Getting honest feedback from your team can make a real difference. Employee surveys help you spot when morale is low or find new ways to boost satisfaction. They show you what’s going well and what might need your attention.
When employee surveys are a routine part of your company, everyone has the space to be heard, sharing opinions that can help to drive real change. But often, these surveys can become an afterthought, or worse, overlooked, which means chances to understand how your people feel and how your business is performing are lost.
In this post, we’ll explain why employee surveys matter, the different types available to gather insights for positive change, and how Cintra People can help you bring them to life.
What is an employee survey?
Employee surveys are questionnaires designed to collect feedback on various aspects of daily working life. These surveys usually ask about work culture, job satisfaction, and company policies, giving employees a safe space to share their thoughts and suggest helpful solutions.
Your survey can be as long or as short as needed, but the ideal length for a survey is between 10-35 questions for engagement surveys and 5 questions for pulse surveys. This allows you to collect enough detail without overwhelming your team which can potentially impact completion rates, so the more concise you can be the better!
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Employee survey questions
Each survey, no matter their length or type, will need questions – how else would you get data after all! A good survey question should be short with simple language to avoid confusion and make responding easy.
You can structure them in a few different ways:
- Scaled: This is the typical question type you’ll see in employee surveys, allowing people to express to what degree they agree (or disagree) with a statement. By using a scale like 0-10, you give employees more freedom to express their satisfaction level. We suggest providing titles to your scale to help guide responses, with 1 being strongly disagree, 5-6 being neutral or no opinion, or 10 being strongly agree, for example. This makes the results easier to interpret.
- Free text: Very self-explanatory, but free text questions allow people to express their response in their own words giving you a deeper insight. This is great when more personalised answers are needed, like “What areas do you need more support?” or the more general “Do you have any feedback on what the company could do better?”. It’s good practice to only use these when necessary and add a character limit to minimise the amount of data you’ll need to analyse (and minimise venting responses, too!).
- Multiple options: Multiple choice questions give employees a set of answers to choose from. Think yes or no questions or “Which is more important to you?”. This type of question gives your results more structure with clear percentages of what is most (or least) popular.
The benefits of an employee survey
Considering that employees involved in daily tasks and customer interactions have valuable insights that leaders might overlook, employee listening strategies, such as staff surveys, offer a wide range of benefits.
Employee surveys offer a structured way for employees to give feedback on their work environment. These surveys can give real insights into opinions on management, employee job satisfaction (more on this later), aspects that influence staff turnover, relationships with colleagues, and perceptions of company culture.
It gives you the inside scoop into how employees view their own work, their coworkers, and the company’s performance. By getting feedback on personal performance and where skillsets could be improved, you’re armed with all you need to manage performance and spot where extra training is needed. The feedback you receive, and the actions you make as a response, help to create a foundation to long-term success, creating a culture of continuous improvement. The data you collect guides informed decisions based on facts, not hunches.
Five types of employee surveys for businesses
1. Employee satisfaction survey
Employee satisfaction surveys help you understand why employees might be unhappy and take the necessary steps to fix it. This could mean changing policies, improving communication, or offering training opportunities. It also helps you understand what you are doing well, which is just as important as what needs improvement.
Considering happier employees tend to work better, improving satisfaction can increase profits. These surveys check whether employees feel appreciated for their work. By addressing their concerns and making changes based on feedback, you can boost satisfaction and reduce turnover.
2. Culture survey
A workplace culture survey can tell you how well people work together and understand how leaders lead. A strong company culture inspires trust, teamwork, and success, while a negative one can cause disengagement and affect morale. Culture surveys can help you detect underlying issues, such as individuals feeling unheard or undervalued or team conflicts. By uncovering hidden problems that might not be obvious on the surface, you can take steps to resolve them before they escalate, ensuring a smoother workplace for everyone.
Since employee culture surveys identify areas where trust in management and leadership may be lacking, you can address concerns like poor communication from leadership and build stronger relationships with your team.
Cintra People can help you develop and share culture surveys across your workforce with customisable fields allow you to add specific sections and topics and set the frequency and audience. Alternatively, you can save time by choosing a survey from one of the pre-existing templates. And once these are broadcasted, each employee will receive an email notification to complete the survey, with a progress bar so they can see where they’re up to and what they still need to complete.
Not only that, but the person configuring the survey will see “Pending” against those to whom it has been sent for a response, with optional weekly reminders that can be sent to those who haven’t completed it yet.
3. Exit survey
Businesses that approach exit interviews strategically get maximum value. These interviews, often the last chance to talk with departing employees, hold valuable insights. By using a structured process, asking consistent questions, and promoting honesty, you can learn why employees leave and find ways to fix any recurring issues.
Effective exit surveys include a wide range of diverse elements of the employee experience. Questions such as, “what was the best part of your job”, and “were there any company policies you found difficult to understand”, can:
- Tell you the reasons why people leave,
- help you identify leadership and management problems,
- suggest improvements to company policies, such as onboarding and training,
- and improve employee retention.
That said, exit surveys aren’t just a ‘paper exercise’. For your people to honestly share feedback, they need to feel that giving feedback is heard and acted upon. By that, we mean we shouldn’t treat an exit survey as a research project.
4. Employee engagement survey
Engagement in the workplace is at the heart of everything in your business. After all, if people aren’t engaged in the work they do, the missions they follow, and the products or services they provide, your business can’t thrive. Not only does it hinder results, lack of engagement also impacts the likelihood of employee feedback, slowing down progress and growth too.
With only 23% of hybrid workers engaged at work, employee engagement surveys are more important than ever to improving your culture before engagement rates drop further.
Regular employee engagement surveys empower employees to provide feedback, promoting ongoing improvement and building a culture where everyone feels valued. By making them a recurring activity, it also allows you to spot shifts in engagement early, with software like Cintra People providing clear reports on the top and bottom scoring areas, as well as giving clear insights on completion rates to track engagement trends over time.
For example, if surveys show that employees feel stressed or unappreciated, you can take action to enhance their work environment or provide more support before it affects productivity or causes social isolation. This fosters a sense of community and belonging among your employees–boosting engagement.
5. Diversity and inclusion survey
Understanding the demographics of their workforce and how employees from diverse backgrounds feel is crucial for businesses. Without this awareness, you may be unintentionally treating people unfairly, leading to discrimination and legal issues that damage your reputation, and drive away valuable employees.
When we look at how to build a positive culture in the workplace, diversity and inclusion surveys play a key role in assessing employees’ sense of belonging and inclusion at work. These employee surveys help pinpoint obstacles to inclusion, such as unconscious bias or microaggressions, and enable businesses to implement strategies that build a culture where everyone feels valued and respected. This feedback can inform targeted training programs or workshops aimed at addressing these issues and creating a more inclusive environment.
Get the most out of employee surveys with Cintra People
Conducting meaningful employee surveys is essential for understanding your team and improving your business.
Cintra People streamlines the survey process, making it easy to gather feedback and gain actionable HR insights. From creating customised surveys to analysing results and taking actionable steps, it promotes open communication and employee engagement while empowering your people to shape and reinforce a cohesive company culture.
Want to see for yourself? Book a demo to find out how Cintra People can help to turn feedback into action for a connected culture where everyone feels heard and supported.
Cintra People HR Software
HR software that brings HRIS, payroll, performance, and engagement together—helping you see what’s really happening in your workforce, solve challenges quickly, and make work better for everyone.
