Employ engagement is a crucial factor that contributes to the success of any establishment. It impacts productivity, satisfaction, and even the ability to achieve a common goal relating to business performance. But how do you know your employees are being engaged?

The best way to know if your workers are engaged is to assess their engagement level constantly. This will enable you to note the areas where engagement becomes a problem and improve them. 

One effective way to assess engagement and get feedback is to conduct an employee engagement survey. However, it is not the survey that offers insight into employee engagement but the questions you ask. To help you, here are some high-quality employee engagement questions to ask in your next survey.

Importance of Engaged Employees

According to a study, companies with engaged employees have 21% higher profitability than those without.

Engaged employees fuel a company. These employees set a positive culture that represents you among customers, stakeholders, and even competition. They also play a significant role in the amount of revenue that a company rakes in.

An engaged employee is enthusiastic about their work and takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests. They display positive behaviors toward their work, the organization, and its values. In contrast, a disengaged employee half-heartedly performs roles at work, performing the barest minimum to get by at work.

In this instance, it is easy to wonder why employee engagement is important. After all, both engaged and disengaged employees get their jobs done.

While true, one gets the job done, and the other does it properly. When offering benefits, engaged employees are more beneficial to their teams and the company they work for. Some of these benefits include:

• Employee Retention: Employee disengagement is one of the many factors that contribute to high employee turnover. Without adequate job satisfaction and an interest in their position, employees are more likely to leave a job. However, engaged workers are more likely to be motivated and remain committed to their jobs and the company. In companies like this one, high employee turnover rates are not a problem. This not only helps the establishment enjoy a close relationship with employees but also enables them to save up to more than $4000 in recruiting costs.
• Employee Productivity: Employees who are engaged at work are more likely to have above-average productivity. Engagement breeds productivity, gearing employees to cross milestones, achieve common goals, and spearhead their company’s success.
• Increased Profitability: As previously mentioned, an establishment with engaged employees has higher profitability than one with disengaged employees. The more engaged employees are, the more productive they are and the more revenue the establishment makes from this productivity.
• Less Burnout: Stress and burnout are rep challenges many employees face in the business world today. In a Deloitte survey, 77% of respondents said they were experiencing burnout. Burnout is a problem that plagues many establishments in the business world. It drains employee motivation, makes them less productive, and causes their performance to suffer. This affects their confidence level, reduces loyalty, and creates a lackluster company culture. Less engagement leads to stress over the work that needs to be completed. This, in turn, leads to even more stress as employees struggle to meet milestones. By being engaged, employees can avoid burnout and stress.
• Increased Collaboration: Engagement breeds employee loyalty. This, in turn, makes it easier for employees to collaborate among themselves, making teamwork easier.

While all these benefits are great, it is important to note that not all employees within an establishment will have the same level of engagement. Some employees are going to be very engaged at work, and some are not going to be as engaged as their peers. The discrepancies and disparities in engagement levels are usually due to various factors that affect every employee uniquely. 

So, how do you measure every employee’s engagement level to determine how best to address pain points and improve engagement? The short answer is to organize an employee engagement survey.

Why Is An Employee Engagement Survey Important?

Employee engagement surveys are questions asked to measure your employees’ commitment, motivation, and passion for their roles and your company. It offers insight into which areas of a business are positively influencing employee engagement and which areas need to be improved.

Using a survey to gauge employee engagement opens the floor for honest feedback between employers and their staff. HR managers can use it to determine the engagement level of every employee, and also used by team leaders to determine areas where team members need support. More importantly, it strengthens direct communication between employees and team leaders, enabling workers to communicate their concerns and letting leaders work on them.

With employee engagement survey results, employers can make informed decisions to improve employee engagement and satisfaction at work. This will not only make it easier to attract and retain top-performing employees at work but also help average employees to perform better at their duties.

Some importance of employee engagement surveys include:

• Help Employees Be Vocal

Employee engagement surveys are one of the few ways employees can share honest feedback about their experience with your company. These surveys give employees an avenue for open feedback not controlled by coercion or intimidation. They establish an opportunity for employees to be directly invested in developing their experience and that of their colleagues in the company. They also help employees feel like their opinions can be valued when these opinions are not only heard but also acted upon.

