

Simply dropping a survey on employees and expecting completion is a foolproof way to get a very low survey response rate. Employees may not understand the purpose of the survey or get frustrated at the abrupt new task added to their to-do list.

Making a formal announcement about the survey's purpose, deadlines, and anonymous features should be your starting point when introducing a new survey. You can also reinforce the importance of the survey during:

• Company-wide meetings
• One-on-one meetings
• Internal communications
• Survey reminders
• Team meetings

4. Keep surveys short and to the point

Answering a long survey takes time and energy, which can lead to survey fatigue. Keeping the survey length manageable is a key component of a high survey response rate, especially if you use pulse surveys regularly. It also helps you narrow down the survey's focus and makes sure that you ask relevant questions that lead to actionable information.

It's also good to keep the same questions during short pulse surveys. Since employees know what to expect, they're more likely to complete the survey, and you'll also get higher-quality data and more useful trackable metrics.

5. Use open-ended questions

The type of survey questions you use depends largely on the data you want to collect. Pulse surveys do well with simple yes/no questions or ranking (scale of 1-10) questions, where employees don't need to craft long-form answers that can be more time-consuming. The information obtained from these questions is simpler to track and measure as it's easier to quantify instead of answers from longer survey questions.

However, if you want to make sweeping improvements, it's worthwhile to include longer, open-ended questions that encourage higher-level feedback.

For instance, asking employees if they're happy with their office environment (yes/no question) will identify a general satisfaction trend. But if you want to dig deeper into what employees enjoy about their workspace or what they would like to see improved upon, an open-ended question will produce more actionable answers.

You might ask the following question: "What could senior leaders and managers do to make the workplace more inviting?"

6. Create a culture of feedback

Feedback culture refers to a company culture where everyone can give and receive feedback without fear of retribution.

The main goal of feedback culture is to move away from uncomfortable power dynamics that often occur in large companies. This stratification leads to situations where senior leaders may not understand the company's employee experience, while employees don't understand the reasoning behind certain decisions.

Miscommunications can often lead to decreases in employee morale and engagement as well as out-of-touch decision-making by senior leadership.

Creating a feedback culture requires an investment of time and effort from HR teams, senior management, line managers, and employees.

However, having employees who are comfortable giving feedback will increase survey participation and promote higher overall employee engagement.

7. Share survey results

Regardless of whether your survey responses are generally positive or negative, it's vital to share them with survey participants and company leaders.

Sharing survey results with the company's upper management shows employees that their managers take their employee survey responses seriously.

Sharing results also includes action plans and feedback implementation, which will encourage further employee feedback and increase employee survey response rates during the next round of questionnaires.

8. Act on employee feedback and pulse survey results

The goal of employee engagement surveys is to evaluate employee engagement levels and find out what isn't working as well as it should. The feedback you get from open-ended questions can support subsequent action planning to increase engagement and employee satisfaction.

The more your employees see that you're willing to take their ideas to heart, the higher the response rate to the next round of employee engagement surveys. Survey respondents will also be more likely to provide higher-quality, honest survey data if they know their input matters to managers and leaders.

9. Make surveys easy to complete

Long surveys with multiple open-ended questions can be emotionally and mentally draining, especially if you hand them out at the end of the week. Even simple things, such as having to sign into a new app or create a new account to complete a survey, form barriers to accessibility and tank employee survey participation rates.

One way to make employee surveys easier is to stick to the same engagement survey software that plugs into your current employee platform. Simplifying accessibility will do wonders for your employee survey participation rates and lead to higher quality data.

10. Send creative reminders

While an employee engagement survey is important business, many employees respond well to a bit of fun or whimsy in email reminders. Adding some creativity can make these reminders stand out from the dozens of notifications employees get daily and may even make them look forward to their next engagement survey.

11. Let people know the length of the survey in advance

Letting employees know the length and complexity of a survey can dramatically increase employee survey participation. They can plan adequately and incorporate the engagement survey into their schedule, resulting in their full attention and a higher completion rate.

A good way to let employees know about this is to add a simple disclaimer in their reminders, like "This survey has 10 short questions that should take approximately two minutes to complete."

It's important to note that a time disclaimer may put some people off taking longer surveys, as they may not be able to allot the time needed. If you notice engagement survey response rates dropping after adding a survey length disclaimer, consider fewer questions or a shorter survey to improve employee survey participation.

