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All organizations are driven by the performance of their employees. When your employees are feeling motivated to work and produce consistently good results, your company benefits from increased productivity, company morale, and most importantly – increased profit.

But what keeps staff motivated in the workforce? And how do you measure it?

In the past, HR professionals would rely on Employee Satisfaction Surveys to determine how content employees were with certain aspects of their job. This included their satisfaction in the work environment, how the company was organized, tasks they were given, salaries, benefits and bonuses.

This information would tell HR professionals what changes needed to be made in the company to increase the overall happiness, level of contentment and satisfaction among employees.

However, there was a problem with Employee Satisfaction Surveys.

By only measuring the level of contentment towards their job position and workplace culture, there was no way to compare the satisfaction of an employee to the level of output from their job performance.

The correlation between employee satisfaction and job performance didn’t exist.

However, over the past decade, HR professionals have turned their attention towards a more progressive view of measuring employee satisfaction and performance – employee engagement.

Distinguishing between employee engagement and employee satisfaction

With Employee Satisfaction Surveys… the correlation between employee satisfaction and job performance didn’t exist.

In recent years, the distinction between employee satisfaction and engagement has been studied in greater detail.

While an Employee Satisfaction Survey focuses on one’s ‘feelings’ towards their job and workplace conditions, an Employee Engagement Survey focuses on their emotional commitment to the company.

Many studies conducted have proven that Employee Engagement Surveys to be successful in producing measurable data, which offers insight into the correlation between employee satisfaction and job performance.

Why you should prioritize employee engagement

With so much research put into correlating the link between job satisfaction and performance, findings have revealed that highly engaged employees are more likely to perform beyond the expectations of their job description.

So, while a satisfied employee will show up to work and perform their basic duties, a highly engaged employee will excel at performing tasks inside and outside of their role.

This extra initiative is a key ingredient in driving innovation and growth within an organization – and it’s the kind of results that led to a dynamic shift away from employee satisfaction… to the more lucrative study of employee engagement.

Some of the benefits of focusing on employee engagement include:

  • Drive company innovation
  • Improve employee performance
  • Deliver bigger returns on HR investments
  • Nurture top-performing employees
  • Reduce employee turnover and poor performance

Driving business results

By taking on-board constructive advice and making positive changes to the organization, a well-constructed Employee Engagement Survey can help build trust between employees, HR professionals and employers.

While a satisfied employee will show up to work and perform their basic duties, a highly engaged employee will excel at performing tasks inside and outside of their role.

This process leads to actionable results that can encourage growth, innovation and stability within the company. Not only that, but you also increase the chance of retaining top-performing employees, by developing career opportunities for them to pursue.

What do all these benefits lead towards? More opportunities for the business to increase their profits.

In fact, the benefits of employee engagement are so dramatic, according to a survey released by the 2011 Corporate Leadership Council study, “… performance against revenue expectations is 23% greater for companies with high engagement capital compared to those with low engagement capital.”

With these kinds of statistics, it’s clear that addressing shortcomings in employee engagement can greatly boost performance for businesses over a long period of time.

What are the risks of employee engagement surveys?

Just like any corporate survey, there are good and bad ways that organizations can approach the idea of distributing an Employee Engagement Survey.

For any survey to be successful, the business must have objectives they want to achieve and be willing to respond accordingly to feedback they receive. Inaction on the company’s behalf can lead to mistrust among employees, or a feeling that they’re voices aren’t being heard.

According to a survey released by the 2011 Corporate Leadership Council study, “… performance against revenue expectations is 23% greater for companies with high engagement capital compared to those with low engagement capital.

Also, if your survey isn’t tailored to address the specific needs of the company, you won’t have the data you need to make constructive changes that encourage positive growth for the business.

Creating your own employee engagement survey

With the advent of online survey tool creators, there are many powerful tools to create and distribute an Employee Engagement Survey for your own business.

Our surveyTool is an intuitive online survey creator, which allows you to setup your own Employee Engagement Survey quickly and easily.

Whether you want to learn about your employee’s engagement towards their professional development, their desire to meet certain business goals, or the level of involvement in their current position – you can create a custom survey that gets the answers you’re looking for.

Summary

By making a clear distinction between employee engagement and job satisfaction, you’ll be able to identify key issues within your organization that could be affecting your ability to increase job performance, innovation and morale among the workforce.

This dynamic approach incorporates engagement and satisfaction into the mix, which encourages real progress towards positive working relationships and the desire to continually improve practices in the workforce.

Øyvind's avatar
Øyvind Forsbak
CTO
As CTO and co-founder of Orient Software, Øyvind Forsbak oversees all of our organization’s technical matters. Since Orient Software's founding in 2005, Øyvind has guided the company's choices of technology to become a world class developer in .NET and modern JavaScript frameworks.
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