Complete employee engagement survey guide for 2023

During times of change or disruption, listening to employees and focusing on employee engagement becomes even more vital. It enables leaders to identify trends and concerns, reassures employees that their opinion matters, and shows that you are stepping up to support employees.

In 2023, the cost-of-living crisis and a looming recession are leaving employees feeling anxious and uncertain. This is likely to impact levels of employee engagement. Using employee engagement survey questions to consult people at times like these helps your organisation understand what matters and take swift action. It also shows that you care. Read our 2023 trends report to find 24 survey questions to ask your employees this year.

On the other hand, leaders who choose not to listen to how employees feel risk losing valuable talent. A Microsoft study found that almost half of global employees are considering quitting their jobs post-pandemic and study after study shows that people would consider leaving their job if hybrid working wasn’t on offer.

So, whether you’re new to employee surveys, reviewing your employee voice approach, or wondering how or why to conduct an employee survey in this new world of work, our complete employee engagement survey guide will tell you everything you need. You can also find here some further information on employment engagement survey pricing.

In this guide: 

• How do employee engagement surveys help with engagement?
• Why should you run an employee engagement survey?
• Employee engagement survey business case
• How much does an employee engagement survey cost?
• What questions should you ask in an employee engagement survey?
• Five universal drivers of employee engagement
• 12 employee engagement survey questions to ask
• Types of employee engagement survey: Annual, Pulse or Always On?
• What drives employee engagement in a hybrid workplace?
• Employee engagement survey questions for a hybrid workforce

What is employee engagement?

An anonymous employee engagement survey measures how engaged people are and how they feel about working for your organisation. So, what do we mean by employee engagement and why bother measuring it?

Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to their work, your organisation and its goals. It’s important because engaged employees have an impact on every aspect of your organisation.

Employees feel engaged when they are:

• Clear about their role in the organisation, how they contribute to the organisation’s goals and ultimately, success and that they are valued by their business
• Energised by work, their job fulfils them and they are motivated to do their best
• Happier, healthier and as a result, more effective, and more likely to exhibit discretionary effort, to go the “extra mile”

On the contrary when people don’t feel engaged, they get less done, take more sick leave and look for jobs elsewhere. They can be sceptical about communication ‘from the top’, resist changes and are unlikely to contribute new ideas or improvements.

How do employee engagement surveys help with engagement?

While measuring employee engagement is the endpoint, an employee survey is itself a positive and motivating activity.

If it’s not something you have invested in before, it can take time to embed engagement and culture into the everyday language and behaviour of your colleagues, managers and leaders. Your engagement survey plays a key role in this behavioural shift.

Getting into a cycle of listening, deciding on action and making changes means people can see the impact of their feedback and know that their opinion is valued. This also encourages employees to speak up beyond the engagement survey itself, knowing that leaders will pay attention.

To encourage a culture of listening, support your survey with additional feedback opportunities like:

• Manager 1:1s
• Monthly Lunch and Learns
• Quarterly Town Halls
• Roundtable discussions

Brewin Dolphin have seen the impact of their engagement survey for their wider culture:

“The survey programme has a much more significant impact than just measuring engagement at a particular point in the year. Our people tell me that the reason they engage with the whole area of employee engagement is because they see their feedback actually makes a difference – the organisation acts on it and things change throughout the year as a result.”

Fiona Wallace Head of Organisational Effectiveness, Brewin Dolphin

Why conduct an employee survey?

An employee survey response rate helps you understand your organisation’s overall engagement level, and how you can improve or maintain how engaged people feel.

It is vital so that your organisation can:

1. Listen to involve

Inviting honest feedback might sound intimidating but asking for feedback via an anonymous third-party route is the act of confident leadership and a transparent, inclusive culture. It shows employees that their opinion is valuable and gives them agency.

2. Listen to understand

Diversity & Inclusion is a top priority for organisations and leaders are in one of the best positions to make meaningful change happen. However in order for these changes to have an impact on D&I, we must first understand the current experience for people of different backgrounds and demographics.

