An enormous part of a business’ success depends on the culture it develops among its workforce – 88% of job-seekers say a healthy culture is essential for organizational success. The problem, however, is how much of that culture comes from the attitude of its employees. The SECOND problem is the fact that we don’t know what our employees are truly feeling… or do we? What about a survey?
Surveying your team can solve nearly any problem you encounter as a people-leader. Not only does it increase engagement and loyalty among the team members that answer, but it can key you in to any problem they may have with your company or management and enable you to fix it on the spot.
It’s also an incredibly effective employee retention strategy, as per SHRM, organizational responsiveness to employee feedback leads to higher retention rates, lower absenteeism, improved productivity, better customer service and higher employee morale. Sending out surveys shows your team that you care about their feelings and opinions, but acting on the results shows them that you’re truly invested in them. That makes them stay.
As useful as surveys are, there’s a big difference between the effective ones and the ineffective ones. You have to develop surveys intentionally, intelligently, and with a goal in mind. If you’re curious about the underlying culture of your workplace, try a survey that focuses on engagement. If you need to assess the efficacy of your training and onboarding, ask them about the parts they valued and the parts they didn’t.
No matter what you’re trying to pull from your team, a survey will help you tweak your performance management and boost employee retention and engagement immensely. If you don’t have enough time on your hand to put together a survey, don’t worry, because we’ve already started for you! Here are many of the best questions you could ask about any subject your organization is struggling – or excelling – in.
Each question has a suggested format, but you can feel free to get flexible with the way you ask them!
Engagement
High employee engagement results in an 81% improvement in attendance, a 30% improvement in employee retention, a 10% increase in customer satisfaction, and a 21% boost in productivity.
How encouraging and supportive is management here? (1-10)
How much freedom for creativity would you say you get within your responsibilities? (1-10)
How satisfied are you with your benefits and compensation? (1-10)
Do you have a clear career path within this organization? (Y/N)
Would you say you’re typically informed about important company decisions? (Y/N)
How interesting and challenging do you find your day-to-day work? (1-10)
Do you feel that your role makes good use of your skills? (Y/N)
Do you feel that your role has a real purpose outside of being a simple job? (Y/N)
How proud are you to work for this organization? (1-10)
What aspects of our workplace culture could be improved? (Open-ended)
Do you feel satisfied with the recognition you receive from peers and management? (Y/N)
How trusting of a relationship do you have with your manager? (1-10)
Would you recommend this workplace to your friends? (Y/N)
How would you describe our organization’s mission? (Open-ended)
Is there anything else you wish we asked you in this survey? (Open-ended)
Performance
You may not realize that most of your staff is confused about goal metrics or unsatisfied with the feedback they receive – get to the bottom of it right away.
How could our company help you do your job more effectively? (Open-ended)
How confident are you in expressing work-related concerns to management? (1-10)
Do you feel that your salary is competitive with equivalent positions elsewhere? (Y/N)
How strongly would you say this organization supports teamwork? (1-10)
Do you receive frequent enough feedback on your performance? (Y/N)
Would you say you receive regular and helpful communication from this company? (Y/N)
How often do you have the opportunity to contribute to decisions that directly affect business outcomes? (1-10)
Do you feel that performance standards are clearly defined? (Y/N)
How comfortable are you giving feedback to your supervisors/managers? (1-10)
How clear are your expectations and goals? (1-10)
Well-Being
An enormous reason for low employee retention numbers is a combination of burnout and a poor work/life balance. Make sure your team isn’t too worn out.
How would you rate your work-life balance, 1 being overwhelmed by work off-hours and 10 being unaffected by work off-hours? (1-10)
How much is the health and well-being of employees supported in this company? (1-10)
Do your benefits meet your family’s needs enough? (Y/N)
What recommendations do you have to further boost employee wellbeing? (Open-ended)
How happy are you in this workplace? (1-10)
Name your favorite part about working here. (Open-ended)
Name your least favorite part about working here. (Open-ended)
(For hybrid workforces) Do you feel that remote workers and on-site workers are treated equally and given the same opportunities? (Y/N)
Have you made real friends at work? (Y/N)
What perks would you like to see added to our workplace? (Open-ended)
Onboarding
Organizations with strong onboarding processes have an 82% better new hire employee retention rate. Make sure yours is strong too.
What parts of your onboarding process, if any, weren’t very helpful? (Open-ended)
What parts of your onboarding process were the most helpful? (Open-ended)
Do you think any elements of our training and onboarding could be trimmed? (Open-ended)
Do you think any elements should be added to our training and onboarding? (Open-ended)
How often do you find yourself recalling key items from your onboarding lessons? (1-10)
(If you lack an LMS) Do you think a Learning Management System would improve new hires’ onboarding experiences? (Y/N)
How was your onboarding experience overall? (1-10)
Are you interested in receiving further training/education? (Y/N)
Weekly Pulse
If you’re interested in a recurring survey that lets you “put your finger on the pulse” of your workforce as time goes on, try a weekly (or monthly) pulse survey.
Were you able to achieve your goals this week? (Y/N)
Was there anything that prevented you from doing your best work? (Open-ended)
What was the best part of your week? (Open-ended)
What was the worst part of your week? (Open-ended)
Who was your most helpful teammate/supervisor this week and why? (Open-ended)
What are you looking forward to next week? (Open-ended)
Do you believe we’re headed in the right direction in regards to the projects we’re working on? (Y/N)
Now that you’ve got the pieces to your survey puzzle, where exactly do you put them together? You don’t want to push a strawpoll-style survey out to your team via email, since it won’t give you the data analysis you need and not every team member will complete it. The best way to conduct a survey and truly get the most out of its results is by using employee retention software that hosts a dynamic survey tool right on the platform.
HelloTeam is just the right employee retention software for the job. Our survey tool lets you send out individual or recurring surveys in any format you’d like, including open-ended, sliding scale, and multiple choice. You can even choose between anonymous and named results! To watch HelloTeam’s survey tool (and its countless other performance and engagement features) in action, take a tour here!
You can also book a demo here!