How to Use an Employee Survey to Measure Employee Engagement

If you’ve been keeping up with the CiVS blog — you’ll be no stranger to employee engagement. We’ve talked about its importance in our discussion of employee burnout, supporting remote workers and survey benefits. Now, we are going to cover how to successfully measure it. Though, before we dive into that, let’s cover why we should measure employee engagement.

Why measure employee engagement?

Disengaged employees are less likely to work hard, feel motivated, or meet their role expectations. They cause 60% more errors and defects in work performance compared to their engaged co-workers. A Deloitte joint study of 1,500 respondents estimated that the cost of disengaged employees to companies was between $450 and $550 billion a year in lost revenue and employee turnover.

Measuring employee engagement can liberate HR teams to make meaningful actions in key sectors and develop strategies to save costs in the long run. By measuring engagement companies can begin to act before major problems begin to develop and maintain a strong work culture. The use of survey tools to help achieve this can find key trends in the data to create meaningful insights and detect areas of improvement. Furthermore, reaching out to check in on employees is a key step in preventing external feedback of the company. Where employees may take to social media, or complain to friends about the company, tarnishing it’s name and value.

How to measure employee engagement

Here at CiVS we’ve been thinking about some of our top survey questions when it comes to measuring employee engagement. Surveys are a good way to measure employee engagement as they offer an unbiased perspective on engagement in a company. Unlike other forms of communication such as HR complaints or reports, surveys collect the opinions of multiple individuals with both strong and weak engagement. Surveys allow companies to collect opinions across all employees rather than just those who are dissatisfied, which is an essential element in detecting growing problems in early stages.

The below questions can fit into a variety of question types. In a CiVS survey we offer 13 different question types (read more about that: here). The below questions are best fitted to a likert question type which can range from a 1-10 slider, images, or a star rating.

• On a scale of 1-10 how strongly do you relate to the following statement: I am absorbed in the work I do.
• On a scale of 1-10 how strongly do you relate to the following statement: I feel energized when I am working.
• Do you feel excited about coming to work?
• Are you proud of working for [organization]?
• Do you find your work for [organization] meaningful?

Executing your perfect survey

By working consultatively with your team CiVS can help you build your perfect survey. Our employee surveys can assist in a range of areas from engagement to retention and employee satisfaction. Each survey comes with a detailed report which outlines the valuable insights your company gained without any of the clutter. If you have any questions about survey structure, set up or process feel free to contact the CiVS team at info@civs.com.au or give us a call at (08) 6314 0580.