Employee Engagement Questions You Should Ask

Employee engagement is a top priority for HR and business leaders tasked with retaining employees, reducing turnover and driving productivity. This is for good reason, as Gallup reported that only 34% of employees are engaged, leaving nearly two thirds either not engaged or actively disengaged.

Improving employee engagement doesn’t need to be a complicated puzzle to solve. The best way to figure out what your employees need? Just ask them.

Clear questions that employees can respond to anonymously get honest feedback. Using this honest feedback in your people strategy is the quickest way to implement improvements that your workforce want. That’s why we offer quick pulse questioning in our platform Stribe.

Not only that, but employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.

What does employee engagement mean?

Employee engagement is a combination of an employee’s behaviour, attitude and emotion towards their employer. Researchers have found that engaged employees who identify as engaged with their work go above and beyond what is expected of them.

IES asked HR professionals what they understood or meant when they used the term ‘engagement’. They defined engagement as:

– belief in the organisation

– desire to work to make things better

– understanding of business context and the ‘bigger picture’

– respectful of, and helpful to, colleagues

– willingness to ‘go the extra mile’

– keeping up to date with developments in the field.

As we can see, engagement is you helping your employees understand their value. In doing this, you’ll create an environment where employees feel positively about the company and are willing to go the extra mile.

Benefits of employee engagement 

A highly engaged workforce brings clear business benefits and a genuine competitive advantage. In the words of Simon Sinek, “Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order.” 

Sineks’ sentiment is reflected in the engagement profit chain, which lays out the chain reaction that starts when employees are fully engaged:

   Engaged Employees lead to…

      higher service, quality, and productivity, which leads to…

          higher customer satisfaction, which leads to…

              increased sales (from more repeat business and referrals), leading to

                  higher levels of profit, which leads to…

                      higher shareholder returns (i.e., stock price)

Employee engagement is not an abstract idea. It’s a set of clearly identifiable metrics that bring about tangible benefits.

Example employee engagement questions

To ensure you have a robust employee engagement strategy, you need to gather clear data on how engaged your employees are, and what their pain points are.

The below questions are a great way to do this. We recommend allowing your employees to answer anonymously, as this will give you the most honest and worthwhile data.

We have split these questions into several groups that we consider to be the key areas of employee engagement:

– Job satisfaction

– Personal development

– Organisational commitment and trust

– Recognition

Job satisfaction

Employees that feel the work they do matters work harder and feel happier in their role. Therefore, to gather data on job satisfaction, questions should be on how people feel about their day to day work. As well as this, find out how much they feel their work impact’s the company’s success.

– “Are your ideas considered?”

– “Does your work challenge you and stretch you to improve?”

– “Do you feel that you positively impact [company] growth?”

Personal development

Employers can help their people to grow by working with them to set challenging, motivating goals. To that effect, questions on this gauge whether your people feel they’re moving forward, and you support them to do so.

– “Are you happy with how often you discuss your personal development with your line manager?”

– “Do you have time in your working day to learn?”

– “When did you last learn a new skill at work?

– “Are you happy with the current opportunities for learning and development?”

Organisation commitment and trust

Commitment to an organisation’s goals and values is a fundamental building block in engagement. Trust in an employer equates to confidence, so when an employee feels confident in their organisation, they are free to do their best work.

– “Do you see yourself still working at [company] in two years?”

– “Do you agree with the way we treat our customers?”

– “Would you recommend [company] as a great place to work?”

– “Do you feel that you are told the truth from management at [company]?”

– “What is one thing we could have done internally to improve how last month went?” *

* Top Tip: Unsurprisingly asking specific questions will most likely give you specific responses. Providing you with valuable tips and ideas that you can swiftly incorporate into your strategy.

Recognition

To grow engagement, you need to make people feel that their talents and efforts are being recognised.

– “When was the last time you and your team celebrated a win?”

– “When receiving praise from your line manager do, they give specific acknowledgement of why they think they’ve done a good job?”

– “Is your best work acknowledged?”