Employee experience survey: Top questions to ask

Most of us want our workforce to be happy, engaged, and motivated. But more than just a nice bonus, a positive employee experience is critical to your bottom line. In fact, by prioritising employee experience and effectively engaging your employees, you can boost profitability by as much as 21%.

Sound good? Let’s take a closer look at employee experience and how to measure and make the most out of your employee experience strategy with a well-honed employee experience survey.

What is employee experience?

Employee experience covers all aspects of the employee lifecycle and a worker’s interactions with your organisation. This includes everything from the people in their team, the culture and work environment, their relationships with management, and the technology that they use,

Why is employee experience important?

Employee experience management is important for several reasons. Not just because investing in and caring for your people is a good thing to do, but because it ultimately leads to greater business success.

Here are some benefits you can expect when you prioritise employee experience.

1. Better employee engagement

When employees are engaged they can be as much as 13% more productive.

2. Stronger workplace culture

A strong sense of community and belonging is important for employee satisfaction and retention. As much as 62% of job leavers quit due to toxic company culture, so it’s important to get right.

3. Attracting and retaining talent

Job seekers and current employees value a positive employee experience, including a supportive workplace, an attractive benefits package, and good-quality tech.

4. Enhanced employee well-being

Stress-free and energised workers are far more positive and productive in the workplace. Building a positive employee experience that prioritises well-being is good for people and profits.

How to measure employee experience

When developing an employee experience strategy it’s crucial to establish where you are before you start making changes.

By collecting data and employee insights you can better understand where improvements can be made and where to target your efforts. Some key employee experience metrics include the following.

1. Retention rates

Staff are more likely to stick around when they feel happy and motivated. Low retention rates indicate a negative employee experience.

2. Employee net promoter score (eNPS)

The eNPS captures how likely your workforce is to recommend your organisation as a great place to work. It’s a useful temperature check on how your employees feel about the company.

3. Absenteeism

Teams that are physically and mentally healthy and show up consistently are more productive. Low absenteeism rates indicate a positive employee experience.

4. Employee productivity

Happy employees are more productive and more likely to achieve their goals. Measuring productivity, like progress towards or achieving goals, is a great way to check general happiness at work.

Rather than guessing, capture data and insights that more accurately tell you what you’re getting right and what you need to improve by strategically crafting an employee experience survey.

What is an employee experience survey?

An employee experience survey is designed to measure various qualitative and quantitative employee experience metrics to help senior leaders better understand how happy, satisfied, and engaged the workforce is.

Using the survey results, leaders can develop an employee experience strategy to target improvement areas and track interventions’ success. Typically an employee experience survey is carried out annually.

An employee experience survey is usually created and managed by HR leaders, but senior leaders across the organisation should have input into the survey, encourage team participation, and take responsibility for employee experience management in their respective business areas.

The best employee experience survey questions you should ask

An employee experience survey should be tailored to your people and organisation, but to get you started we’ve created a list of 20 questions that can help you better understand and improve your employee experience.

Employee role

1. How happy do you feel in your current position?
2. How much does the company support you in maintaining a healthy work-life balance?
3. How happy are you with your current salary?
4. Are you happy with the non-financial benefits you receive?

Want to dive deeper into your employee value proposition (EVP)? Consider adding more targeted EVP survey questions.

Leadership and management

1. Do you think your manager handles conflict well?
2. Do you receive regular feedback from your manager?
3. How satisfied are you with the quality of feedback your manager provides?
4. How would you like your manager to recognise your work achievements?
5. How could your manager improve communication?

Culture

1. How likely are you to recommend the organisation as a great place to work?
2. How would you rate employee morale currently?
3. Describe company culture in two or three words.
4. If there was one thing you would change about the company’s culture, what would it be?
5. Do you consider your personal beliefs to align with company values?

Progression, learning and development

1. Do you feel like you can grow within the organisation and see a clear career path for yourself here?
2. Do you feel supported in your learning and development journey by your manager?
3. Have you been able to take part in training, courses, or other development activities that you wanted to do this quarter/year?

Service and processes

1. Do you have the right tools and tech to do your job properly?
2. How would you rate the customer service the company currently provides?
3. What one thing could make your job easier?

Benefits of employee experience surveys

Used well, surveys can be an incredibly effective way of gaining invaluable insights into your employee experience. Other key benefits of conducting employee experience surveys include:

• Making your employees feel heard and valued by asking for their input and opinions
• Being able to target improvements where they’re needed. For example, if staff feel a good work-life balance isn’t encouraged, you can devise a specific plan to tackle this issue
• Having a way to measure key metrics that can be applied across all teams, departments, and locations to pinpoint successes and where issues might need to be addressed in the entire organisation.

Employee experience survey best practice

As well as making sure you ask the right questions, follow these other hints and tips to make sure you get the most out of your employee experience survey.

• Be clear on the “why?” before you begin. Understand what you want to achieve with the survey and what you’ll do with the results.
• If you want people to participate it’s important to communicate with your workforce and explain the purpose of the survey, what you’ll do with the results, how long it should take, and the deadline for completion while reassuring them that answers are anonymous.
• Avoid survey fatigue by keeping the survey short (10 – 15 minutes) and not overdoing the frequency of conducting them.
• Share the results and create an action plan you can discuss with your teams to show that you’re listening and value their input.

Summary

Every company is unique, so what makes your employee experience exceptional will depend on various factors including the size of your team, the industry you work in, and what your staff value. Take the guesswork out of improving your employee experience by investing time in well-crafted employee experience surveys.

Want to take it to the next level and make it even more engaging? Why not capitalise on interactive technology like Seenit’s User-Generated Video solution as a more direct and engaging way to conduct an employee experience survey.