12. Use a dedicated employee survey tool

Creating an employee engagement survey takes time and effort, and you want to get the most out of your investment. Using an employee engagement tool like Officevibe can help large and small companies use employee surveys to improve employee engagement and motivate employees. By keeping employees engaged and motivated, you can tap into your workforce's true potential.

Officevibe is a comprehensive employee experience platform that uses a range of employee engagement surveys to monitor employee engagement and satisfaction.

In addition to our pulse survey tool, one-on-one meeting tools, and other employee feedback features, the platform measures key metrics, allowing you to evaluate the success of your employee engagement interventions.

If you want to know how your employees really feel about your company, check out how Officevibe can provide the perfect survey tool for your office.

Workplace surveys are a great way to help boost morale, improve employee engagement, and maintain company values. But the pressing question is: which employee surveys will benefit your organization the most? Let's explore Pulse Surveys vs. engagement surveys.

The main difference between Pulse Surveys and engagement surveys is frequency. Annual surveys offer a general overall perspective into your employees' experiences with the company.

Pulse Surveys allow you to maintain company health and happiness with quicker and more frequent check-ins.

This article discusses the key differences between a Pulse Survey and an engagement survey to help you determine what action plans might offer your company the best employee satisfaction and retention results.

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Annual employee engagement surveys

In most companies, employee engagement surveys traditionally happen once per year. Usually, human resources (HR) sends out an annual survey asking staff about:

• Employee experience
• Workplace values
• Management feedback
• Business process opinions

By sending in-depth surveys, your organization's leadership can receive helpful insights and data about the past year to help the team form next year's action planning.

Why might you need an annual employee engagement survey

Employees want to feel valued. When you listen to team opinions and strive to make improvements, you can empower everyone to stay with the company and work to achieve collective goals.

An annual engagement survey can help you learn how to:

• Give employees better resources and tools to improve their performance
• Support individual team members
• Place employees into positions you designed based on their skill sets
• Improve and reassess workloads
• Help develop long-term career goals
• Grow your role as a manager

How do annual employee engagement surveys work?

Learning about employee engagement without overwhelming your team with too many questions can be challenging. To measure employee engagement, you need to find a balance between asking enough questions to cover every base without creating survey fatigue.

Employee engagement surveys typically include at least 50 different questions that employees can respond to using rating scales. For example, you could ask employees how they feel about the number of vacation days they are entitled to, on a scale from one to 10.

To help you get started, try these employee survey questions, or opt for an employee survey tool like Officevibe which offers specially designed surveys to cover a broad range of workplace topics.

What do annual surveys measure, and how?

A yearly survey measures two main things:

• Employee sentiment—how each employee feels about their workload, managers, and day-to-day jobs.
• Management sentiment—how well company policies and the workplace environment empower organizational success.

To gain insights surrounding these topics, typically, an annual survey will ask for opinions on:

• Organizational changes
• Office culture
• Company values
• Work conditions
• Job fulfillment and satisfaction
• Compensation and benefits
• Career outlooks

Your management team can track engagement, measure employee retention, and outline future business trends using the survey results.

Annual employee engagement survey benefits

The benefits of providing an annual survey include the ability to:

• Send everyone the same survey to gain valuable company insights.
• Learn how to improve retention rates.
• Gather feedback on a variety of different topics at the same time.
• Discover unexpected trends in employee feedback.
• Measure data against previous years.
• Understand how the team views the company name and mission.
• Determine how employees perceive the organization's culture.

Are there any cons to only using an annual employee survey?

You will find drawbacks to limiting yourself to only one annual employee survey. To explain, we'll use a metaphor: imagine that you only go grocery shopping once a year.

Of course, you can stock up on the essentials, but what happens if you decide that you want a salmon dinner next week and don't have any fish? This type of shopping wouldn't allow for meal variation or spontaneous cravings.

Now, if you go grocery shopping every week, you can explore fresh new options and always have what you're in the mood to eat.

The same theory applies to employee feedback survey frequency. Of course, you can gain a general overview of how everyone's doing, but you will never receive specific, real-time insights.

Employee Pulse Surveys

Pulse Surveys are short and frequent surveys that allow you to consistently collect employees' opinions so that you can respond with immediate action. Regular feedback helps you improve your business every day, not just once per year.

Officevibe's employee Pulse Survey tools rely on three basic foundations:

• Regular questionnaires at weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly intervals
• Real-time data and long-term insights
• Employee anonymity for accurate responses

Why might you need an employee Pulse Survey?