3. Listen to adapt

One of the most important consequences of an employee engagement survey is that action is taken as a result. If your employees don’t see that anything has changed as a result of their feedback, it’s worse than not asking in the first place. A good employee survey company will advise you on the best ways to follow up your survey data. For example, People Insight’s employee survey platform suggests actions to resolve challenges which makes post-survey action planning simple.

Employee engagement survey business case

Whichever type of employee engagement survey you choose, your survey outputs will help identify and prioritise changes to improve engagement.

Research has consistently shown that high levels of engagement go together with high business performance. On top of that, engaged employees are healthier, happier and more fulfilled.

In fact, during the upheaval of Covid-19, organisations actually increased employee engagement by listening to their people during the pandemic and acting with compassion and empathy.

Despite this evidence about employee engagement, HR leaders must sometimes still convince people about the value of conducting an employee survey. Find more ideas to support your HR planning in 2023 here.

Business outcomes of employee engagement

How much does an employee engagement survey cost?

Employee engagement survey pricing will vary because every organisation is different. The cost of your survey depends on factors such as the number of employees, the complexity of the situation, and whether you will use a survey framework or a custom questionnaire.

The key difference is whether you want access to a survey platform, so you can build and run unlimited pulse surveys, or whether you want a fully managed programme with more hands-on support, for instance if you are grappling with multiple issues like engagement, culture, and diversity and inclusion.

To get the best, and best priced, employee engagement survey start by asking potential survey partners about the right listening activity for your organisation. For example, you might think your issue requires something complicated, when a fast, ready to go, simply priced survey is just what you need.

Also speak to potential vendors about the features and services they can offer to enhance your survey experience. For instance, you might have an Internal Comms team who can manage your survey communications plan. Or, you might need your survey partner to support with this. Most providers can offer help with survey invites, manager briefings, or post-survey comms in addition to running your survey.

The most important thing about employee survey pricing is to consider which features will be used most by your users and managers, and will add the most value when it comes to analysing your survey results and creating an effective action plan.

What questions should you ask in an employee engagement survey?

An employee survey is one of the best ways to measure engagement. Having the right questions and framework to conduct your survey is vital. Your survey should be based on a robust, scientific model such as the PEARL™ employee engagement model.

The PEARL™ model is the result of an extensive study by psychologists and data scientists who reviewed the latest literature, carried out client research and studied over 20 million data points.

PEARL™ is based on the five universal drivers of employee engagement. These are the parts of the employee experience with the strongest influence on how engaged people feel.

By working on these, you have a good chance of improving your overall engagement level.

Five universal drivers of employee engagement

• Purpose – What does your organisation stand for and where are you going?
• Enablement – Do employees have what they need to do their job well?
• Autonomy – Are you promoting healthy and positive behaviours?
• Reward – Are employee efforts and aspirations being recognised?
• Leadership – Are your leaders supporting and enabling change?

Within the PEARL™ model, these break down to two more specific sub-drivers. Employee engagement surveys typically include 2-4 questions that dig into each of these to give a clear picture of engagement.

Importantly, all PEARL™ survey questions are highly actionable and can be benchmarked against our comprehensive database.

Find out more about how to write survey questions that drive action.

In addition to the core question-set, you can conduct an employee engagement survey with questions that dig into specific areas such as Diversity and Inclusion or employee wellbeing.

12 Employee Engagement Survey Questions

People Insight’s core employee survey question-set contains 35 questions across the 5 PEARL™ themes.

These apply across organisation sizes, types and sectors; our database is full of benchmarking data that compares your employee experience to your peers. Survey questions can also be tailored to suit your organisation or dig into a burning topic. An employee survey consultant can help tailor your questionnaire.

Below is a sample of the survey questions we recommend using.

Results of an engagement survey provide both a quantitative engagement score and rich qualitative feedback full of suggestions.

Open-ended survey questions ask respondents for broader input. For example,

• What is the best thing about working here?
• If you could change one thing about working here, what would that be?

Types of Employee Engagement Survey: Annual, Pulse or Always On?

When deciding to capture feedback from your employees, you might have some questions around which type of employee engagement survey is right for you.

