Today only a few can conduct high-quality HR surveys that produce results and change

something in the company for the better. According to Matt Grimshaw, many problems are

associated with employee engagement surveys – from the inability to compose questions to

the lack of understanding of how to analyze the results and what to do with them next.

A traditional employee engagement survey happens once a year and includes all

employees. Writing good engagement survey questions helps better understand employees’

desires and dissatisfaction. By implementing changes coming out of the engagement survey,

you will decrease the employee turnover rate, increase engagement, and make their work

more efficient.

We have collected all the most frequent mistakes when writing an employee engagement

survey.

How to write engagement survey questions

You can conduct an employee engagement survey via chatbot, Google Forms, or offline.

Before conducting employee engagement surveys, reread this article to save yourself from

unpleasant situations and redoing your work.

Don’t write many terms that are incomprehensible to employees in survey questions

Onboarding, offboarding, eNPS – these are things that you understand as an HR person, but

some of your colleagues do not. And they don’t need to know these terms. They discourage

and create a situation where a person chooses a random answer because they don’t

understand the question.

Write questions in simple terms

It is better to replace all professional terms with familiar words and phrases for the general

mass of employees. It’s okay if the questions seem too simple in wording. It’s better because

it’s more apparent in meaning, which increases the chances of getting honest answers rather

than ones that are put at random.

Don’t write a too long or too short survey

When a person has not conducted employee engagement surveys before or has not been

actively participating in them, it is difficult to immediately develop a quality employee

engagement survey and understand its optimal volume. In this matter, it is important not to

forget the purpose of the employee engagement survey and always focus on what you want

to end up with and what parameters to investigate. Otherwise, you may encounter problems

with the structure, which will further confuse the survey participants. Or you may encounter

problems with the volume (it will either fail to assess the situation objectively and efficiently

or be too large and not interesting for the employees).

Not everyone will want to fill out an employee engagement survey with 30+ questions. But

even a survey of 5 questions may not satisfy the purpose for which it is being conducted. If

you need help with formatting your surveys, you can always turn to the help of a qualified

Essay Writer and your content will be proofread and formatted in the proper way.

Write no more than ten questions

You need to break down the drivers of employee engagement into groups and research

them. This will allow each category of factors to be studied in more detail, adhere to the

normal volume of the engagement survey, process the results faster, and think through a

strategy to change the situation.

The optimal number of questions in the personnel engagement survey is up to 10. The ideal

time to complete the engagement survey is up to 5 minutes. If longer – participants lose

concentration and desire to hurry up to pass the survey or not to pass it next time.

Don’t write bias and manipulation in the survey question

Employee engagement surveys are a case where the personal opinion of each employee,

based on their experience, is important, even if that was not entirely successful. The last

thing to do is to try to influence that opinion through biased question wording, where you’re

already trying to motivate the person to respond in a certain way.

Examples of such questions are:

• Does our company have a great corporate culture?
• Isn’t it great when your request is answered within an hour rather than a day?
• Are you happy when the company wants to improve your working life, for example, by answering surveys like this?

It’s hard not to answer these leading questions in the affirmative. It seems that this case will

require a serious argument or explanation when you do not want to provide them.

Write neutral questions

When formulating questions, it is important to forget about the emotional component and

remember that the purpose of the employee engagement survey is to get employees’ honest

opinions to understand the real situation with the level of staff satisfaction. So remove all

bias, and make neutral questions like these:

• How would you rate the managerial qualities of your immediate supervisor?
• Do you have an opportunity to grow within your organization?
• Do you understand the long-term perspective of your company?

With such questions, you will get the most accurate results.

Don’t write too many open survey questions

It may seem that open-ended questions are an ideal tool to understand the real state of

affairs, but not always. Often, in a hurry, people answer anything just to finish the procedure

faster. On the one hand, this is a plus – you see an uninvolved employee without a detailed

analysis (because an involved employee will ask to reschedule the survey to do it

qualitatively). On the other hand, it makes it challenging to work through the results. And

some use such a tool to write a long, honest complaint, which allows you to accurately

understand the mood and personal feelings of the employee and prevent them from leaving.

In the case of satisfied employees, open-ended questions work well and can really help

correct some shortcomings. Just don’t forget that analyzing such answers is harder and

longer. You will have to collect analytics in one file yourself.

Write a few open-ended questions

Try to reduce the number of open questions. Try to keep this ratio of 1 open-ended question

to 7 closed-ended questions. And before you do the survey, think about whether you will

have enough time to analyze these responses, evaluate them, and consider them when

forming an action plan.

Another idea is to allow participants to share their impressions, complaints, or wishes at the

end of the survey as an open-ended question.

Don`t write double survey questions

In employee engagement surveys, this error is becoming less common, but it is there. Its

essence is that they ask two different parameters in one question. For example:

• How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with salary payments and your current job? (An employee may be satisfied with the salary but not happy with the place of work)
• Do you like the office space, organization, and working conditions? (the participant may only like the office space but will have questions and dissatisfaction with the working conditions)
• How do you assess the level of development of the corporate culture and motivation system? (But what if the company is doing well with the benefits system but not so well with the corporate culture? How do you answer then?)

The participant is made nervous, as it seems he is the only one who does not know which

part of the question to answer. In the end, he chooses something, and in the best case, he

leaves comments on his decision (if there is an opportunity for that).

Write simple questions

Even if you feel like the questions are very similar to each other and have the same

message, you don’t need to combine them. It is better to ask two separate, albeit similar,

questions and not make the participants unnecessarily nervous or answer inopportunely

than to work with the wrong results later.

Let’s take the first question in the example. It can be divided into two parts:

• How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your paychecks?
• How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your current job? And there will be no problems, no difficulties.

Conclusion

Employee engagement surveys (and the insights and strategies that come from them) can

hugely impact a company’s success. A proper engagement survey questions help you:

• Comprehend where your business excels
• Shed light on where you need to enhance
• Give every employee a voice
• Help connect the dots between employee engagement and your bottom line
• Build employee trust
• Compare and contrast among different employee groups
• Drive influential action and smarter people’s decisions
• Capture feedback that helps you navigate change
• Assist you to cultivate a competitive and engaging firm culture

The quality of the employee engagement survey depends on the quality of the questions.

Improve your employee engagement survey questions to gain more insights and enhance

employee engagement!

BIO:

Eliza Medley is an experienced writer and psychologist. She is actively interested in anagement,

new technologies, and writing motivational articles. She also loves catching up on modern trends. She inspires people to learn new things and reach new heights with her work.