The State of Work Report by Slack found that 84% of employees enjoy a greater feeling of job value, purpose, and satisfaction when they can adequately understand the company's strategy. So how can you ensure that your employees understand their importance?

Officevibe Pulse Survey data shows that 96% of employees said receiving regular feedback is a good thing. Offering an opinion outlet and communication channel can help employees understand their value.

Pulse Surveys allow you to:

• Gain more accurate insight into employee emotions and the organization's culture.
• Learn about what's happening around the office right now.
• Provide employees the resources they need as soon as they need them.
• Discover recurring organizational trends and test different solutions.
• Encourage more feedback with shorter enticing surveys.
• Learn about what initiatives work well before allocating more resources toward them.
• Analyze data more quickly and easily with short, frequent feedback.

How do Pulse Surveys work?

Employee Pulse Surveys work by sending out a brief questionnaire to your team on a frequent schedule, based on any current issues, questions, or important items. Typically, organizations choose to send a Pulse Survey every week with 10 questions or fewer.

Next, you can use employee survey feedback to track engagement and improve business processes. Each week when new questions pop up at a meeting, jot them down, and add them to the next Pulse Survey!

What do Pulse Surveys measure?

Officevibe's Pulse Surveys measure 10 key metrics:

1. Employee-manager relationship metrics help you support and understand each team member with relational intelligence.
2. Feedback measurements help you understand the best practices for promoting team improvements. Officevibe Pulse Survey data found that 83% of employees really appreciate receiving feedback, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.
3. Employees' personal growth metrics show how well employees feel they can build a career with your organization.
4. Coworker relationships and team collaboration questions help you foster a more productive and happier team.
5. Employee well-being tracking helps you promote positive work environments to avoid employee burnout.
6. Team member appreciation feedback helps ensure that you know how to provide adequate employee recognition to keep employees motivated.
7. Workforce alignment metrics empower your team to keep working toward the same goal.
8. Overall happiness within the organization includes asking questions about work-life balance, stress, and work enjoyment. One-on-one meetings can help you build personal relationships with every employee.
9. Job satisfaction metrics allow you to ensure that everyone is in the best position for their skillset, receives adequate pay, and can access the tools they need to succeed.
10. Employee ambassadorship measurements help you understand if your team truly loves and advocates for the organization so that you can boost employee retention.

Pulse Surveys help managers and leaders measure engagement levels on their team and track trends over time by using 10 metrics and 26 sub-metrics of engagement with easy-to-read reports. Consider using a few questions for each of the above metrics to acquire actionable results.

Pulse Survey benefits

Frequent Pulse Surveys help you better understand how employees feel all of the time so that you can track positive changes. The data you receive from Pulse Surveys is far more accurate, relevant, and specific than an annual survey.

Other benefits that come with using Pulse Surveys include the ability to:

• Increase response rates with shorter questions than annual employee surveys.
• Receive fast and applicable weekly data each.
• Track long-term business goal progress to stay on track.
• Resolve any issues quickly.
• Monitor how the organization changes throughout seasonal or quarterly cycles.
• Make sure that your team has the resources they need every day.
• Adjust questions based on the previous week's results.
• Ensure that employees don't forget about important opinions with regular check-ins.

How can you use annual surveys and Pulse Surveys together?

Since annual employee surveys and Pulse Surveys each offer different benefits on their own, they become even more powerful when you use them in combination.

Sending Pulse Surveys weekly, biweekly, or monthly offers you quick and simple answers. Annual employee surveys provide much longer and more in-depth questions that allow you to contextualize how all survey responses relate to one another.

For example, let's say that only one employee responds to a Pulse Survey question saying that they struggle with staying focused during online meetings. Since it was just one person, maybe you don't investigate with further questions.

Then, in the long-form annual survey, the same employee explains that they have WiFi issues in their home office that make online meetings challenging. Now you can understand exactly how to provide resources to resolve this person's problem.

How can you choose the right survey for your team?

Choosing the best survey type for your organization is challenging. You want to ask just enough questions so that you do not miss out on valuable information without overwhelming the team with too many surveys.

Here are a few things to consider when choosing your survey strategy:

• The number of different organizations within the company that need varying questions.
• Any pressing business decisions that require immediate opinions.
• The company's flexibility and open-mindedness surrounding change.
• The overall survey's purposes and goals that you wish to achieve.
• Any HR hoops you may need to jump through to enable regular surveys.

