Reimagining employee surveys to make people feel heard and deliver business value

Australian workers are feeling disengaged. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, four in five Aussie workers feel disconnected and detached from their work.

Additionally, UKG found that only 22 per cent of employees are energised at work and are keen to consistently go above and beyond.

How can you figure out if your employees are not engaged?

Employee engagement surveys are a valuable source of information for every organisation. They’re an opportunity to get a sense of how people are feeling and a powerful way of driving cultural change.

However, many organisations still run annual surveys that take too long time to complete and then spend months analysing the data before communicating what action, if any, will be taken as a result of the findings.

Even with the best intentions, the months that often pass between asking the questions and acting on the responses leave many employees with the sense that their employer isn’t listening or, worse still, that they simply don’t care.

If you’re ready to reimagine employee engagement surveys so that they drive greater engagement and deliver more valuable insights, there are four aspects I’d encourage you to focus on:

1. Increase the frequency: It’s not good enough to claim that you’re listening to employees because you ask them to complete a staff survey every year or every six months. Market conditions, business priorities, and employee needs can change quickly, so you should be getting a sense of how they’re feeling and seeking their opinions every month, or better still, every week.
2. Keep it simple: Another problem with infrequent surveys is that they’re too long. People don’t have the time or the inclination to take 20–30 minutes out of their day to answer a seemingly endless list of questions about every aspect of your company culture. Consider asking no more than five questions in a monthly survey, and as few as one question if you’re going to seek feedback every week.
3. Ask relevant questions: If you’re only going to ask a small number of questions, it’s worth spending a little longer on getting them right. Don’t waste people’s time with questions that gather data for the sake of it. Instead, stay focused on asking questions that will deliver actionable insights. And don’t be afraid to ask the most important questions once every quarter to build a picture of how sentiment is changing over time.
4. Act on feedback: Failing to act on what you’ve heard in a timely manner is even worse than not asking employees to share their opinions in the first place. And yet we’ve all worked for organisations where they conduct an annual survey, share the findings in a branded deck, and then never make any changes to reflect what they’ve heard, or quietly make changes without effectively communicating them. Don’t fall into that trap.

Employee surveys are a valuable asset in the HR toolbox. Done well, they can improve levels of engagement and help increase retention rates because people feel more invested in your organisation’s goals and strategies.

But long, generic or irrelevant surveys are likely doing more harm than good, and failing to act on the views that employees share increases the likelihood that they disengage or head for the exits. With people naturally focused on the year ahead as they return to work after the holidays, there’s never been a better time to reimagine your employee engagement surveys.

Alex Catteau is the vice-president of sales Australia and New Zealand at UKG.