6 tips for writing the perfect employee happiness survey
Why is Employee Happiness important?
Simply because happy employees are engaged employees. Engaged employees play a big part in driving the company's financial results. So, keeping your team happy is key to business success.
The employee happiness survey gets more and more important every year. Why is that? More and more companies have understood how important it is to focus and work with their happiness, therefore the competition regarding initiatives for keeping employees happy has increased greatly in the last years.
A DCA national, representative survey of Australian employees that among other topics measured employment conditions, diversity demographics, employee engagement, and well-being, showed that companies that fail to keep up with community expectations about key issues like work-life balance and respectful and inclusive workplaces are at risk of lower productivity and higher staff turnover.
Even if you are focusing on all the above, a lack of culture or company vision can lead to increased staff turnover. The employees today are simply more demanding than before. They require that the company stands up and raises its opinion on topics such as equality and climate change.
With all this said, can you still stand out? Of course you can and we will show you how.
Start with an Employee Happiness Survey
This will give you a great starting point. How are they feeling right now? What are your team's pain points? Don't guess anymore, find out! Is it scary to find out? Yes, maybe but you got to do it, the sooner you find out, the better. You can use a free trial of Happy at Work to get started. You can start an account, send a happiness-at-work questionnaire, collect the answers within 2 weeks, and pay nothing (just make sure to cancel the account after those 2 weeks, then you'll pay €5 per user).
Conduct your survey with the questions you have in mind or that you will get from this article.
6 Tips for Writing the Perfect Employee Happiness Survey
1. Be specific Employees appreciate being asked direct questions about what they like and dislike about their jobs. This makes them more likely to answer honestly. Make sure to ask open-ended questions as well, such as “What do you like most about your job?” and “What do you dislike most about your job?.”
2. Keep it short You don't want the Employees to just click through the survey. Studies have also shown that a long survey leads to low response frequency, more about that here. Keep it short, a maximum of 10 questions, preferably even less.
3. Ask a couple of open-ended questions With open-ended questions, you can get insights that standard rating questions just cannot provide. It is golden to put this kind of question in the end but you can also mix them up to make the survey more variated. The last question in a survey is smart to have as open-ended as it is rounding up the survey in a good way.
4. Report the survey results and your action plan Transparency, transparency, transparency. So many organizations forget about this. Share the results and share it fast. That will create a feedback loop that can create an upward trend in your organization. Also, share the action plan and how you plan to reply to the feedback. This will also have a great impact on the response frequency.
5. Communicate the value and WHY for employees Why are you sending this survey? What value does it give for the employee? Communicate this transparently and directly! It is okay to be very specific. "We want to decrease our staff turnover" or "We want to become a happier workplace" could be good examples of why you are doing this.
6. Send surveys often Last bot not least, send surveys often! That way you can see what progress you are making. As mentioned earlier, keep it short so it doesn't become annoying and be consistent, ask the same questions to see how you improve or decrease in those questions.
Conclusion Happy employees are engaged employees and that is great for your business. Employee Happiness Surveys are an important part of finding out what your employees think about your culture to drive change. Create a short survey, follow up the results fast, share it, and repeat. Make sure to ask the same questions so you can follow your progress. Share the values of the employee and why you are doing this. Remember, you can do it for free, just use our 2-week trial here.
If you have any other questions or would like to create a first free employee happiness survey, book a demo with us and we will make sure to help you get going.
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