Gain feedback in real-time

You don't need to wait until the end of the year to listen to your teammates' opinions. Everyone at your company has valuable and insightful ideas that can benefit how the entire organization operates, so why wait months to hear them?

Pulse Surveys offer an incredible opportunity to grow your business through consistent team collaboration. Gain a better view of what's happening around the office every week so that you can handle any hurdle.

You've come to the right place if you want to begin sending out Pulse Surveys but don't know where to start. Officevibe's Pulse Surveys include convenient templates, anonymous answers, simple response channels, and easy-to-analyze results.

Officevibe’s easy-to-use platform provides you with all the resources you might need to tap into the employee sentiment of employees in ways to enhance organizations' workplace environments.

Improve your team's engagement and get started for free today.

To improve and grow your company, encouraging honest employee feedback is cardinal.

When it comes to improving and growing your company, encouraging honest employee feedback is key.

While many employees may not be accustomed to speaking their mind with their team, there are several ways companies can help their employees feel more comfortable voicing their concerns and sharing their ideas with leadership.

Part of having a strong company culture is offering a safe space that gives people a voice and, ideally, an open-door policy. We've put together our top tips on how to achieve more open and honest communication and get more candid feedback for your organization.

{emphasize}How to get honest feedback from your employees

• 5 ways to encourage honest employee feedback
• Putting employee feedback to good use
• Encourage honest employee feedback with Officevibe{emphasize}

5 ways to encourage honest employee feedback

No matter the size of your team or company, there are plenty of effective ways to encourage honest employee feedback and gather valuable insights. From one-on-one meetings and employee surveys to real-time and anonymous feedback, it's all about implementing the right strategies. A happy team is a productive team!

Have one-on-one meetings with team members

For managers, one-on-one meetings and skip-level meetings are a great way to connect with employees more personally and open the floor to honest discussion.

When you want to encourage honest feedback, what’s most important is to create a comfortable atmosphere for the direct report. It should be one based on trust and without the nerve-wracking fear of being reprimanded if they speak up. Your people should feel safe having open communication with their manager.

When done right, these meetings are a great way to collect and listen to critical feedback on things like engagement and satisfaction. So before diving into asking questions, start by setting the tone on a friendly, relaxed, and human level. Get a feel for the mindset you’re both in. Once you feel confident in the mutual trust, you can venture further into the conversation.

What’s equally important is to come prepared. To get the kind of feedback you need, you need to ask the right questions during your one-on-one meetings.

💡 Need some guidance on how to do this effectively? Learn how to run a one-on-one meeting like a pro.

Enable anonymous employee feedback

Some employees are more comfortable than others when expressing themselves directly to their managers or peers. Some people may be more reluctant to provide feedback or share their ideas and feelings if they have to disclose their names.

What’s cool about anonymous feedback is that it helps create a safe space where most people are more at ease, which helps bring up issues that leadership otherwise wouldn’t know about.

When the opinions expressed are anonymous, you allow employees to speak more freely and respond with increased honesty. It enables people to share their feedback and issues in a judgment-free way.

Officevibe is your ultimate tool for your business to gather anonymous employee feedback and listen on a regular basis. Our anonymous feedback and Pulse Survey software offer an intuitive platform that makes it easy to collect valuable, continuous feedback that can then be used to make improvements and implement new strategies.

What’s also a plus is that while employees can share their concerns and issues, it also gives them the opportunity to share positive feedback about their peers.

Get continuous feedback through employee surveys

One of the easiest and most effective ways to receive continuous feedback is with employee surveys.

Busy everyday operations mean that sometimes leaders have less time for other methods like one-on-one meetings. Pulse Surveys are a helpful tool for asking team members important questions about their well-being, manager, peers, the organization, and culture.

Survey questions should be specific and targeted but not leading. Framing questions this way opens the door to getting more developed information and honest answers. Again, it's also important to conduct them regularly to keep up with what's going on and lessen the possibility of employees forgetting about things they want to share.

Lastly, to up the potential for quality feedback, keep them concise and not too time-consuming. The best way to do that is to follow employee engagement survey best practices.

Collect real-time feedback from employees and managers

A great way to focus on continuous improvement is with real-time feedback. Unlike periodic performance reviews, this immediate feedback helps employees and even managers grow in the now. Think less critical evaluation and more ongoing support and development.

Managers share insights on their employees' strengths and areas of improvement, and employees share the challenges they face with their managers. The result? Better connections amongst colleagues and progress on both sides.

