Editorial
It seems like every time of year is engagement season, at least if you pay attention to jewelry commercials. Fall? Nothing pairs with a pumpkin spice latte like an engagement ring. Christmas? Perfect time for diamonds under the tree. Valentine’s Day? Self-explanatory. Summer? Time to propose while you’re on a romantic vacation.
But engagement isn’t only about your home life — it’s about work, too. Don’t call HR just yet, because I’m talking about the most important type of engagement when it comes to the workplace: employee engagement.
Of all the performance metrics you can track, employee engagement is often the most revealing. Your profits may be up, and churn may be low, but if you have low employee engagement, you likely have problems looming on the horizon.
So how do you tell when morale is low? You need to ask. Employee engagement surveys are one of the best ways to identify problems and spot issues before they turn into something more serious. So put the engagement ring down, pick up your pumpkin spice latte and let’s get into the importance of employee engagement.
Why You Need to Care About Employee Engagement
People want to work somewhere they feel valued, appreciated and important. The Institute for Employment Studies found that engaged employees are more likely to be invested in their work and are less likely to quit. They perform better at tasks than their disengaged colleagues, feel happier and have a greater sense of attachment to their organization.
Engaged employees have more reason to go to work beyond a paycheck. They’re invested, absorbed and devoted to making life better for their colleagues — and your customers. They’re likely your top performers. They’re the ones who go above and beyond when helping colleagues and customers, the ones who truly live the values of your organization and the ones who you use as an example to other employees.
What makes employees engaged? Surprisingly, it’s not related to how much money they make. (In fact, according to a 2018 study by Access Perks, nearly 60% of Americans would take a job they love over a job they hate, even if the preferred position paid half of what they’d earn at the job they dislike.)
Instead, the key drivers of employee engagement are related to the employee. Do employees feel they have a path for growth? Do they feel their manager cares about them, and is helping them showcase their strengths and build on their weaknesses? Do they feel that their work has a purpose, both in helping the organization’s customers, and in helping achieve the organization’s larger mission?
This means you — or your leadership team — need to do some soul searching. You may know what your mission and vision are, but you may not be consistently promoting them across the organization. Or you may not be helping employees see the part they play in helping the organization achieve them. And if you aren’t measuring and rewarding employees according to how well they live your values, those values are likely just words on a website or a wall somewhere.
Related Article: Is EX the New CX?
Benefits of Employee Engagement Surveys
While every employee at your company is responsible for shaping your company culture, none have the power to shape it as much as senior management. And because employee engagement can be directly tied to business profitability, it’s in your leadership team’s best interest to make employee experience a priority.
It can be humbling, but the best way to put the focus squarely on employee engagement is by sending an annual or biannual employee engagement survey. It’s easy to say “oh, our employees are happy,” but until you read employees’ feedback in their words, until you sit down and discuss it as a management team, you aren’t truly going to face the issues that are stifling employee engagement. Plus, to be honest, not conducting regular employee surveys sends a clear message: you don’t care what your employees have to say.
If you haven’t done consistent employee engagement work, here are a few tips to get started.
- Give your employees a voice. It’s easy to know what needs to be improved, but it’s often hard to get that feedback to the right place. Employee engagement surveys give your team a venue to share their feedback – both positive and negative. When you’re designing your survey, be sure to have a good mix of Likert scale and open-ended questions. You’ll also want to repeat a few key questions on each survey, so you can judge improvement over time.
- Build trust with employees. Taking swift and purposeful action on employee feedback shows your team that you care and are doing your best to make their careers successful and fulfilling. Be sure to continue sharing updates on how initiatives are progressing too. Much like with your customers, you will need to have a multi-pronged communication approach with your employees, from updates in Slack and emails to regular presentations at your all-hands meetings. When employees trust that their feedback is heard, valued and being acted upon, they will be more forthcoming in future surveys.
- Shape company culture. Building your company culture is more than just sending out an annual employee engagement survey and hoping for the best. Listening to employees and acting on their responses sends a powerful message — you’re listening to their feedback and holding yourselves accountable for creating a positive workplace. After all, how can you say you “put people first” if your people don’t even know that’s one of your values?
Employee engagement surveys are valuable even when people don’t participate. According to the People Analytics team at Meta, people who don’t fill out either of their two annual surveys are 2.6 times more likely to leave in the next six months. So, if you see a growing trend of employees who don’t complete engagement surveys, there’s another red flag to watch out for.
Related Article: How Corporate Culture Feeds Into the Bottom Line
Best Practices for Employee Engagement Surveys
Employees want empowering and fulfilling work experience, which in general means they want to help improve your workplace. After all, it’s in their best interest.
If you haven’t sent an employee engagement survey before, don’t try to disguise its purpose. Let employees know exactly what information you’re trying to measure, what changes it could lead to and why it’s important to the business. This will help employees to better understand the purpose of the survey and the value of their responses.
Some other best practices to keep in mind:
- KISS (Keep it Short, Sweetie). Employee surveys should be brief and to the point to avoid boring the respondents or overwhelming them with too much information. Let respondents know how much time it will take to complete the survey before they begin — most employee engagement survey software can estimate this automatically. If you are designing your survey yourself, stick with 8-10 questions.
- Make them anonymous. Employee surveys should be anonymous to encourage honest responses. Keep in mind that even when answers aren’t attributed to specific individuals, it might still be possible to determine somebody’s identity by the answers they give. This can leave some respondents unwilling to share their true feelings.
- Use open-ended questions. Open-ended questions encourage employees to share their opinions and ideas. By allowing respondents to express themselves in their own words, they have the chance to contextualize their answers and provide even more useful insights.
According to Gallup, only 33% of employees in the US fall into the “engaged” category. Companies with the most engagement saw a 10% difference in customer loyalty and engagement — and a 23% difference in profitability — compared to those with the least engagement.
Conference
Sep
16
HR Tech Conference Las Vegas 2025
Register
Conference
Oct
27
Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo Orlando 2025
Register
It’s in all our best interests to make sure employees are engaged by making sure their work leaves them challenged and fulfilled, and they feel supported by their manager. So why not start your employee engagement program with a survey and see exactly where you stand?
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
