32 Employee Engagement Survey Questions: Examples & Tips

As a leader, you can tell when your employees aren’t the happiest. Often a lack of satisfaction at work can lead to poor productivity, reduced communication, low engagement and effectiveness in executing tasks. When you see a decline in employee performance, it’s time to investigate why this might be happening. While it may seem like a quick fix to simply ask employees directly what’s going on, this approach isn’t effective with everyone and could intimidate certain individuals. 

A more comfortable way to gain some honest and transparent insight as to why employees may be feeling disengaged at work is to employ a company survey and use employee engagement survey questions to get the answers that you’re looking for. This is going to help you, your human resources team and other managers in retaining talent, gaining valuable feedback and sustaining a healthy company culture. 

• What is employee engagement? 
• Using surveys to measure employee engagement
• 32 Employee engagement survey questions
• Parting advice

What is employee engagement? 

Employee engagement refers to how much an individual feels akin or connected with their team and the organization as a whole. If an employee feels engaged, they tend to possess similar values that are embedded in the company culture, which helps them feel a sense of belonging within the group. 

Employee engagement results in team members feeling motivated and excited by their work, feeling keen to keep learning and take on new challenges. The level of employee engagement in an organization tends to reflect employees’ levels of satisfaction at work, which largely depends on management practices and the way in which leadership and managers operate.

Why use surveys to measure employee engagement?

Employee engagement surveys are an optimal way to measure employee engagement for a few reasons. First, this is an opportunity for employees to be transparent with the way they are feeling, without a formal confrontation. Because most employee engagement surveys are organized on a Likert scale (I.e., from strongly disagree- strongly agree), this means individuals don’t need to be too explicit with their responses and are more likely to be more honest. Employee engagement survey questions also accumulate data, which can be quantified and analysed. 

Rather than taking down the comments and individual feelings of employees, you can base your engagement strategy on the meaningful numbers that your employees are producing. Because of this numeric advantage, you can also track your progress and modify your strategy over time, based on employee feedback, so that you’re addressing the most important issues and concerns. 

It all starts with asking for feedback and Fellow makes it easy to do that!

32 Employee engagement survey questions

There are several different ways to create an employee engagement survey. Of course, you can construct one yourself (as this article will teach you to do), or you can use a business that creates this for you. Whatever your decision, we want to ensure you know what kinds of questions you should look to include in your employee engagement survey, in terms of what is most effective in gaining valuable responses from your team members. Check out the types of employee engagement survey questions that should be included in your survey, to gain transparent feedback from your team members and trust.

1 Employee satisfaction questions

As we previously mentioned, a lack of employee engagement tends to emerge due to employee dissatisfaction at work. For that reason, it’s key that you ensure to include employee engagement survey questions that capture how happy and how fulfilled individuals feel at work. Employee satisfaction inquiries will help you get to the bottom of the problem the fastest. In fact typically, the responses will give you the answers you’re looking for. Check out these examples that you can ask your team: 

• How do you feel about work today?

• Would you recommend [organization] to your friends as an employer?
• Do you feel excited about coming to work?
• Are you proud of working for [organization]?
• Are you satisfied with your current compensation and benefits?
• Do you enjoy working with your team?
• How can we help improve your engagement at work?
• Is there anything else you would like to share that you find important to your employee experience here at [organization]?

2 Team alignment and culture questions

Questions centered around team alignment and culture are useful for uncovering how connected individuals feel to the group and to the company as a whole. These questions seek to understand if employees feel that their ideas, visions and opinions are accepted by the wider group. It also tends to uncover if individuals feel as if their values are in line with those of their team and of the organization as a whole. Check out these employee engagement survey questions below to understand the level of connectedness your employees feel with the organization: 

• Do you find your work for [organization] meaningful?
• Does [organization]’s vision and values inspire you?
• Do others provide you with recognition for your accomplishments at work?
• Do you feel like your supervisor is invested in your success?
• Does [organization]’s culture foster a comfortable, supportive work environment?
• Are there any problems with our culture?
• Is leadership invested in and contributing to your culture initiatives?

3 Employee retention questions

Asking retention questions in your employee engagement survey is essential to shedding light on how to keep and attract top talent. This will be hugely indicative especially for your human resources team to modify or strategize the way in which you recruit employees, what kinds of perks and benefits you offer, what kinds of pay raises and opportunities for advancement exist. Consider asking the questions below to uncover how well you’re retaining top talent: 

• Do you see yourself working here in a year?
• Does your work challenge you and aid your development?
• Do you see a path for career advancement at [organization]?
• Do you have the tools needed to maximize your potential here?
• Have you recently thought about leaving [organization]?
• Has anyone at the company asked about and expressed support for your career goals?

4 Leadership assessment questions

Often, a lack of employee engagement can be tied to the way in which leadership is running the work environment. Leaders must take the opportunity to learn and grow from employee engagement surveys. Instead of taking any of the feedback personally, focus on ways in which you can learn, grow and become an even more effective leader in the process. Ask the questions below in order to identify how employees feel about the way in which leadership is viewed:

• “The leaders at [company] keep people informed about what is happening”
• “My manager is a great role model for employees”
• “The leaders at [Company] have communicated a vision that motivates me”

5 Enablement questions

These kinds of employee engagement questions uncover how equipped employees feel to do their job effectively. These questions are also great for understanding if employees feel as if there are opportunities for them to maintain and gain new skills and competencies at work. Enablement has everything to do with the resources available to employees, so this is important in understanding if what you’re offering is holding your employees back from performing their best. Ask the questions below to uncover how enabled your employees feel at work:  

• “I have access to the things I need to do my job well”
• “I have access to the learning and development I need to do my job well”
• “Most of the systems and processes here support us getting our work done effectively”
• I have access to the resources/information I need to do my job well.
• I have enough time to do my job well.

6 Professional development questions

Of course, employees need to have tools and resources at their disposal, but it’s equally important for them to feel as if their career aspirations are supported by their manager and by the organization as a whole. To feel heard, understood and acknowledged is going to have a huge impact on the performance of your employees, because that encouragement will motivate them to do well in their job. The results of these questions are a great resource to modify how you approach performance reviews. Check out the professional development questions below so that you can support your employees in realizing their dreams: 

• “My manager (or someone in management) has shown a genuine interest in my career aspirations”
• “I believe there are good career opportunities for me at this company”
• “This is a great company for me to make a contribution to my development”

Parting advice 

Employing an employee engagement survey is a fantastic way to gain a true understanding about how your employees are feeling at work. Using this feedback is a valuable opportunity to modify the ways in which leadership makes decisions and shapes the company culture. A happy workforce is a productive and effective workforce, meaning that you are more likely to hit organizational goals if your employees feel satisfied, motivated and of course, engaged at work. We hope that these employee engagement survey questions will help to steer you in the right direction as you aim to acquire some feedback from your employees. If you liked this article, make sure to send it to a friend or a colleague. Thanks for stopping by, we’ll see you next time!