23 of the Best Employee Engagement Survey Questions to Ask

When people are highly engaged with their work, good things happen. If reality follows research, teams will be more productive, the turnover rate will be lower, and the company will be more profitable (1). It should come as no surprise, then, that the best employee engagement surveys are rolled out by the highest-performing teams.

An employee engagement survey is your first step towards improving employee engagement. The purpose of the survey is important - specifically, you want to measure employee engagement by measuring the connection people have to their work and the company’s goals.

When you use the Surveys and Polls tool in Frankli, the platform does the hard work for you, including setting the questions, alerting your team to the survey, reminding them to participate and analysing the data. Using our survey templates, you can create, customise and roll out an employee engagement survey in less than 30 seconds.

Of course, with any survey, it’s crucial that you get the questions right. That’s why, today, we’re sharing 23 of the best employee engagement survey questions to ask, featuring some questions from Frankli’s employee engagement survey template.

But before we get into the templates, we wanted to answer some frequently-asked questions about employee engagement surveys.

‍Employee Engagement Survey: FAQs

Why do I need to measure employee engagement?

Measuring employee engagement is important for one key reason: What gets measured gets improved. By consistently measuring employee engagement across your organisation, you can identify root causes of disengagement quickly, before the impact is widely felt.

Find out more about how high engagement leads to high performance.

‍Why are employee engagement surveys so important?

High engagement leads to positive outcomes in terms of customer loyalty, profitability, productivity, turnover, absenteeism, wellbeing and more (1), so there are huge benefits to measuring and improving engagement across your teams.

In simple terms, you can't afford not to measure employee engagement.

‍How long should an employee engagement survey be?

We advise keeping your employee engagement survey to 10 or 15 questions. 12 or 13 is the sweet spot for most teams.

‍How often should we roll out an employee engagement survey?

We recommend rolling out an employee engagement survey at least once a year. If your survey is well-constructed and not too long, you might benefit from running it more regularly, for example, once per quarter.

‍What form should employee engagement questions take?

The employee engagement questions we’ve provided are designed to be answered using the Likert Scale (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree). If you’d like more detailed answers, you could provide text boxes instead. Just remember that research shows shows that the longer a survey is, the less time respondents spend answering each question. So detailed surveys don’t necessarily yield high-quality responses.

Are employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys the same thing?

Not exactly. While these two surveys may have questions in common, they have slightly different goals. An employee engagement survey is designed to measure your people’s connection to the company, whereas an employee satisfaction survey measures how happy they are in their role.

‍What are the ideal results in an employee engagement survey?

For all of the questions we’ve provided, you want the average score to be Agree or Strongly Agree. Depending on the nature of the question, you ideally want to see between 60 and 80% agreement from your people. Get up-to-date employee engagement benchmarks by industry, tenure, role and more.

‍Our employee engagement survey is complete. What’s next?

Your next step is to analyse the results of the survey (in Frankli, we do this part for you), and identify areas where improvements need to be made.

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Employee Engagement Survey Best Practices

1. Define clear objectives.

Before conducting your employee engagement survey, it's a good idea to establish exactly what you want to achieve with the survey. Are you looking to measure employee engagement, identify specific areas of improvement, or track progress over time?

Establishing clear goals will help you really refine the best employee engagement questions to ask.

2. Ensure confidentiality and anonymity.

In order to get honest feedback from employees, you'll need to ensure the responses remain anonymous - this is automatically the case with employee engagement surveys in Frankli.

It's just as important that you communicate survey anonymity to employees. This creates a safe space for employees to highlight blockers or risks without fear of repercussions.

3. Include at least one open-ended question.

Ideally, employee engagement surveys should include both quantitative questions (e.g., rating scales, multiple-choice ) and qualitative questions (e.g., open-ended questions).

‍Quantitative questions provide measurable data, while qualitative questions invite employees to share their thoughts and opinions in their own words. One of the best qualitative questions to ask team members is simply, "Is there something else we should have asked in this survey?"

4. Keep it simple and focused.

Avoid long surveys, as these can overwhelm employees and lead to survey fatigue. Around 12 Likert Scale questions and 1 open-ended question works well for most teams.

‍Keep the survey simple, focused, and easy to complete within a time frame of about 10 - 15 minutes. And avoid jargon or complex language that may confuse employees.

5. Involve employees in the process.

Highly engaged employees are usually very responsive when it comes to employee surveys, but other employees might need a bit more prompting.

‍Involving employees in the survey design can enhance their sense of ownership and commitment to the survey results. This creates a work environment where employee perspectives are welcomed and considered, which, in itself can be a driver of employee engagement.

6. Use benchmarking data.

Benchmarking data allows you to compare your organisation's results with industry standards and previous survey data to gain insights, identify areas that need improvement and track progress over time.

See our list of essential employee engagement benchmarks.

7. Take action.

Once the survey responses are ready, it's time to make an action plan. Review the responses, identify key areas of improvement, make a plan to address them, and include concrete deadlines.

‍OKR goal-setting can be useful here - you might set a specific goal around employee engagement, or multiple goals covering areas that warrant attention. e.g. employee career development, company culture, and work-life balance.

8. Track progress.

Improving your employee engagement level is an ongoing process, it shouldn't stop after one survey.

‍Aim to run employee engagement surveys quarterly or annually, making sure that there's sufficient time to follow up on your action points from the previous one.

9. Evaluate survey effectiveness.

Evaluate the effectiveness of your employee engagement survey by measuring its impact on employee engagement levels, productivity and turnover rates.

‍This will help you determine the return on investment (ROI) of your survey and make adjustments for future surveys.

10. Foster a culture of feedback.

Employee engagement surveys should form part of a larger culture of feedback within your organisation.

Encourage regular feedback from employees through other channels, such as 1:1 meetings or dedicated feedback channels like Frankli's Feedback space. This will help foster a culture of open communication and continuous improvement.

11. Track other metrics too.

People’s connection to their work doesn't easily translate to a number on a screen. That's why surveys alone won't give you a full and detailed picture of employee engagement.

For a comprehensive view of employee engagement, you need to track several metrics, including eNPS, employee turnover rates, employee goal performance, employee satisfaction rates, employee wellbeing rates, 1:1 meeting participation and employee development adoption rates.

Find out more about employee engagement metrics.

‍23 of the Best Employee Engagement Survey Questions to Ask:

• I’m proud to work for (Company X).

• I would recommend (Company X) as a great place to work.

• (Company X) motivates me to go beyond what I would in a similar role elsewhere.

• (Company X) is in a position to really succeed over the next three years.

• I have clear goals and objectives.

• I know how my work contributes to the goals of (Company X).

• Day-to-day decisions demonstrate that quality and improvement are top priorities at (Company X).

• I rarely think about looking for a job at another company.

• The leaders/managers at (Company X) keep me informed about what’s happening.

• The leaders at (Company X) have communicated a vision that motivates me.

• The leaders at (Company X) demonstrate that people are important to the company's success.

• My manager is a positive role model for me.

• My manager gives me useful feedback on how well I am performing.

• At (Company X), there is open and honest two-way communication.

• It really feels like everyone is on the same team at (Company X)

• (Company X) effectively directs resources (funding, people and effort) towards company goals.

• I am appropriately involved in decisions that affect my work.

• I have access to the things 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 learning and development I need to do my job well.

• I know what I need to do to be successful in my role.

• I feel like I have a responsibility in helping (Company X) achieve its aims.

• I am confident using the systems I need in my role.

‍Optional: Is there something else you think we should have asked in this survey?

‍It takes less than 30 seconds to create and publish an employee engagement survey through Frankli. Get started today.

1. Gallup, The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes.