survey questions

10 Great Questions To Ask In An Employee Survey

Survey Tips

Did you know that globally only one in eight employees are actively engaged in the workplace? According to a Gallup poll, that’s only 13% of workers worldwide.

This has led to an increased commitment by businesses the world over to increase employee engagement through retention and morale boosting activities. It also begs the question, “Why the low engagement?”

To answer that question for your business, you’ll want to conduct an employee survey to find out. This is the only way to find out if your employees are satisfied at their job, and if not, what they’d like to see changed.

Now that you’re on board with sending surveys to your workforce, we’re going to look at 10 great questions to ask in an employee survey. First, let’s look at the important things you want to gather.

What You Want to Know

Your basic goal is to find out if your employees are happy and content with their job. You want to know if they are engaged and will continue to be so. And, finally, you want to increase their on-the-job performance and productivity.

To gather this kind of information, it’s a good idea to keep a three things in mind.

First, you want to know if your employees understand and connect with your company’s mission and goals. Just going about their business to get a paycheck doesn’t equate to an engaged employee.

Engaged workers are more productive, so you want to know if your employees are aligned with your company’s goals. (tweet this) Do they believe in your vision?

Bottom line – you want to know if they understand the link between your goals and their goals.

Second, you want to know how they feel about their co-workers. Are they committed to a team atmosphere?

Third, are your employees capable of doing their job, and do they feel they have the necessary competencies?

While your employees may feel like they are part of the team and adhere to your vision, if they don’t believe in themselves or need extra training, they are less likely to be engaged.

Now that you know to keep these things in mind when crafting your survey, let’s look at 10 great questions to ask in an employee survey.

#1: Question About Mission and Goals

Your employees are your best advocates, and to be engaged, they need to believe in your vision. You want to know if they are in it for the paycheck, or if they truly buy in to the products and services you offer.

Questions you might ask include:

Do you understand the mission and goals of the company? What are they?
Would you recommend our company’s products or services to a friend? Why or why not?
What do you think of our customer service?

#2: Question About Team Work

Team work is big in the 21^st century. Driven by the Millennial generation and their desire to collaborate, you’ll find that employees thrive in a team atmosphere.

When your employees work together with a healthy team, you’ll also find that each team member will go the extra mile to complete the project.

Tied into team work is your employees’ satisfaction with their peers. This is a good place to find out if they are all getting along and sharing the workload.

You want to know if your employees respect each other and manage conflict well. These questions help you gauge employee morale.

Questions you might ask include:

Are you a proud member of your team?
Does your team inspire you to work better and harder?
Do you think your team helps you get your work done?

#3: Question About Supervisors

A bad boss is the number one reason people quit a job. This is why including a question about your managers and supervisors is a good idea.

You want your managers to be supportive, not oppressive. Ask your employees how they feel and if they have any suggestions.

Questions you might ask include:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do you feel giving feedback to your supervisor?
What are the strengths of your supervisor?
What are the weaknesses of your supervisor?

#4: Question About Appreciation

Engaged employees feel valued and appreciated. Yet, more often than not, employees feel underappreciated in the workplace.

You’ll encourage productivity among your employees if they feel appreciated and recognized for their hard work, so find out if they do.

Questions you might ask include:

Has your supervisor thanked you for a job well done in the last month?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how valued do you feel at work?
Have you received any recognition in the last month?

#5: Question About Growth

Another big reason, especially among the Millennial population, that people leave jobs is because they don’t feel there is an opportunity for growth.

So, ask your employees if they feel stuck.

Questions you might ask include:

On a scale of 1 to 10, do you feel there are growth opportunities?
Have you received training on a new skill this year?

#6: Question About Long-Term Goals

To help you plan for the future, you want to understand your employees’ career goals. This can also help you motivate your workforce and provide them with opportunities.

Questions you might ask include:

What do you want to be doing two years from now?
Do you see yourself working in the same position in two years?