Officevibe is also an effective tool for collecting real-time feedback that can be used to improve the day-to-day and develop the long-term improvement of the team.

Conduct stay interviews with each employee

Even if you regularly use methods of gathering employee feedback, you’re not always able to tell when an employee is looking for new opportunities elsewhere. Proactively taking action is great for sparking open dialogue and helps you gain valuable insights.

Unlike the classic exit interview, the stay interview is a very good way for the leadership to connect with each employee and talk to them about what’s keeping them happy and engaged. Ultimately, the goal is to learn why they stay with your company even when the market is fiercely competitive.

Since ​​41% of people have left a job because they didn’t feel listened to (AllVoices), this kind of feedback is ultra-valuable when it comes to avoiding employee turnover and keeping your team satisfied.

Putting employee feedback to good use

Beyond using these methods to good use, what matters most is what you do with the feedback once you have it.

Employees who feel heard are more engaged. Employees who feel able to talk about their grievances and the good stuff have better relationships with their leaders.

Encourage honest employee feedback with Officevibe

Pulse Surveys, anonymous feedback, and peer-to-peer recognition contribute to 82% of employees expressing that they feel their opinions matter in the workplace.

That’s why Officevibe is a great tool to help open conversations with colleagues, create a comfortable space for sharing, and streamline the feedback with one easy-to-use platform.

How does your company take the pulse of employee well-being, satisfaction, and engagement? 

Some organizations opt for periodic feedback sessions while others utilize tools like surveys to assess these essential metrics. 

But measuring employee satisfaction and engagement is not as simple as tracking sales or profit margins; they are too intimately linked with emotion and personal experience to be easily quantifiable. 

Despite the challenges of tracking employee engagement and satisfaction, these invaluable metrics allow business leaders to gauge employees' motivation, productivity, and overall experience at work. 

Finding the right employee engagement KPI can be tricky, so we'll share nine of the core metrics we use to measure employee engagement and satisfaction.

{emphasize}What's in this article

• Importance of employee engagement KPIs
• The top 9 employee engagement and satisfaction KPIs
• Use employee engagement KPIs to improve employee experience{emphasize}

Importance of employee engagement KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) allow you to identify objectives, set clear goals, and hit your targets. 

Yet, measuring employee engagement can't be done with one KPI alone. To get the full picture of your team's workplace experience, you'll need to use multiple employee engagement metrics.

Why should you spend your valuable time gathering data on employee engagement and satisfaction? According to Gallup’s 2021 State of the Global Workplace report, only 20% of employees feel engaged in their work.

That means 80% of workers feel disconnected from their daily tasks which can lead to:

• Low employee productivity
• High absenteeism
• Increased turnover rates
• Decreased performance

If you want to solve a problem, you first need to identify it. Measuring employee engagement levels is a good place to start. Once you have an idea of how your employees feel about subjects like feedback, career opportunities, and benefits,  you can chart a better course for the future of your company.

The top 9 employee engagement and satisfaction KPIs

A sure-fire way to create a motivated and passionate workforce is by evaluating your current situation using employee engagement metrics. These metrics will help you get an overview employee experience and lead you to the root causes of low engagement.

1. Employee net promoter score (eNPS)

The employee net promoter score (eNPS) is a simple way to identify how many engaged employees are in your organization. Net promoter scores began as a way to measure customer loyalty, but business leaders have adapted them into a KPI to calculate employee engagement.

All you need to do is to ask one key question (on a scale of 1 to 10): "How likely are you to recommend our company as a place to work?"

{emphasize}

Based on the answers, you'll categorize your employees as:

• Detractors (score of 0-6) 
• Neutral (score of 7-8)
• Promoters (score of 9-10){emphasize}

Calculating your eNPS is a great way to measure ambassadorship in your organization. Your promoters are enthusiastic ambassadors for your company, helping you attract talent and hold onto them. Neutral employees likely won't say anything bad or good about the company, but they are the first in line to become the next promoters if you address their feedback.

2. Employee satisfaction index (ESI)

The employee satisfaction index (ESI) measures how satisfied your employees are with their job. Employee satisfaction is different from employee engagement; it focuses on employee fulfillment and happiness rather than commitment and work output.

To get your ESI score, you need to ask the following questions:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your job?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how well does your job meet your expectations?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how close is your workplace to your ideal job?

{emphasize}The equation to calculate your ESI is as follows:

ESI = (((question mean value/3) - 1)/9) x 100{emphasize}

The result is a number between 1 and 100, and a higher score means higher employee satisfaction.

