How Often Should You Gage Employee Satisfaction?

According to Gallup, 85% of employees surveyed worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. The American workforce consists of more than 100 million full-time employees, with only one-third of those employees being engaged at work, of which 51% of employees are disengaged – they show up to work physically, but that’s where it ends. Employee disengagement influences a company’s bottom line in so many ways – disengaged employees are more likely to leave in search of better opportunities, are more likely to burn out, be unproductive during the course of their workday, or to cause reputational damage to the company (whether knowingly or inadvertently).

It’s clear that employee engagement should be top of mind for organizations. By measuring employee engagement levels, organizations become better equipped to anticipate and address employees’ pain points. But, how frequently should you gage employee engagement (and employee satisfaction app, since they are closely related)?

There’s no golden rule

According to Jacob Morgan (see Forbes), there’s no straightforward answer and no “golden rule”. When designing employee engagement and employee satisfaction surveys, his advice is to determine:
• What it is that you are trying to learn about your organization?
• What are the fewest questions that you can ask to learn this?

It’s ultimately up to the company whether they want to gage employee satisfaction and engagement on a weekly, quarterly, or six-months basis. The frequency of gaging employee engagement depends on how the company wishes to use the data (e.g. to nip potential workplace problems in the bud); although it might be problematic to opt for yearly measurements alone (or letting even more time than that pass between measurements).

Determine the rhythm based on need

An employee engagement app, such as the one offered by Ezzely, may serve as an effective platform for sending out more frequent (yet shorter – 4-6 question) surveys directly to employees’ mobile phones or smart device, while longer and more formal surveys can be sent every quarter, every six months or annually.

The key aspects to remember when wanting to take the engagement pulse of a company are:

• Companies should determine which rhythm works best for them.
• Companies should rather focus on obtaining sufficient and meaningful data from their surveys to help them address any employee engagement or employee satisfaction issues, adequately.
• The frequency of the survey does not matter if issues identified in previous employee engagement measurement exercises remain unaddressed. Remember: Make your employees feel as though their opinions matter by investigating the feedback they share and by addressing it in earnest.

Take a look at some of our past blogs (5 Questions to Ask in an Employee Survey and Why; The Next Big Thing in Employee Survey Software) to assist you in creating more effective employee engagement and satisfaction surveys, and visit our website to find out how Ezzely can help you take the pulse of your organization effectively, with easy deployment and better response rates.