• Measure Employee Engagement

This primary benefit of employee engagement surveys is also undoubtedly one of the most important benefits of the process. Employee engagement surveys give an establishment insight into how engaged its employees are by measuring the key drivers of engagement and the major obstacles to engagement within the organization. By doing so, establishments can assess their employees to determine if it is majorly engaged or disengaged workforce while determining the best way to effect positive changes in employee engagement levels.

• Increase Employee Engagement

Another core importance of employee engagement surveys is that it allows establishments to improve employee engagement. By using questions to assess factors that affect employee engagement, such as advancement, employee recognition, pay, benefits, job responsibilities, training & development opportunities, leadership, and work environment, establishments can unveil problem areas and also ask employees what they think the best solution to these problems will be. Essentially, the information obtained from this process will help the establishment identify action areas across all levels of the business. By addressing and working on the pain points affecting employee engagement, businesses can improve and increase engagement, thereby improving productivity and profit in the long run.

• Organizational Growth

Employee engagement surveys are the perfect opportunities to implement organizational growth. By analyzing responses and providing solutions to the pain points discovered, an organization can increase engagement across all its departments. This will implement organizational growth as engagement will be put at the forefront of the organization’s needs.

Top Employee Engagement Survey Questions

When conducting an employee engagement survey, it is not the act that generates tangible solutions but the questions asked. Without the proper questions in the survey, the effect of the survey will be lost and defeated.

Asking the right questions is crucial to a successful employee engagement survey. These questions need to reflect your organization’s needs and explore all areas – or at least the important areas- that need to be addressed in your company.

Most importantly, these questions should encourage employees to leave honest feedback. They should be conversation-starters that do not intimidate employees. Some questions you can include in your survey are:

1. Satisfaction Questions

Satisfaction questions are a great way to gauge how satisfied an employee is with working in your establishment. It gauges employee contentedness and happiness in their role. Are they eager to come to work? Are they satisfied with their current responsibilities? With satisfaction-based questions, you can gauge employee happiness and uncover limitations that make it difficult for them to be satisfied with their jobs.

• How Do You Feel About Work Today?: With this question, organizations can show employees that they value their opinions. It shows the workers that the establishment cares about how they feel about work while also allowing them to be honest about their current disposition toward work. 
• Do You Feel Excited About Coming To Work?: This conversation-started will give establishments an avenue to dig deep into employee excitement levels while also uncovering possible problems that make employees dread coming to work.
• Are You Proud About Working Here?: This question focuses on the employee’s achievements while working with your establishment. Are they happy to represent your brand? If they aren’t, this question will unveil the problem and help the establishment tackle it.
• Do You Enjoy Working With Your Team?: When team members feel valued and can communicate with their team members, they usually feel satisfied working with their team. This question is a great way to measure team cohesion while also using the opportunity to resolve any problem they may have.
• Are You Satisfied With Your Current Compensation & Benefits?: Compensation plays a crucial role in employee satisfaction. If employees are unsatisfied with their benefits and salaries, they will be dissatisfied with their work and may suffer disengagement.
• How Likely Are You To Recommend The Establishment As An Employer To Your Friends?: As with questions such as “How likely are you to nominate the company as one of the best places to work” this question offers insight into how happy an employee is with their current job.

2. Communication Questions

Communication barriers cause engagement to deteriorate in an establishment. Using an employee engagement survey to fix the situation and sustain good communication, some questions you can ask include:

• Are You Comfortable Contributing Ideas And Opinions At Work?: This provides an easy way to measure psychological safety.
• Do You Feel Comfortable Asking For Help?: This makes it easier to know how the lack of certain skills and the inability to ask for help affects an employee’s engagement.
• Do You Feel Comfortable Giving Your Supervisor Feedback?: This is a great way to gauge how open the doors of communication between workers and their bosses are.
• Do You Think Your Manager Values Your Opinion?: This question makes it easier to measure how an employee’s inability (or ability) to contribute at their workplace affects their engagement.
• Do You Have A Good Working Relationship With Your Colleagues?: A healthy workplace contributes to high engagement. The better the relationship between colleagues, the more productive the employees are.