3. Turnover rate

Using turnover rate as a KPI can help you measure employee happiness, satisfaction, and engagement. Low employee engagement can lead to high employee turnover rates, and the current job market makes it even more challenging to hold onto talent. Joblist's 2021 Job Market Report found that 73% of workers are actively thinking of leaving their current job.

You can calculate employee turnover with the following formula:

Employee turnover rate = (total number of employees that quit ÷ total number of employees at the beginning of the period) x 100

It's possible to narrow this metric down to specific departments or teams to gauge employee engagement and satisfaction across different sectors of the organization.

4. Online company ratings

Checking online reviews for your company on sites like Glassdoor can give you insights into how satisfied previous employees were at your workplace.

Most of these sites rate your organization between 1 to 5 stars which gives you quantifiable data you can use in discussions with leadership about improving employee engagement.

5. Employee survey results

Employee satisfaction surveys allow managers to gain perspective on employee happiness and well-being. Ideally, leaders should use the data from employee surveys to implement meaningful changes based on employee feedback.

You can use surveys to gather data on engagement and satisfaction, but the type of survey depends on your objectives. Pulse Surveys are the best way to gauge real-time employee engagement; they're quick and frequent enough that you can track changes as soon as they happen.

6. Absenteeism

Measuring employee absenteeism will help you gain insight into how motivated and productive your employees are. An engaged employee won't miss work often because they're committed to their job, and satisfied employees will show up more because they're happy at work.

Employee wellness is also closely tied to absenteeism. If your employees are overworked, lacking vacation days, or aren't allowed any flexibility, they're more likely to skip work to get a break. Progressive employers focus on employee wellness by providing adequate benefits, offering flexible hours, and letting people work from home when they need to.

{emphasize}You can use the following formula to get your absenteeism rate:

Absenteeism rate = (total number of days absent per employee ÷ total number of days worked) x 100{emphasize}

Absenteeism signifies engagement, satisfaction, and employee wellbeing. If your absence rate is low, it's likely because you have an actively engaged workforce with high job satisfaction.

7. Internal promotion rate

In a report by The Society for Human Resource Management, only 29% of employees said they were satisfied with their career advancement opportunities. Personal growth is essential to most people, and if they can't develop their career in their current job, they're likely to start searching for a new one.

If you want to find the leading indicator of how well your company is doing with its advancement opportunities, you can look at your organization's promotion rate.

{emphasize}Promotion rate = (total number of promoted employees ÷ total number of employees) x 100{emphasize}

Measuring internal promotions shows how willing your organization is to grow your employees, which is something your team members are definitely paying attention to. Improving growth opportunities can lead to better employee engagement and a higher employee retention rate.

8. Successful hires

A good way to judge employee engagement and satisfaction is to measure how successful your company is at holding on to new hires after their probationary period.

If you find that new employees leave after a few months, your human resource management team might need to evaluate your company culture, hiring process, and other onboarding procedures.

9. Feedback

Officevibe survey data reveals that 96% of employees felt that they benefitted from receiving regular feedback from their managers and other employees. Many organizations suffer from a lack of feedback or not knowing how to give it effectively.

You can use feedback as a KPI by setting goals for how often you give feedback to your employees or how often you recognize them for their work and accomplishments. Some workplaces encourage daily recognition, ensuring that their employees feel valued.

Another way to use feedback to measure employee engagement is to link it with your employee's goals, giving you insight into their performance. Making feedback a meaningful function in the workplace can empower your employees.

{emphasize}Studies show that companies who provide regular feedback experience 14.9% lower turnover rates.{emphasize}

Use employee engagement KPIs to improve employee experience

If you use employee engagement KPIs to make meaningful improvements, your employees will be more satisfied with their jobs. Happy employees lead to a motivated workforce that's more likely to stick around and go the extra mile to achieve business goals.

The Officevibe Pulse Survey tool measures engagement and satisfaction with 10 key employee engagement metrics that give actionable insights into your employees' experience.

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Officevibe can help you build an effective engagement strategy. Our tools allow you to get frequent, honest feedback from your employees so that you always know where you stand with your team. Whether something is working well or leaves room for improvement you'll see it illustrated in an easy-to-read, shareable report.

Employee turnover and attrition are bad news for many companies and organizations. Retaining employees can make a massive difference to your business's bottom line. The recent Great Resignation has been a serious wake-up call for many of us in management to pay more attention to our workplace culture, refocus on retention and introduce new practices like regularly asking survey questions to take the pulse of employee sentiment.