#7: Question About Accomplishments

Along with growth and long-term goals, this question can help you see into the minds of your employees. Plus, it gives them a chance to toot their own horn.

Questions you might ask include:

What was your greatest accomplishment this year?
Was there anything you wanted to achieve but didn’t?

#8: Question About Job Specifics

Employees aren’t always comfortable voicing their concerns, so this can be a helpful question.

Questions you might ask include:

Which part of your job do you like best?
Which part of your job do you like least?

#9: Question About Help

Are you creating obstacles for your employees? If you don’t ask, you won’t ever know.

Question you might ask include:

How can the company help make your job easier?

#10: Question About Morale

Your employees want to enjoy the workplace, so a little fun each week is a good idea. Find out what their idea of fun is.

Questions you might ask include:

How can we make work more fun?
Do you like team-building activities?

Final Thoughts

When planning for your employee feedback surveys, you want to think of these surveys as a long-range plan. (tweet this)

We don’t recommend sending just one survey and thinking it will fix all of the problems at your company. One survey should be followed several months later, and then again a few months after that.

This allows you to gauge the change in response. Hopefully with enough time in-between surveys (but not too much), you’ll see some change in the answers.

Lastly, when crafting your survey questions, stick with a mix of closed-ended and open-ended survey questions. Take care not to lead your employees down a particular path, and ensure your questions aren’t biased.

Keep your surveys short and on target. Finally, once you’ve received feedback, be sure to act on it. Let your employees know the feedback you received, and what you’re doing to remedy any issues.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Jonathan Simcoe and Gilles Lambert

How Many Questions Your Online Survey Should Have

Survey Tips

You’re working hard on your survey, and you want to be as thorough as possible.

But, suddenly, you notice you’ve created a lot of questions. Have you ever wondered how many are too many?

In this article, we look at how many questions your online survey should have for great results.

We’re going to highlight some tips for keeping your surveys short and focused while getting you the information you need.

Focus on One Objective

To get the best results for your survey, focus on one objective. (tweet this) Know exactly what you want to learn before crafting your questions.

For example, let’s say you want to know what customers think about your website because you’re thinking about building a new one. This would not be the time to throw in product questions.

Make sure your questions are specific and easily answerable. Keep away from biased, misleading or confusing questions.

If you want to know about other things, make another survey.

Keep Your Survey Short

With your clear objective in hand, craft your survey with as few questions as possible.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all number of questions a survey should have, a good rule of thumb is to keep your survey short enough that the average person can complete it 5-10 minutes. This usually amounts to 10 questions or less.

Most of your customers will abandon surveys with too many questions – think more than 10. This is especially true if your questions are long and detailed. If they’re short and focused, you can often get away with a few more.

We do recommend keeping your questions short as respondents tend to abandon long-winded, complicated surveys.

Final Thoughts

Consider letting your respondents know upfront how many questions they can expect and how long you estimate it will take them to finish.

This lets them know your value not only their opinions, but their time.

Tell them why you are conducting your survey and let them know their opinions count.

No matter how many ultra-focused questions you decide to ask, offer survey respondents a small incentive for taking your survey, and you’ll find you just might have fewer dropouts.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Evan Dennis

The Top 7 Survey Question Mistakes

Survey Tips

Sending surveys is a great tool to help you gather feedback about your business, products or services and your staff.

With the availability of online software to send your surveys, it’s never been easier and more cost effective to gather data about your audience.

While you can create and distribute online surveys quite easily, you’ve got to put some thought into how you design and write a successful survey. It requires careful planning and thoughtfulness.

To help you create the most productive and data-rich surveys, we’ve put together the top 7 survey question mistakes to avoid.

#1: You Missed the Target

For the most accurate surveys, you want to select and sample the right target audience. If you don’t understand your target audience, it’s very hard to design an effective survey.

For example, let’s say your survey is about swimming lessons for children, and you randomly send the survey to your customers. You might hit childless people, the elderly or those whose kids are too old for swimming lessons.

