11 Questions to Ask Employees
A key part of a manager’s job is collaborating with his or her people to understand their challenges and successes in the workplace, as well as empowering them to work better and be happy with their experiences. But to do this, managers need both a means of collecting employee feedback and assurance that that feedback will be honest, otherwise it won’t be beneficial for company culture improvement or organizational growth.
There are three main subjects to understand your people’s opinions to facilitate organizational growth:
- Employee engagement
- Workplace experience
- Areas for improvement
The questions you ask should enable everyone to expand on their thoughts about these broad areas, while still being specific enough to provoke thoughtful anonymous feedback to help the company grow.
Read on to learn more about these subjects and discover 11 questions that you should ask so that both your company and people thrive.
Employee Engagement
Forbes defines employee engagement as “the level of commitment, passion, and loyalty a worker has toward their work and company.”
The more engaged your people are, the more aligned their goals will be with those of the company, and the better they’ll work toward those shared goals to benefit the bottom line. As such, understanding areas and levels of employee engagement in your company is an important part of facilitating your organization’s growth.
Questions you can ask to understand everyone’s level of commitment, passion, and loyalty include:
- Do you feel passionate about the work you do for our company? Why or why not?
- What changes could we make that would impact your feelings, either positively or negatively?
- What factors impact your commitment to your work?
Workplace Experience
Workplace experience is quite literally the experience that your people have at work, and if the recent trend in major organizations to create entire management positions focused on the employee experience is any indicator, fostering a great experience is becoming a bigger priority than ever before.
Tech companies are known for their fun workplace experiences and non-traditional perks. A few examples include free food, on-site massages, nap pods, and off-site events. Believe it or not, Google offers all these perks to its people:
- Free meals and snacks
- Free cooking classes
- Free onsite gym/gym classes
- Onsite massage therapist
- Onsite medical staff
- Decompression capsules
- Free onsite laundry facilities
- Free onsite haircuts
- Free onsite rec room
But workplace experience is more than just freebies and fun. It’s about professional relationships, the alignment of procedures with desired outcomes, the avenues for communication that can be used, and opportunities for people to grow and develop their skills.
An individual may be willing to talk openly about some of these things, but others, like how they interact with their colleagues or communicate with managers, may be better addressed by asking for anonymous survey feedback.
What should you ask people to ensure that you receive honest, constructive feedback that will promote organizational growth? Try questions like the following, which aim to address various facets of the employee experience:
- How do you believe that our company’s systems and/or policies help us or prevent us not just from reaching our goals, but exceeding them?
- Do you believe that the current avenues for communicating with your supervisors and members of company leadership are effective? Why or why not?
- Does our workplace culture provide you with a positive experience? Why or why not?
- In what ways could our company improve your workplace experience?
- What impact does your experience have on your ability to fulfill your job responsibilities as best as possible?
Suggestions for Improvement
Managers should seek anonymous employee feedback about subjects like employee engagement and the workplace experience to obtain suggestions for improvement that will promote organizational growth.
As such, the questions that you ask shouldn’t only be about people’s beliefs – you should also ask for concrete suggestions to improve processes and systems that are directly linked to your company’s goals.
For example, you can ask questions such as:
- What do you consider to be the biggest obstacle to success in our company, and what would you do to change it?
- How can our company better utilize your skills and interests to grow the business?
- In what ways do you envision our company realistically growing, and what can we do to achieve it?
Are You Listening to Your People?
By asking these 11 questions and others in a format where your people can answer honestly and anonymously, you’ll cultivate a collaborative, growth-oriented culture.
No company can succeed, let alone grow, without a committed team. Even in the best organizations there’s room for improvement, and managers should provide ample opportunities for everyone to share their experiences and suggestions for improvement. People’s feedback should be heard.
Providing feedback is a delicate exercise for those who may be hesitant or afraid to criticize the business to management, which is why it’s crucial to provide opportunities to complete anonymous surveys.
This is where Olumo comes in.
Anonymous Feedback Provides Valuable Insight
Olumo is a tool for managers to gain insight into workplace happiness, for people to quickly and easily provide anonymous survey feedback on workplace topics, and for organizations to grow to their full potential.
How do we do this?
We send 1-2 questions per week to your people about various workplace issues via text message, which can quickly and anonymously be answered. Responses are compiled into a live dashboard showing historical trends, offering advanced custom reporting that you can incorporate into your strategies for organizational growth.
With anonymous employee feedback, your company can become the best it can be by collecting real-time, actionable data. At Olumo, we have more than 400 questions to ask across 10 experience categories. The easy and quick text message format (the average time to read and respond is less than 30 seconds!) maximizes responsiveness, which is key for identifying problems and their solutions to enable organizational growth.
Because our platform aggregates responses, you’ll have easy access to fresh data about respondents’ strengths and weaknesses and can track the effectiveness of their chosen solutions.
Start Asking Questions Today
Now’s the time to start gathering feedback. Ditch your annual survey (if you even have one) and instead adopt a more effective approach with text message-based anonymous surveys. If you don’t, you may be left behind.
It may be easier to bury your head in the sand and ignore that the workplace experience is poor or there’s a lack of commitment and personal growth, but you do so at your organization’s peril. Your people are truly the lifeblood of your organization – they know you better than anyone, and it’s best to listen to them.
It’s not hard to ask questions. Watch our brief video to learn how easy it is to set up simple, consistent, anonymous surveys. Sign up today and leverage employee feedback!