This painful amount is due to:

• lost productivity
• new employee training and onboarding
• effects on decreased employee morale.

Losing your top performers can be even more devastating, as they often fill a niche role that requires expertise and skillset that's hard to replace.

Retaining employees rather than seeing another turnover offers several attractive retention benefits, including:

• increased revenue
• improved corporate culture
• a better customer experience

The good news is that you can do a lot to reduce employee turnover. More than half of exiting employees say that their manager could have done something to prevent them from leaving. Just ponder that a moment.

Employee retention surveys are a great way to identify how employees feel about their workplace and prospects in your company. They also complement traditional exit surveys and stay interviews to pinpoint current workplace concerns and head them off before they lead to excessive employee attrition.

The importance of asking the right survey questions for employee retention

Any company serious about improving its retention rates needs to be able to measure its employee satisfaction. While an open feedback culture is a gold standard for improving employee morale and retention, creating one takes significant time and effort to show results.

Employee surveys provide your organization with clear evidence of how employees feel in their workplace. These vital tools can monitor trends and identify current and future concerns.

{emphasize}There is an inherent link between employee engagement and retention, another reason why it's so important to find ways to keep your finger on the pulse of employee sentiment.{emphasize}

They also provide better answers than a traditional exit survey, where responses are often biased and skewed because the former employee doesn't want to burn bridges or because they are fed up with the organization.

As with other employee sentiment measurement tools, you'll need to invest in development to get the most out of your employee retention survey. It isn't enough to put together a few questions about the workplace and hope for the best. The more time you spend developing the right survey questions and strategy, the more valuable the employee feedback you'll get will be.

20 examples of employee retention survey questions

A platform like Officevibe helps you get to know your people by using tools like Pulse Surveys to take the guesswork out of finding out how your team feels. While the examples below aren't as exhaustive as our in-app bank of 122 science-baked questions, we've created a quick list related to the most relevant retention themes to spark the conversation.

{emphasize}If you find this list helpful, you might also enjoy these 35 employee survey questions to amplify team engagement.{emphasize}

Employee engagement survey questions

Employee engagement refers to how passionate your workers are about their job, which often translates into their commitment to their organization. It's a key component of low turnover workplaces, where employees feel valued and challenged by their work.

Here are some questions to help your management discover how engaged your employees are in their current positions.

1. When was the last time you felt proud about something you achieved at work?
2. What would you consider to be the most challenging aspect of your position?
3. Rate your workload on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being too little and 10 being completely overwhelmed.
4. How likely would you be to recommend a job at our company to a family member or friend? Can you explain the reasoning for your answer?

Survey questions about company culture

Workplace culture plays a prominent role in employee engagement and retention. A collaborative culture improves the employee experience, enhances productivity, and stops managers from losing employees to other teams, departments, or companies.

Here are some of the best questions to assess how employees perceive their corporate culture.

5. Do you feel like you can be yourself around your managers and teammates?
6. Do you feel you can bring up problems to your manager and, if so, that your manager will address them?
7. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you think your employer values your contribution, with 1 being not at all and 10 being highly valued?
8. If you could change one thing about the culture in our organization, what would it be and why?

Survey questions about career development

Employees are likely to leave if they feel your company doesn't offer the career advancement they expect. High-quality development opportunities within the organization can ensure that your most highly skilled individuals will stay.

9. Have you received any training opportunities within the last six months, and did they contribute to achieving your career goals?
10. Have you encountered any new opportunities within the company that will help you on your career path?
11. What type of development plan would improve your performance and help you move forward in your career?
12. Are you getting value out of current training and development programs?
13. Have you and your manager set expectations about your progress in the company?

{emphasize}🌱 Help your team members grow. Take the career development talk a step further using our one-on-one meeting template specifically designed to guide these conversations.{emphasize}

Survey questions about compensation and perks

Proper and fair compensation is critical in keeping employees at their jobs. According to a report from the Society for Human Resource Management, 96% of employees say that compensation is important to their overall job satisfaction and employee experience. We can't say we're surprised by that fact.

Here are some questions to approach the subject of compensation and perks:

14. Do you feel you get paid fairly in your current position compared to others in your type of position working elsewhere?
15. Would you take a new job at another company if they offered you the salary you currently make?
16. Are you satisfied with the perks you get currently? If not, what perks would you like to see the company offer in the future?