You want to target the right audience, so you’d want to send the survey to people with young children. In other words, you need to send the survey to the decisions makers, otherwise the data you collect won’t mean much.

When you understand your target audience, you are more familiar with their basic attitudes and beliefs. This can assist you in steering clear of offensive or even biased questions and help you pose the right ones.

Not only do you want to be cognizant of the data you are trying to collect, but you want to know enough to understand what information your respondents are capable of providing you.

#2: The Survey is Too Long

One study says humans have a shorter attention span than the common goldfish. While goldfish remain attentive for nine seconds, this study shows the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to around eight seconds now.

Why? You can probably blame the mobile phone.

We tell you this to encourage you to keep your survey short. Consider the respondent completing your survey on his phone while checking his Facebook feed at the same time on his laptop.

You want to maximize your responses, so you want to get right to the point quickly and in as few steps as possible.

Know what you want to learn from your survey respondents and ask only the information you absolutely need and will definitely use. Try and keep your surveys to just about five minutes. If you go over that time-frame, think about offering an incentive or reward.

#3: The Survey Questions are Biased

A survey that contains bias is basically useless when it comes to analyzing data.

What are biased questions? These are questions that lead your respondents to a particular answer. Most often, survey creators don’t intend to write leading questions, and this is a quite common mistake.

Biased questions can even prompt an answer that doesn’t reflect your respondent’s true feelings or opinions. (tweet this) When you ask loaded questions, they can confuse the respondent and often cause them to abandon a survey because they don’t want to provide the answer for fear it will give away personal data.

Biased questions can also be found in the double-barreled question. This is when you force your respondent to answer two questions at once. You want to write survey questions that measure only one thing.

#4: You Included Too Many Demographics

Another mistake is to begin your survey with too many demographic questions such as age, sex, income, education, number of children, email address and more.

You only want to ask demographic questions if your survey depends on it. For example, as in the survey we mentioned above, it would be important to know if your respondents had children.

In addition, if you are using logic in your survey, you can pose multiple demographic questions because you’ll take respondents to other areas of the survey based on their answer, and they won’t have to answer all of them.

Just be sure, again, that you really need the information. For example, if someone answered “no” to the “Do you have children question,” you could take them to another question that asks if they “care” for children (such as a grandparent).

Too many intrusive demographic questions can make your respondents uncomfortable and cause survey drop-out. Try asking your questions at the end of the survey. They’ll be more likely to answer after they’ve spent the time completing your survey.

#5: The Questions Include Negative Wording

Avoid posing questions with the word “not” in them. Your respondents may have trouble knowing what to answer if you use negative wording.

For example, you ask this question: “Do you agree or disagree that swimming lessons are not important for children?” Your possible answers are: agree, disagree, don’t know.

This is a difficult question to answer because first, it can’t be answered quickly, and second, it’s confusing.

You’re better off posing a question like this: “Do you think swimming lessons are important for children? Possible answers: yes, no, don’t know.

This question is easier on the eye and easier for your respondents to answer quickly.

#6: You Ask Unnecessary Questions

It’s incredibly easy when designing a survey to throw in every question for which you think you might need an answer. This is a huge mistake.

For example, if you really only need to know if your respondents think swimming lessons are important, just ask that question or a few related to it.

This might be the case if you’re trying to gauge your target market for their willingness to support a new swimming facility in the area.

Pose only the questions from which you’ll use the data to make a decision or take an action. (tweet this) Don’t ask questions that you won’t act on or don’t have the ability to act on.

#7: You Offer Too Many Choices

While it’s good to offer choices when asking multiple choice questions, you want to keep the possible answers to a realistic number.

Too many choices will confuse your respondents and complicate your data analysis. Keep your list of choices short and succinct.

Plan on offering people the ability to check the Other, please specify box. You might also include the option of don’t know, uncertain, or not applicable. Offering these choices keeps your respondents from getting frustrated when they don’t see their response in the multiple choice list.

