On the Workify blog we recently covered why employee experience management is the heartbeat of your organization. Since it’s crucial to focus on, it’s important we mention an important piece of the management effort—the employee experience survey.
Like we mentioned in the previous post, employees have various touch points during their lifetime at a company. These points are all connected to their overall experience, and each employee is at a different stage. Though it’s important to survey them specifically based on where they are—like onboarding or exiting—you’ll also need to capture their overall employee experience while they’re working for you.
Getting started with an employee experience survey
The first thing to discover when you’re surveying is simple—are employees happy and satisfied while working at your company? And are the experiences they’re having aligned with your employer brand? Employee experience surveys help you spot when your brand and results aren’t in sync, so you can then take action.
We’ve identified six main lifecycle stages that should be your primary focus: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and separation. You should survey at each of these phases— at minimum—but include any others that are relevant to your workers. Once you’re scoring high in satisfaction for all employee groups, you’ll know you’ve successfully taken into account each phase of their lifecycle.
What questions should you ask?
Since your survey is trying to capture the overall employee experience, it’s possible that some questions overlap with other surveys. Even if there’s some overlap, keep in mind that each survey serves a specific purpose. In the case of an employee experience survey, you’re looking for overall, general sentiment over a period of time.
We recommend asking things like:
- Do you feel like the organization is open to change?
- Do you feel like your opinion and perspectives are valued?
- Is there a sense of connection among coworkers?
- Would you recommend that other people join [insert company]?
- What are your thoughts on the company’s culture?
Who needs an employee experience survey?
The short answer is—everyone! Employee engagement programs are proven to have a number of benefits for your company. They’re likely to improve your culture, increase your bottom line, and even impact customer service. Employee experience surveys are an important piece of engagement programs and your surveying strategies.
Once you’ve launched these general employee experience surveys, you can then drill down into more specific categories and topics that relate to your business. (This includes everything from learning and development surveys to how workers are reacting to mergers and acquisitions). There isn’t a one-size fits all approach to employee engagement programs—and every company will need different surveys at different times—but employee experience surveys are a cornerstone of any successful engagement effort.
Ready to get started today?
Get connected with our team of experts today to get your company’s employee engagement program up and running.
We’ll help you identify the survey types that will lead to the most success, let you know what cadences you should be surveying on, and show you how to use our tools and take advantage of our analytics features.