4 Big Questions to Improve Employee Engagement

Are There Questions to Improve Employee Engagement?
The short answer is yes.  Based upon decades of research there are four major questions to improve employee engagement.  The answers help identify what your employees care most about that directly correlates to the three top employee engagement drivers of discretionary effort, intent to stay, and level of advocacy.

Why Employee Engagement Matters to Your People and Your Business
Engaged employees work harder, are more productive, and stay longer.  The degree of employee engagement has a direct impact on your bottom line. How about $550 Billion worth of productivity loss in a year?

That’s what the recent Gallup study reported. And that doesn’t even include the cost of replacing those workers who leave.

Two Questioning Methods
Now that we hopefully have your attention, there are two questioning methods that you can use to determine if your employees represent the 70% of workers from the same study who are unhappy with their work or the 30% who are engaged at their workplace.

• Formal Employee Engagement Survey
  There are easily distributed Employee Engagement Surveys that are designed to gather information anonymously on how employees feel about the company, its leaders, and their work. As long as you have employee trust and are committed to making changes as a result of what you learn from the survey, you should get their open and honest feedback.

  Pull together the responses.  Reflect on what changes should or could be made.  Then adjust your culture to suit their needs.

• Informal Ongoing Dialogue
  This method of questions to improve employee engagement can be very effective, but it may take a while for employees to trust the process. They need to know there will be no repercussions for negative input. Otherwise the answers to your questions will provide little direction on what needs to be changed.

Four Questions to Improve Employee Engagement
Regardless of the method you choose, here are four questions to improve employee engagement that will help you uncover the policies, rules, and behaviors that either block or enable employees to contribute their best work.

1. How Readily Available Are The Resources and Information That You Need to Do Your Job?
   When vital information is kept in silos, projects break down. Employees need to know where they can turn for support, critical data, and a clear definition of both failure and success.
2. When Did You Last Feel Proud of Your Work?
   The answer may reveal why an employee is not contributing as much as when they felt the pride of achievement and encourages the worker to own their own performance. Here is where you can gently probe to learn what may be holding them back.
3. When Did You Last Feel Valued by the Organization?
   This question speaks to a critical employee engagement motivator – recognition for a job well done. You will get a sense of whether or not you are acknowledging workers often enough for their superior work or discretionary effort.
4. Where Do You Rate Your Performance vis-à-vis Your Peers?
   This question is designed to identify strengths in members of the team so they can build those strengths in others. The goal is to create a collaborative environment where the team works together toward the highest possible performance.

The Bottom Line
Your goal is to figure out: What makes employees excited about coming to work?  What keeps employees from achieving their work goals?  And how do employees see themselves growing in the company?

To learn more about questions to improve employee engagement, download our The Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement – Backed by Research