To Conclude

If you avoid the top 7 survey question mistakes mentioned here, you’ll design a better survey.

You will find that you’ll receive more accurate data. Plus, your respondents will walk away from your survey feeling good about helping you and your company. They won’t feel frustrated at a poorly-designed survey.

Your respondents will be glad they took the time to answer your survey properly.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Benjamin Child

How Often Should You Survey Your Clients and Customers?

Survey Tips

One of the most common questions people ask us is, “How often should you survey your clients and customers?”

This question doesn’t always have a straightforward answer. Depending on your industry, and the survey, it could be every few months or once a year. Let’s look at some common scenarios to help you decide how often to survey your clients and customers.

The Customer Satisfaction Survey

This survey is one you send to your most active customers to help maintain a relationship with them. This survey is most successful when sent twice per year.

This type of survey lets your customers know you appreciate their loyalty, and their purchases, and you want them to take an active part in your business by providing feedback and input.

The Survey Sent After the Purchase

Whether you’ve just completed a project for a client, or a customer has purchased a product from you, you’ll want to send a survey to get your customer’s thoughts on your service or product.

The goal of this survey is two-fold. First, you want to know what they think, and second, you want to continue building a relationship so they come back to you in the future.

This type of survey is best sent very shortly after the project completion or product purchase. Don’t wait too long as people’s memories are fleeting. But, do wait enough time for your client or customer to use your product or service.

Final Thoughts

There are other types of surveys – for example, surveys sent out after an event or training event, market research or bench marking surveys. The event surveys are best sent after the event, and the other types should be sent at times relevant to what’s going on in your industry.

Before sending your survey, have a strategy that involves how often you’ll send surveys and what you intend to gain from them.

Lastly, we recommend waiting about two months in-between survey sends so you don’t overwhelm your customers and clients. (tweet this)

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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Nextiva: Write Usable Biased Problems and Question skewing and modeling for political modelling

Survey Tips

You’re ready to start your first survey and you know what questions you want to ask—that’s a terrific start.

But, did you know that the way you ask your survey questions can affect your usable results, which you believed to be harmless? Did you know, in many cases, that you can change the outcome of your survey, without skewing it, from a good, successful survey to a bad one by writing biased survey questions?

Today, we’re going to look at 10 essential examples of biased survey questions. We’re going to talk about how you can inadvertently create well-written survey questions that don’t alter your survey respondent’s perspectives.

You want to pose questions that are answered accurately and without any bias. You want to abandon the chance to lead anyone toward an answer or confuse them in the process. Do not forget, this is a skill in itself

Before we talk about the 10 examples of biased survey questions, let’s look at the biased survey.

What is a Biased Survey?

A biased survey is one that encompasses errors caused by the design of the survey and its questions. It’s important for you, the survey creator, to create survey questions that don’t change the survey’s outcome.

Things to consider are the way questions are worded, the structure of the survey, and even its design, style and colors.

A biased survey can lead to survey response bias and higher than normal drop-out rates.

Now, let’s view 10 examples of survey bias.

#1: The Leading Question

One of the biggest mistakes survey creators make is creating a question that leads respondents to give the “correct” answer. Leading questions negate your survey results, so you want to stay away from them at all costs.

You don’t want to word a survey question in a way that will sway your reader to a particular side. To do this, you must use neutral wording. Here are some examples of leading and biased questions:

Leading question: How dumb is (insert politician) when it comes to foreign policy? This immediately brings a negative connotation to the question. Instead, you might ask the question: Please describe your politician’s position on foreign policy.
Leading question: Should concerned dog owners vaccinate their pets? By using the word concerned, you put pet owners who don’t vaccinate their pets on the defensive, thus creating bias. Instead, ask it this way: Do you think dogs should be required to be vaccinated?

