What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement refers to how committed and enthusiastic individuals are about their organisation and their own ambitions. In essence, it assesses how driven employees are to go above and beyond for their coworkers and the organisation as a whole, demonstrating their commitment.
Employee engagement, according to many is just about happiness and fulfilment. But it’s a much more expansive concept. You can have a small group of employees that are happy and satisfied at work, but it does not indicate they are working hard or producing results on a daily basis.
Majority of the firms used to regard employee surveys as merely a human-resources-driven project that allowed employees to “blow off steam” while providing little strategic value. As a result, the outcomes were frequently undervalued, preventing any beneficial action from being done.
However, with time they have evolved to become one of the most important tools in bringing about significant changes in the working style of the organizations. Employee surveys are currently considered as a major business improvement tool by many large and small firms, especially with the advent of COVID.
The pandemic brought large scale changes to the workplace and with it many challenges for both employees and organizations. Surveys became one of the more efficient mediums to identify the mindset of the employees as their work-life balance underwent drastic changes due to work shifting online.
Also, with the advent of various omnichannel survey software, it makes the job of creating surveys for organizations easy. It also adds to the convinience of respondents – in this case employees- as they can choose their channel of choice for responding.
Why conduct employee surveys?
Identifying strengths and weaknesses in management performance, as well as organisational policies, processes, and technology, in order to increase operational efficiency, lower costs, and boost employee happiness. Employee surveys should result in significant improvements in a variety of facets of organisational performance, not only HR. Regularly asking input from your staff is one of the simplest methods to build engagement with the workforce.
Give your employees a channel and a chance to express their problems and ideas. Many times, employees have concerns which cannot be voiced directly. Sometimes the issues are sensitive which employees don’t feel comfortable with sharing. Thus surveys where the respondents are kept anonymous can prove to be great tools for the employees to share their opinions and concerns.
Like the employees, it works for the management and administration as well. Sometimes managers find it difficult to freely discuss some issues with their employees or keep an active track of how certain policies are being received by the employees. Thus they also help managers get a sense of how they want to proceed with the company’s improvement.
Thus surveys work in a great manner, allowing managers to gather the pulse of the people working under them and intervene if required.
Direct questions allow you to better understand how your staff is feeling at any given time. You can enhance the likelihood that the feedback you receive is honest, helpful, and productive by employing pulse surveys and asking employees simple questions at any time.
Advantages of Employee Surveys
Improving employee retention, which will lower the expenses of hiring and retraining replacement employees and make your organisation a more appealing place to work.
Improving the working environment, such as sincerely acknowledging employees’ contribution to the company, assisting them in achieving a better work-life balance, or providing a clear path to professional advancement. By lowering employee absenteeism and voluntary turnover, these types of reforms can bring significant and tangible “paybacks.”
Identifying significant drivers and impediments to providing exceptional customer service, as well as obtaining priceless improvement ideas from staff who interact with consumers on a daily basis. Many businesses are unaware that their staff are valuable – and inexpensive! – source of new ideas.
An employee survey that is well-designed can help any organisation by helping them identify what motivates and demotivates their staff. With the help of enterprise survey software, organizations can thus launch surveys to gain significant inisghts into the employees to drive impactful changes.