Survey questions about management

The old adage says, "People leave managers, not companies." Managers strongly impact overall employee satisfaction and require feedback from employees to know if they're improving the overall employee experience. Here are some questions to find out if resolving management kinks can boost retention.

17. Does your manager provide you with the support you need to complete your work?
18. What does your manager do to support you and your team in accomplishing tasks?
19. Would you recommend your direct manager to another team?
20. Are you satisfied with the recognition you receive from your manager? When was the last time you received acknowledgment for excelling in your role?

Once you've developed the perfect questionnaire, you'll need a method to carry out the survey. Officevibe has excellent tools to measure all the important aspects of employee retention. Whether you want to conduct a quick pulse survey to get a snapshot of the current situation or longer-form surveys to get ideas on how to improve as an employer or manager, Officevibe's resources are flexible to meet your needs.

When to use employee retention surveys

Employee retention surveys can act as proactive or reactive tools to measure employee engagement and satisfaction. If your organization already experiences too much turnover, using longer surveys can pinpoint specific employee concerns leading them to resign.

However, the best use for surveys is as a proactive tool to keep employees satisfied and turnover low. Short pulse surveys at the end of the week or month can help managers gauge the current employee mood. These questionnaires are an excellent way to pick up potential issues.

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In most cases, employees plan to leave well before handing in their resignation letter, so addressing their concerns early on might be enough to head off an unwanted personnel loss.

You can also use a longer employee engagement survey to discover ways to improve employee retention. These questionnaires can help your organization take long-term steps to improve its employer brand and attract new talent to the company.

It's important to note that while employee retention surveys are an excellent tool to discover how employees feel about your organization, you can find plenty of other ways to get employee feedback. These might include:

• One-on-one feedback sessions
• Team meetings
• Stay interviews and exit interviews
• Onboarding of new employees

You can incorporate employee retention surveys in some of these feedback sessions to get even more useful data. Be sure to adapt the questionnaires to suit the situation. For example, an employee engagement questionnaire might not be completely anonymous during a team meeting, so avoid asking those more intimate questions.

Employee retention survey best practices

Designing a survey for maximum results takes time. The type of questions you ask, how you ask them, and even how often you send surveys out can affect the quality of your data. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

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• Keep the survey short: Employees already have enough on their plate without spending half an hour answering a questionnaire. Keep surveys to ten questions or less.
• Ask specific and open-ended questions: Asking broad questions often leads to employees providing vague, non-actionable answers. By keeping the questions straightforward, the company can identify problems and solutions and get a clearer picture of how the workforce feels. Open-ended questions encourage longer answers that can provide you with ideas on how to improve the organization's culture.
• Avoid leading questions: Leading questions encourage specific answers, leading to inaccurate data. For instance, "Which aspect of your fantastic job do you love the most?" implies that the employee already feels that their job is fantastic and loves aspects of the job, which may not be the case.
• Keep surveys anonymous: Employees may be reluctant to give honest answers about their manager or the company if they fear reprisals or negative consequences. Making the surveys anonymous allows for more honest feedback and will often result in a higher response rate.
• Send out surveys regularly: The only way to maximize results from an employee retention survey is consistency. By integrating the questions into routine quarterly performance reviews and conducting smaller Pulse Surveys at the end of each month, you can show employees that you care about their opinion. Doing so makes it more likely that you'll get genuine, actionable data. Using survey tools like Officevibe can assist in scheduling, making it easier to find the optimal timing for your survey.{emphasize}

How to use employee feedback from surveys to improve retention and turnover

Once you've gotten the hang of employee retention surveys, the next challenge is to analyze the data you receive. As with all other tools, employee retention surveys are only as good as those using them. What you do with the results of an employee survey can have as much of an impact as conducting the employee engagement survey in the first place.

While you will never please everyone, employee retention surveys will give you a starting point for improving your workplace. The more employees you get to answer an employee survey, the more accurate and actionable your results.

If one person on a team says they don't like their manager, you may not have any reason to act. However, if everyone on the team gives the same answer, you know you have a legitimate concern.

{emphasize}💡 Surveys are a practicable and measurable tool to help, but there are other ways to prevent turnover. Check out these 10 strategies to improve employee retention via engagement.{emphasize}

A management tool from Officevibe can help you make sense of the answers you receive. The platform simplifies the development of an employee survey, and it can also help your organization make effective decisions concerning employee retention and reducing turnover.