Companies report talent acquisition, retention and reducing job-related stress are among their top business concerns.[1] Many are looking to understand and improve their corporate culture to attract and engage employees. Surveys that collect employee feedback are a part of this process. But what questions should you ask? Here are a few tips for creating surveys that will generate valuable, actionable information.
Borrow Good Ideas
A good first step is to see how others have done it. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has done extensive research and created an excellent survey program. SHRM’s survey focuses on these broad areas of questioning:
- Engagement opinions
- Engagement behaviors
- Conditions for engagement
- Career development
- Relationships with management
- Benefits and salary
- Work environment[2]
SurveyMonkey, a consumer survey service, has partnered with SHRM to create templates (free to view), with pre-set questions[3]. This is an excellent resource if you want to learn from a professional survey without having to pay vendor fees. Look at what questions are asked and how they are asked to generate the best responses.
Get the Most Out of Every Question
Be Strategic – Each question in a survey should generate an actionable response. Asking “Do you like your manager?” does not unveil as much as asking “Does management recognize strong job performance?” and “Do you think communication between senior leaders and employees is good?” The latter offers opportunities for negative feedback.
Avoid Yes/No Questions – Angela Sinickas, an authority on measuring engagement, suggests using survey questions crafted as a statement with a five-point scale to provide more insight by measuring sentiment strength. An example is: “My coworkers and I have a good working relationship,” with a scale from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree.”[4] A disengaged employee may answer “yes” out of loyalty or fear of reprisal. They also might give themselves more permission for honesty if a “neutral” or even “disagree” answer is available.
Be Specific – Questions that are not specific can generate misunderstandings when management when interpreting the responses. Asking “I trust the information I receive from management” might put a manager on the hot seat when the employee was instead conveying frustration with corporate level communication. Instead, use “I trust information I receive from my immediate manager” to clarify the question and results.
