20 Employee Engagement Questions
Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of effective employee engagement is receiving meaningful feedback. In my experience, the best way to successfully do so is through simply asking questions.
Asking questions, either individually or in a group setting, communicates to the employee that their opinion matters and that those in leadership genuinely respect and care about what they have to say.
Incorporating employee feedback strategies into a team culture has two additional positive outcomes:
- The team is exposed to potentially new understandings, information and ideas.
- Ideas that come from employees themselves makes it much more likely they will be committed to their execution.
Below are 20 representative questions and requests that supervisors and team leaders can use to encourage employee engagement, receive helpful feedback, stimulate open dialogue and build a healthy team culture. Use them to inspire development of additional questions that engage your team in providing regular feedback.
- Share an experience when someone on our team encouraged and praised you.
- Share how you have witnessed someone on our team achieving a goal and how it inspired you.
- Share how you have witnessed someone on our team living out one of our values and how it inspired you.
- Share a failure and the positive outcomes of what at the time seemed like a disaster.
- Share how you think you are perceived by others on the team.
- Write down your miracle accomplishment……your equivalent of a four minute mile….how might you start running toward it?
- Write down 5 things that bother you at work, then pare it to three and finally one to share.
- What rumors have you heard recently that you think we should address?
- How should we handle gossip? What are the guidelines?
- Bring to a staff meeting your recognition “stuff” from over the years and share it.
- Bring and share your hobby; or share what you are passionate about outside of work and bring something tangible to demonstrate what that is.
- Share what you would do “if I had it my way around here.”
- List the bad habits we need to break in our work culture.
- If you could make one suggestion to senior leadership to improve our team culture, what would it be?
- What do turf wars do you see on our team?
- What are some examples of courage you have seen on our team in the recent past?
- What values, if lived out, would make the biggest positive impact our staff culture?
- What are three things you would like to change about our team?
- What are three things you want to be sure we don’t change about our team?
- What do we do as a team that hinders your motivation and execution?
Receiving feedback only goes so far in helping employees feel engaged and that their opinions are valued. Actually following through and executing their ideas will reinforce that their opinions and ideas really do matter to their supervisor and the organization’s leadership.
Posted on April 18, 2017