• Should we continue to run an annual survey?
• Is a monthly pulse better suited to our hybrid way of working?
• Should we believe the hype around ‘always on’?

It’s worth noting that introducing a new type of survey doesn’t mean ditching your annual one. Instead, different surveys work hand in hand to help you understand how people feel about different aspects of your organisation.

Comparing Employee Engagement Survey Types

1. Annual or census survey

How often do you run it? Typically once a year.
What does it measure? Overall employee experience and what are the drivers of employee engagement.
Benefits: Gives a deep-dive analysis of how people feel and why – identifies clear areas to change/improve. On top of a core question-set (benchmarked by industry and company size) you can add indices to explore specific areas like wellbeing, diversity and inclusion or hybrid working

2. Pulse survey

How often do you run it? 1-2x a year. There’s no hard and fast rule but you should only survey as fast as you can act.
What does it measure? Pulse surveys are useful for measuring results from a pilot programme, such as a new hybrid working approach, and checking in on progress between annual surveys. They can also be used to measure employee perception of rapid change like a merger or acquisition or change in leadership. During lockdown, for example, organisations ran pulses to measure how effective the transition to remote working had been.
Benefits: Asking for regular feedback is a sign of a transparent and empathetic workplace culture. Since pulse surveys are shorter than annual surveys they reduce the time taken for employees to give their feedback and are a great tool to dig into a specific area.

Employee Pulse Survey Guide: Everything you need to run a pulse

3. Always on employee survey

How often do you run it? Live throughout the year
What does it measure? Provides a channel for people to share ad-hoc suggestions and feedback.
Benefits: Always on surveys can help you spot and respond to trending issues or concerns within your organisation. However, it is important to remember the golden rule of employee surveys – only gather feedback at a pace you can act on. Otherwise, you risk employees becoming resentful and losing trust in the survey process.

What drives employee engagement in a hybrid workplace?

Following the 2020 pandemic, organisations are rethinking where, when and how employees work. Employees are keen for flexible working to continue. A recent poll by the World Economic Forum revealed that 75% of workers want to retain flexibility over their working schedule.

There are plenty of benefits to a hybrid workforce. Since many employees are juggling work with parental or caring responsibilities, the option to work at home offers greater flexibility. Many employees also feel like they can focus better on tasks while working from home.

However, as organisations adopt a hybrid work model, it’s crucial to find out how employees feel about the changes and what their new employee experience looks like.

To do so, you can add questions about hybrid working as an index in your employee survey or run a pulse survey with specific questions about hybrid working arrangements.

Employee Engagement Survey Questions For A Hybrid Workforce

If you’re looking for solutions from an employee engagement survey vendor, People Insight’s research has identified the themes which most strongly influence engagement in a hybrid workplace. By asking questions about these in your employee engagement survey, you can understand how to improve your hybrid work environment.

1. Confidence: Do employees have confidence in the organisation’s leaders and their strategy for the future?
2. Organisational change: How do employees feel about the changes being made, and are they being fairly consulted?
3. Communication: Do employees feel there is good communication in your hybrid work environment?
4. Hybrid working: Is the organisation’s approach effective for employees, the business and for customers?
5. Balance: How does the hybrid working situation affect home/work balance?
6. Onsite working: When in the office or on site, do people feel safe and like they can still work effectively?
7. Wellbeing: Is the organisation doing enough to show it cares about individual health and wellbeing – is this continuing post-pandemic?

Where does your employee engagement survey fit in?

When it comes to measuring and improving employee engagement, the survey itself is only a small part of the process. You also need to consider:

• Stakeholder discussions to excite leaders about your ambitions for change
• Pre and post survey communication plan so everyone knows what to expect
• Action planning training and support for managers to keep up momentum after your survey
• Employee focus groups to dig further into issue areas that emerge from your survey

An example of an organisation’s employee listening cycle.

Here’s a selection of employee engagement resources to help you:

Employee experience: A methodology for success
6 step employee survey communication plan
Improve your employee survey response rate

The essential guide to employee engagement action planning
How great managers follow up survey results

Maximise survey responses from hard-to-reach groups