3 Reasons Why Your Team Should Be Using Employee Surveys in 2021

Employee surveys are always a great tool for employee engagement. Whether anonymous or named, they can help employers get a better understanding about how their workforce feels about particular issues, how engaged they are, and can also help the staff to feel empowered as they share their opinions. (MP offers excellent survey software that allow for custom, pre-created, anonymous, and named surveys. It also shares data in user-friendly reports.) Right now, an employee pulse survey could be especially helpful. A staff survey could help as employers handle three pressing tasks for 2021: making return to work plans, supervising remote employees, and strategizing their approach to the COVID vaccine in the workplace.

3 Reasons Why Employers Should be Conducting Employee Surveys Right Now

1. Develop strong work plans with employee surveys.

As employers bring their team back to work, they can significantly minimize pushback by using employee surveys. Surveys gather data on how employees are feeling about the pandemic and identifies top concerns. They can also make employees feel empowered because they are being asked for their feedback. Another use for employee surveys is to test out plans. Employers could ask their team if they’d prefer returning to work gradually, fully, or staying partially remote on a permanent basis. Getting a fuller picture of what employees want could save organizations significant time and money. It could also help nurture employee engagement. When employees feel safe and happy in their workplace, they perform better and stick around longer. This all manifests in a robust bottom line.

2. Employee surveys benchmark employee engagement, especially for remote workers.

Because many organizations are allowing remote work on a more permanent basis for the first time, they may find engaging remote workers to be a learning curve. When managers can’t see their employees all day, it’s harder to recognize the signs of burnout. Employee surveys, especially anonymous ones, are excellent ways to learn how engaged or disengaged staff feels. The answers on anonymous surveys, of course, are frequently more honest, and thus more helpful to managers. MP’s HR services team suggests taking burnout seriously, whether in remote or in-person teams. Research has frequently proven how much burnout can diminish a company’s bottom line. It could also lead employees to be less productive, take more sick days, and even leave the organization for a new role (creating a new cost: hiring). The most damaging quality of burnout is that it’s contagious. If one employee feels burnt out today, managers should step in and address it. Otherwise, that employee may influence the team and three or four people might feel burnt out next month.

3. Employee surveys help employers track vaccination status and create their vaccination policies.

Many employers right now are trying to figure out how to approach COVID vaccination in their workplace. There are many compliance factors to consider, including staying ADA compliant. An anonymous survey can help employers learn how many people on their staff are vaccinated or plan to get the vaccine. If a high enough percentage are vaccinated or plan on getting vaccinated, employers can choose to simply encourage vaccination in the workplace. This relieves them of the burden of legal risk and the risk of discrimination lawsuits that come with requiring COVID vaccination. To maintain compliance, it’s important for employers to maintain confidentiality and never share workers’ vaccination statuses with anyone else. They should also keep records of vaccination status in a protected area that has limited access, just like any other employee medical information.