#2: The Loaded Question

With the loaded question, you basically force people into answering the question in a particular way. You keep them from explaining their own opinions. The loaded question has the potential to lead to survey drop-out and unclear results. Here is an example:

Loaded question: Where do you like to party? Well, what if the respondents don’t like to party? What if they are homebodies? Instead, you could ask it like this: What do you like to do on weekend evenings?

Avoid loaded questions so you get the most truthful survey answers.

#3: The Double-Barreled Question

Another very common survey mistake, the double-barreled question, forces your respondents to answer two questions at once.

You’ll easily destroy your survey results with the double-barreled question. You want each one of your survey questions to only answer one thing. One subject per question is the rule for accurate, measurable surveys. Here is an example:

Double-barreled question: How happy or unhappy are you with the rate of current school board funding and the common-core curriculum? Wow! This is asking a lot of your respondents. Some might answer both questions, but many others will concentrate on the one that means the most to them. Instead, you could ask it like this: How happy or unhappy are you with the rate of current school board funding? And, next question: What do you think of the common core?

Always break questions into singles so your survey is succinct and measurable.

#4: The Absolute Question

Yes or no answers can keep respondents from leaving unbiased feedback. (tweet this) It creates a bias because you aren’t getting the whole story with this type of question.

The absolute question usually only has the option of a yes or no answer. It also commonly includes words such as all, always, ever, and every.

Consider this question: Do you always shower before bed? The obvious answer for most people is no. You’ve basically backed respondents into a corner.

But, what if you sell shower gel, and you want to know specific showering habits for marketing purposes?

This is where you want to offer respondents some options. You might ask the question this way: How many nights a week do you shower before bed?

You’ve turned an inflexible, biased question into one that provides you with valuable information. Your answer options might be: every day, 5-6 days, 3-4 days, 1-2 days, usually shower in the morning.

#5: The Unclear Question

You want clear, concise answers, right? Then you need to pose clear, concise questions that avoid terms your respondents might not know.

Tech jargon and acronyms create bias because only some of the people in your audience know what you are talking about. It’s important to make it as easy as possible for someone to answer your question.

For example, you want to know how many of your survey respondents own a smartphone, yet you ask them if they have an iPhone. Just because you carry an iPhone doesn’t mean everyone else does. You might ask: Do you have a smartphone (i.e., iPhone, Android, Windows, etc.).

On the flip side, if you are surveying aeronautical engineers, feel free to ask technical questions.

The bottom line? Know your audience and avoid any question that makes people uncomfortable because you’ve shown bias or asked them something they don’t know.

#6: The Multiple Answer Question

Consider your multiple choice questions. When posing them, you want to make sure that there is only one answer.

For example, what if in the question above about showering, you offered these choices: every day, 5-6 days, 4-5 days, 3-4 days and 1-3 days. By using the same numbers over again, you’ve made it quite difficult to get an accurate answer.

#7: Prefer Not to Answer

It’s a good idea to always include “prefer not to answer” in your answer choices if at all possible. Many people will drop-out of a survey if they are uncomfortable with a particular question.

#8: Include All Possible Answers

Not including all possible answers also creates bias. If you are unsure of all the options, you can always add “other” as a choice.

#9: Use Accurate Scales

When asking people to rate your question, you want to offer options ranging from bad to excellent to avoid bias. (tweet this)

For example, you ask people about their experience with your customer service team. If you leave off “poor” as an option, you’ve biased the survey. A great example of just the opposite is the NPS survey question, which has a standardized question with a rating of 1-10 no matter where or when it is served to visitors.

#10: Survey Structure

The way you structure your questions from one to the other can also bias respondents. Study and test your survey to root out poor structure. For example, ask your more personal or in-depth questions at the end to avoid survey dropout.

Final Thoughts

You can avoid survey bias by using these examples of biased survey questions and making sure that your questions are clear, accurate, straight-forward and easy to answer.

This is the best way for you to get honest, thoughtful and accurate feedback from your survey respondents.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free SurveyTown trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Images: Lia Leslie