Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time - ENGAGEMENT SURVEYS

Being an employer is hard – employees don’t always do what you want them to, and they often surprise you in ways both good and bad for your business. Generally, an engaged workforce is more productive and easier to manage. There is no-one way to improve engagement within your workplace, however there are tools that can take you down the right path for your business. The first such tool is an Engagement Survey.

Part 1 – Engagement Surveys

An engagement survey is a survey distributed to current employees and includes questions about their experience within the workplace. An engagement survey is a useful way to gather insight into what your employees think about your business and what is important to them. A well-run survey achieves the following:

1. Identifies what employees think you are doing right and wrong
   Some employees will always tell you what they think you are doing wrong, some may only tell you when things have gotten out of hand. Rarely will employees tell you what you are doing right, and what you are doing right is often the reason why they stay. If there is a disconnect between what you think you are doing right and what employees think, knowing this also is important.

2. Gives you a direction
   Once you know how employees are thinking, you can focus on what needs to change and what needs to stay the same, to improve employee engagement. This prevents you from focusing on areas of lower priority and getting the most from your improvement efforts.

3. Gives employees a voice.
   The act of running this type of survey directly improves engagement as it shows employees that you are interested in their thoughts. Once you know their thoughts however, there is an expectation that you will do something positive with them.
4. Gives you a benchmark
   If you want to know how things at your workplace have changed over time, such as the effects of certain business initiatives, changes in management, or the removal of toxic employees, you need benchmarks. An engagement survey, when written correctly, does not need to change between years, providing you with an easily comparable snapshots of employee sentiment over time.

As part of QTA’s commitment to the road freight industry, we have developed a free engagement survey template for members.  The survey is developed to achieve the goals identified above, by focusing on questions that elicit meaningful responses. The survey includes a range of question types that improve the likelihood that employees complete the survey, including closed ‘yes-no’ questions and free comment fields, that they can choose not to answer. Example questions include:

·         In the last year, have you considered leaving [Company]?

·         Is your manager/supervisor fair and reasonable in the way they treat you?

·         Do you understand what is expected of you to do your job well?

The survey can be easily set-up in an online survey tool, such as Survey Monkey. As an additional fee-for-service, the QTA can set-up the confidential survey and/or prepare reports to review and analyse the results.

If you would like a copy of the free engagement survey template, or if you have any questions about engagement surveys, please contact Ezra Pyers, QTA Employment Relations Manager at ezra@qta.com.au | 07 3394 4388

Special thanks to TWUSUPER for sponsoring this series