A study by Gallup suggests that highly engaged teams are 21% more productive than teams with low engagement. A widely accepted fact, this pushes organizations towards having an engaged workforce. But quite often, despite the efforts, organizations are unable to engage their employees. Which is why, employee engagement surveys become crucial.

Understanding your employees better and how they would be motivated and aligned towards company’s goals is what every company needs. So establishing a framework to get all this information will make your employee engagement survey more effective. Here are some tips to do the same:

Educate Your Employees

Before asking your employees to take the survey, it is always advisable to first educate them about it. Why is it important? What it means to the company? What is in it for them? And rather than simply saying these words, it is better to show them in quantifiable terms how this has helped your organization achieve a goal.

The employees should know that their opinion matters. Market the survey well in advance and let your employees know that their ideas and opinions will be valued and incorporated without any biases for the betterment of the organization.

Deploying the ‘herd philosophy’ can also be an effective method as more socially active employees could take the survey first and then influence others to follow suit. One thing to keep in mind however is that the survey should be done out of free will of employees. Rather than having someone force them, influencing and motivating them to do the same would yield more transparent results.

Boost Participation Rates

For a survey to be effective, it is important that more employees participate in it. The best way to boost participation is to organize surveys more frequently, and ask different kinds of questions to employees. Increasing the frequency of surveys will help you can get an accurate assessment of employees in real-time, and also show you a larger picture free of biases.

Another thing to keep in mind is the kind of questions asked. Rather than leading the questions towards a particular direction, allow a more neutral response. The best practice would be to provide open-ended questions. Questions designed to judge the behavioural outcomes of the employees would either force them to be biased or completely remove their interest from such surveys.

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Redesign Your Survey Process

While taking employee surveys, it is very important that you design your survey process to suit your employees’ convenience. Personal one-to-one sessions, written survey forms, or an online platform - whatever it is, must by and large suit their requirements.

Virtual platforms have emerged as most effective in this criteria owing to the flexibility they provide in terms of time and accessibility of the responders, and data analysis for survey organizers. Methods like onboarding, stair interviews and even office jam sessions can be combined with virtual platforms for employees to add their inputs.

In terms of the questions that are asked, make sure they are:

• open ended, allowing the employees to express their ideas and feedback freely
• broken into smaller fragments rather than large questions that take too much of their time and effort
• multiple choice questions wherever possible
• and, questions not leading towards a pre-defined assumption

Also, following up your employees with their response and demonstrating how it helped the organization figure issues unknown to them, could be a visible proof that their opinions are appreciated. This will further encourage more employees to participate the next time.

Make Your Surveys More Effective with Tools

Bringing technology to the table and using employee survey management tools could help you conduct surveys more effectively. Common tools like Slack, Trello, 15Five, iDoneThis and Culture Amp can help you keep a close watch on the metrics. They not only help you view engagement, but also enable you to act accordingly if anything of concern comes up.

Use of virtual platforms for the survey would ensure employee convenience, and also make analysing the results much easier. Several tools can be integrated to enhance their experience from the survey.

• A tool like a progress bar while taking the survey adds on to the employee convenience, making the entire ordeal feel less like a chore.
• A dashboard that opens with a statement on the purpose of the survey and number of people who have already taken it can serve as a motivation for the employee
• Integration of tools with a “remind me” feature can enable employees to set a time that would be convenient for them and the tool will remind them to take the survey
• Employee engagement surveys followed by an integrated feedback of the survey form would be beneficial in improving future surveys too

While these are smaller tweaks to the survey experience, you can also leverage tools that offer an integrated employee engagement, where conducting and participating in surveys becomes more simplified and organized. Journyz is one such platform that gives your employees a place to interact with your survey. And it gives HR teams the ability to effectively track the survey campaign, from launch to participation to analysis to final follow-up.

The Survey Follow Up

You have followed the survey process diligently and motivated a larger number of employees to be a part of it. But, now what?

The most important part of making an employee engagement survey effective is the follow-up phase. There is so much data that has been obtained, and the most logical step now is to use that data for better employee engagement in the organization. Evaluate what all is relevant from the results, primarily if there are outliers, make a plan and execute it!

Now while that might not be as easy as it sounds, it is always worth the effort. So with the data that you get, frame goals for the organization to achieve. Break that down into a well-defined timeline and also keep alternatives if one plan to achieve the goal does not work. No matter what you do, ensure that you value your employees’ opinions and use the results to create an atmosphere that is productive for them. Because this is what will make your organization productive as well.