By getting feedback from your workforce, you can measure their motivation, well-being, and overall sentiment around your company (and improve their experience accordingly, of course!).
But if you don’t plan your surveys and analyse them strategically, they could bring you irrelevant data… or even backfire!
So, let’s look at the most common employee engagement survey mistakes so that you can bypass them altogether.
How are employee engagement surveys used to support your HR team?
Engagement surveys support your HR team by collecting valuable insights about your employees’ satisfaction and motivation while uncovering workplace issues.
This allows you to understand exactly what’s working well and what isn’t, giving you an opportunity to double down on the former and fix the latter before it escalates. So, you’ll improve your employee experience and, consequently, your retention rate.
ScoreApp is perfect for this! Instead of boring traditional surveys, you’ll compel more employees to share their input through a valuable, dynamic, and visually appealing quiz.
10 common employee engagement survey mistakes
Let’s tackle them individually to see what you can do instead.
1. Unclear survey objectives
If you don’t know your goal, you can’t measure your success. As a result, the survey itself will also feel generic and less valuable.
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Define your goals – Do this before creating the survey! What do you want to achieve? For example, this could be measuring your employee satisfaction, identifying their training needs, assessing your workplace culture, uncovering underlying problems, and so on
- Work your way backwards – Every single question must feed into that main goal and give you relevant data
2. Too long or complex surveys
If your questions never end or require a lot of brain power, you’ll either receive low completion rates or annoy your employees (which is the OPPOSITE of what you should strive for with engagement surveys!).
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Be realistic – Plan your questions properly to make your survey concise and focused, aiming for 10-15 as a rule of thumb. With ScoreApp, you can keep your employees engaged with a mixture of question formats, too
- Keep it simple – Avoid jargon that would confuse your workforce and vague wording that could be interpreted in different ways (like “What can we do to take you to the next level within this company?”). Instead, prioritise clear and simple language that everyone can understand
- Consider pulse surveys – This involves sending the same short set of strategic questions regularly. We recommend sticking to a maximum of 10-15 questions for monthly pulse surveys, 15-20 for quarterly ones and 20-30 if you only share them twice a year
3. Irrelevant or leading survey questions
By adding irrelevant questions, you could annoy your employees with a longer, directionless survey and skew your results.
The latter can also happen if you word them in a way that encourages a specific answer (like “How much did you enjoy our training programme?”): your employees’ responses will likely be biased!
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Check your questions against your initial goal – Plan them so that every single one of them is related to your main survey objective
- Use neutral wording – Phrase your questions in a way that doesn’t influence your employees’ responses, encouraging honest feedback. So, going back to our previous example, you could say “How would you rate the training programme you completed on a scale of 1 to 10?”
4. Poor timing and frequency
Be realistic with how much you’re asking of your employees and when!
For example, if you send out several weekly surveys or expect them to complete one within 24 hours (perhaps when they’re already busy with other deadlines), you’d cause resentment and frustration.
Some of your employees might also answer them randomly and as quickly as possible just to get this new chore out of the way, compromising your results.
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Plan them properly – Avoid your company’s busiest periods (like big events or end-of-year deadlines). Instead, distribute your surveys during calmer ones, and give your employees enough time to complete them
- Create an effective survey schedule – Find the right balance between getting regular feedback and avoiding survey fatigue. Quarterly ones tend to work really well, but you’ll need to consider factors like your goals and the number of questions
6. Lack of follow-up
Collecting feedback from your employees is a great start. If you don’t act on it, though, it’ll all be for nothing.
At the same time, if you do implement some changes but don’t tell them about it, they’ll think you haven’t been listening to them.
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Set up the right email automations – Thank your employees for their responses, and tell them exactly what’s going to happen next. ScoreApp makes this a breeze by connecting with your existing email marketing platform, CRM, and systems
- Review your employees’ answers regularly – Set up tasks or reminders so that, whenever a new survey is sent out and submitted, the right person won’t forget to review it. After looking at all those results (you can easily do that with your ScoreApp analytics), you can develop an action plan to address any issues that come up
- Communicate this clearly – Does anything need to be discussed on a 1:1 basis? Set up a time to do that with each employee. Did you make some changes based on feedback from a specific department? Tell them! It’ll show your employees that you value their input and are actually acting on it. For example: “Since you asked for X, we’ve now introduced…”
7. Not using open-ended responses
Quick-to-answer questions (like multiple choice or rating scales) simplify things for your employees and help you spot patterns more easily.
However, if they’re ALL you include, you’re missing out on more in-depth and qualitative feedback.
For example, an employee might be itching to share their suggestions or opinions on a specific topic. Because there wasn’t an open-ended question for it, though, you’ll never find out.
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Gather qualitative data, too – Include at least one open-ended question that allows your employees to expand on their feedback (for example, using ScoreApp’s Open Text Boxes). It’ll give you better insights into their situation and sentiment!
- Review it, and act on it – Take the time to look at those answers one by one. Can you identify some patterns and make changes accordingly? Or if that particular survey wasn’t anonymous, follow up with each employee to discuss their input
8. Lack of incentives for employees to complete the survey
When you send out an employee engagement survey without any context, they’ll think: “Oh no, yet another task on my to-do list!”
This could lead to low participation (if it’s an optional survey) or to your employees feeling annoyed if they have to complete it.
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Communicate the importance of their contribution – Show your employees that you value their input, and explain how taking that survey will benefit them (for example, because you’ll implement some changes or personalise their experience accordingly)
- Consider additional incentives – This is particularly relevant if you absolutely need to ask lots of questions. So, to keep your employees motivated, run a gifted survey with a small incentive, like a gift card or an entry into a prize draw
9. Overlooking cultural differences
If your employee engagement survey isn’t inclusive, some people will feel left out and could harbour negative sentiments towards your company.
For example, this could involve questions with a heavy focus on Christmas holidays even though not everyone celebrates it.
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Consider cultural differences – Plan inclusive questions that are relevant to all your employees regardless of their background. In fact, why not include a question on that, too (like “What do you think we could do to improve diversity and inclusion in our workplace?”)?
- Create different versions – Consider sending separate surveys or questions to each region, country (if you run a multinational company) or cultural group. With ScoreApp, you can also use conditional logic to skip questions that wouldn’t be relevant to some employees
10. Poor employee survey design
Failing to give clear instructions? Sending out surveys with poorly formatted questions or technical issues? Your employees will either get annoyed, exit them without completing them… or both!
How to avoid this employee engagement survey mistake:
- Test it first – Don’t send out your survey as soon as you’ve put it together! Test it yourself, and conduct a quick trial with a small group of employees. If you identify any design or technical issues, fix them before rolling out the survey to everyone else. It must also be easy to navigate and just as user-friendly on phones and tablets as it is on desktops. With ScoreApp, you can easily create reliable quizzes and surveys that work on any device
- Give instructions – When sending out the survey, include clear and concise instructions on how to complete it. ScoreApp will also show a participant’s progress so they know how many questions they have left. If additional steps are required after submitting it, send automated emails to lay them out
Create successful and dynamic employee engagement surveys with ScoreApp
Avoid these common employee engagement survey mistakes to collect more relevant feedback and improve your workforce’s experience.
With ScoreApp, you can set yourself up for success and keep your employees engaged with more compelling survey-style quizzes. You’ll also gather a TONNE of valuable data for your HR team.
So, create your first employee engagement survey with ScoreApp today and for FREE!