3. Management and Leadership

The relationship between workers and their managers is integral to their engagement at work. Some questions you can ask to evaluate how management policies, leadership styles, and management performance affects engagement include:

• How Do You View The Approach Taken by Leaders to Reach Company Objectives?: This question helps provides insight into how employees feel about leadership approaches.
• Do You Understand The Goals of the Organization?: Without a proper understanding of what a company’s goals are, it is impossible for an employee to be highly engaged.
• Does Your Manager Care About You As A Person?: This is a great question to gauge how healthy or unhealthy relationships between bosses and subordinates are.
• Do You Feel Aligned With The Company Goals?: Differences in values and goals may be under employee engagement. Uncovering the problems makes it easier to solve goal disparity and ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Do Colleagues At The Executive Level Contribute To A Positive Work Culture?: This makes it easier for employees to be honest about their relationships with people at the executive level and how these relationships affect engagement.

4. Work Environment

The work environment plays a significant role in employee engagement. It determines how active an employee is and impacts their level of job satisfaction. To understand if your company meets the comfort, design, and mechanization requirements necessary for your employees to be engaged without being burnt out, some questions you can ask include:

• Do You Find The Office Vibe To Be Positive and Motivating?: This helps to find a problem in the office atmosphere, such as hostility and tension.
• How Prominent Is Office Politics In The Work Environment?: Office politics are sometimes problematic to employee engagement, especially if they are not handled healthily. This question helps discover the presence of politics and how it affects employees.
• Do You Think You Have The Basic Amenities Necessary To Work?: The lack of basic amenities makes working difficult for most employees. This question helps to find out the amenities employees lack.
• Does The Organization Provide You With All The Tools Necessary For A Successful Execution Of Your Duties At Work?: Some job roles require special tools. This question helps determine which tools are necessary to keep employees engaged.
• Does The Establishment Promote Diversity And Inclusion?: Diversity and inclusion are necessary to keep employees engaged. This question makes it easier to gauge the diversity and inclusion of the workforce.
• Does Your Organization Operate In A Socially Responsible Manner?: This helps collect employees’ opinions about the manner of the establishment’s operation.
• Do You Think Including AI Tools At Work Will Improve Productivity?: Many establishments use AI tools to boost productivity at work. However, every company is unique, and knowing your employees’ preferences will help your establishment know if AI will be the best option.

5. Workplace Wellness

Workplace wellness is another factor that plays a crucial role in the engagement level of any organization. For employees to be engaged, their wellness must be a priority for any organization. To know if your organization offers enough health (mental and physical) assistance to keep employees engaged, some questions you can ask include:

• Do You Believe The Business Genuinely Cares About Your Physical and Emotional Health?: This is a conversation starter on how an establishment handles employee wellness.
• Do You Believe An Organization Must Have A Clearly Defined Corporate Wellness Program?: For establishments that do not already have wellness programs, this is a great way to determine if employees find these important.
• Would You Prefer A Station With Healthy Food At Work?: Differences in diets are often restrictive when providing employee snacks. This question enables employees to voice their preferences about different food options (especially healthy foods) at work.
• Do You Believe That The Company’s Wellness And Fitness Programs Are Sufficient?: For companies with a program, this is a great way to know if the program is effective and how it can be improved.
• Would You Be Interested In Participating In Wellness Events And Receiving Updates On Health-related News?

Other Questions You May Include In Your Survey

• Are you given enough recognition?
• Do you receive enough compensation for your contribution to the team’s efforts?
• Do you feel rewarded for your efforts and accomplishments at work?
• Are you frequently given praise for your work by superiors and peers?
• Do you get special treats on occasions like your birthday, your anniversary at work, your professional milestones, etc.?
• Are you satisfied with the current benefits that the company offers, excluding your salary?
• Do you think it is important to implement an Employee Discount Program for employees to be eligible for discounts and special pricing on various products?
• How often do you avail of the benefits given by the company on your purchases?
• Do you have enough time to complete your work properly?
• Do you enjoy your job?
• Are workloads and deadlines a regular source of stress for you?
• Do you typically work from home?
• Do you frequently have to work on the weekends and on holidays?
• Do you believe you’re sacrificing quality time with your friends and family?

Keeping Employees Engaged At Work

Conducting employee engagement surveys is a crucial step towards improving the overall work environment and increasing employee satisfaction. By asking the right questions, employers can gain valuable insights into their employees’ experiences and identify areas where improvements can be made.