“Do you receive enough recognition?”
“Does your manager care about you as a person?”
“Do you have a best friend at work?”
Sentiment-based questions such as these are common on the formal annual or
bi-annual surveys that organizations use to gauge employee engagement, and
the responses reveal some of what employees feel about their jobs and
workplace. Such questions aren’t especially effective, however, at
determining whether employees feel motivated to put energy and effort into
their work beyond the minimum level required—and to what degree, therefore,
they will be productive.
Many organizations are exploring new ways, such as pulse surveys and
real-time analytics, to measure employee engagement, but most—74 percent in
2019—plan to keep using formal, large-scale surveys to gauge employee
engagement.
Insights gleaned from these surveys are especially crucial as
trends in business and technology
continue to change the way employees work—
where, when, why and with whom
. And 80 percent of senior leaders believe good employee engagement is an
important part of achieving business objectives.
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When organizations do conduct traditional surveys, the problem is that
managers at all levels—from senior executives to regional product
managers—have grown so accustomed to the status quo that they don’t
question whether or not the survey data provides insight into business
outcomes. The key is to ask the right questions.
Focus on performance drivers
It’s important to focus the survey on questions that help organizations
improve employee performance. “Companies should focus their employee
engagement surveys on specific drivers of performance,” says Iliyana
Hadjistoyanova, senior principal, research at Gartner.
These three employee performance drivers are key, and can be tested with
employee engagement surveys:
1. Understanding of and connection to company goals. To succeed in their
jobs, employees have to understand how they fit into the organization. It
is crucial that survey results show whether employees understand their
firm’s goals and the link between their own work and the organization’s
strategic objectives. Questions should also reveal whether employees try to
get their job done “despite the strategy” or in a way that intentionally
contributes to strategic goals.
2. Commitment to co-workers. High-performing employees learn from and teach
each other. The changing and ever more global work environment means
employees must be as comfortable working with someone on another continent
as they are with the person in the cube or office next to them. Survey
questions should help you understand whether employees are part of
multidisciplinary, collaborative teams that help them complete their best
work and whether they and the teams they work with have the complementary
competencies, values and working styles needed for strong team and
individual performance.
3. The right capabilities. Capability—which consists of an employee’s
comprehension, agility, network, direction and expectations—is especially
important to measure during periods of significant change. Survey questions
should check whether employees are aware of and confident enough to make
use of the tools, information and people that can help them navigate
change.
Top nine survey questions
Ask these questions to uncover the kind of meaningful engagement that can
improve employee performance:
1. Do you understand the strategic goals of the broader organization?
2. Do you know what you should do to help the company meet its goals and
objectives?
3. Can you see a clear link between your work and the company’s goals and
objectives?
4. Are you proud to be a member of your team?
5. Does your team inspire you to do your best work?
6. Does your team help you to complete your work?
7. Do you have the appropriate amount of information to make correct
decisions about your work?
8. Do you have a good understanding of informal structures and processes at
the organization?
9. When something unexpected comes up in your work, do you usually know who
to ask for help?
A version of this post first appeared on the
Gartner blog
.