How to Interpret Engagement Survey Results

Overview

This guide will help you get the most from your engagement survey. You’ll learn about Reflektive’s survey methodology, best practices for analyzing engagement data, and the optimal ways to uncover key engagement influencers within your organization. If you prefer to view this resource as a .pdf, click here.

 To learn how to set up and launch an engagement survey, please view this article. Also, to supplement your learnings, please check out this eBook and worksheet!

1. 1. Survey Methodology
2. 2. Engagement Definitions
3. 3. Best Practices

Survey Methodology

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Engagement Definitions

• Engagement Survey
  Annual or bi-annual company-wide survey consisting of 20-50 engagement questions. Figure 1.0 (below) shows the structure of Reflektive's engagement survey.
  
  
• Pulse Survey
  A shorter survey (10 - 12 questions total) sent multiple times per year to follow-up on the biggest influencers of employee engagement. Influencers will vary company to company.
  
  
• Overall Engagement Score
  The percentage of employees that respond with a 4 or 5 across the 4 engagement measure questions
  
• Engagement Factors
  Themes of the 29 engagement driver questions. For Reflektive these factors are:
  • Performance Drive - unique to Reflektive!
  • Culture of Feedback - unique to Reflektive!
  • Performance Management - unique to Reflektive!
  • Healthy Culture - unique to Reflektive!
  • Leadership
  • Career Growth
  • Management

• Engagement Measures
  4 survey questions that measure how well your company helps employees reach their highest productivity. The questions are:
  
  
  1. “I would recommend my company to a friend as a great place to work”
  2. “I feel comfortable telling friends that my company has great products or services”
  3. “You’ll probably see me working at my company two years from now”
  4. “I work harder at my company than I have at past companies”
     
     
• Engagement Drivers
  29 survey questions that help companies understand what engagement areas they’re doing well at, and what they need to improve. Some sample engagement drivers are included below:
  
  
  1. "I understand how to grow my career at my company"
  2. "Our leadership team acts in alignment with our stated company values"
  3. "I believe in my company's plan for future growth"
  4. "My manager sets a high standard of excellence for the team"

1. Align with leaders prior to data analysis.
   Ensure that the engagement drivers you include are in-line with company-wide priorities. Meeting with leaders beforehand will also drive partnership and buy-in with executives, making them more likely to take action.
2. Look at survey response rate and overall engagement score first.
   Keep your engagement survey open until you achieve at least an 80% response rate.
   
   Best Practice: Offer a reward to drive survey completion, e.g. the first team that reaches 100% completion gets a free lunch.
   
   
3. Identify the biggest gaps in engagement across your company demographics.
   Look at engagement by location, tenure, department, gender, or any other demographic information.
   
   
4. Identify 2-3 focus areas that are most meaningful and aligned with your company's priorities.
   Ensure that you have the resources and executive support you need to tackle these issues.
   
   Best Practice: Develop SMART metrics to address these gaps. e.g., improve engagement by 20% among engineers in the Boston office.
   
   
5. Examine the lowest-scored top engagement drivers
   These drivers have the largest negative influence on engagement, and should be prioritized by leadership.

Overall Response Rate

• What it means: The percentage of employees who have received and completed an engagement survey.
• Why it matters: Having a high response rate is crucial in ensuring that you’re capturing a large employee dataset.
• What you should target: A response rate of at least 80%.
• Additional recommendations: If particular teams or departments have a low response rate, craft a response that leaders can send out to encourage their teams to complete the survey. We recommend that leaders send their nudge emails in the morning.
  

Overall Engagement Score

• What it means: The percentage of survey respondents that responded favorably on the 4 engagement measure questions (shown above):
• Why it matters: The engagement score indicates how well your company is doing in releasing employees’ energy to achieve the highest productivity
• What you should target:
  • 65 - 80: Acceptable
  • 80 - 90: Good
  • Over 90: Great!

Engagement Favorability Breakdown (Overall)

• What it means: The distribution of employees that have high overall engagement (“favorable”), medium engagement (“neutral”), and low engagement (“unfavorable”)
• Why it matters: The favorability breakdown indicates how difficult or easy it will be to improve engagement at your company. If there are more “neutral” respondents than “unfavorable” respondents, it will be easier to positively impact your overall engagement score.
  
  

Engagement Favorability by Factor

• What it means: Indicator of how your company is performing across different engagement factors (shown above)
• Why it matters: Pinponts your company’s relative strengths and weaknesses among engagement factors
• Additional recommendations: The factors that are most favorable can be helpful to know for recruiting purposes. You can call out these strengths in your recruiting efforts and candidate interviews.
  
  

Engagement Favorability Breakdown (by department)

• What it means: For each department, the percentage of employees that responded favorably on the 4 engagement measure questions.
• Why it matters: Provides a starting point to see which departments have high or low engagement vs. the company overall.
  
  

Heatmap by Department

• What it means: Which engagement factors contribute to or detract from engagement for each department. Detractors are darker red, and contributors are darker green.
• Why it matters: The department score map provides more granularity for HR leaders looking to identify and communicate best practices throughout your company. It also highlights problem areas that HR leaders should address to improve department-specific engagement.
• What you should target: Your benchmark is your overall engagement score. Engagement factors should ideally be within a few points of your overall score. Large discrepancies represent areas of opportunity, or best practices to scale at your company.
  
  

Engagement Favorability (across all survey questions)

• What it means: The percentage of employees who responded with a 4 or 5 for each survey question.
• Why it matters: Provides a detailed breakdown of how your company is doing across many engagement domains.
  
  

Top Engagement Drivers

• What it means: Which survey questions have the largest impact on overall engagement at your company?
• Why it matters: HR leaders can see what employees care about the most, and ensure that they focus on improving those engagement influencers rather than spending time, capital, and resources on less critical influencers.

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Next: Review frequently asked questions about Engagement Surveys

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