What are the most common challenges or pitfalls of employee engagement surveys?

In my experience, the questions are often quite generic and hyper-focused on the employee's happiness and their relationship with their manager and peers and not necessarily what at the organization isn't working. Questions such as "If you could take a chance and get a new manager, would you?" and "What's one thing at our organization that you think could be better? How could it be better?" are critical to understand where a subpar culture may be growing in your organization and to source the root of problems. I've also seen it where employees know their ratings have an impact on their manager and therefore artificially rate them much higher to "please" their boss and avoid conflict.

Most companies spend a great deal of time and effort attempting to get their employees more engaged at work. We need to stop and realize that you can't force an employee to become engaged. HR can not force it either. It is up to every individual to find the intrinsic motivation to do their best at work, or move on. I recommend this question that creates an opportunity for every person to reflect on their own personal engagement effort. "I do my best to be effectively engaged at work."

When you are designing questions, realize that you will probably want to compare results over years for some core questions, so those core questions have to be written so they can stay unchanged for years. Shorter, simpler, less specific is probably better for questions like that.

If employees know their company is just doing this because other organizations are or if they haven't seen a meaningful impact from or response to prior surveys, then why fill it out? At that point, it's sort of a futile exercise that's primarily for appearances rather than truly understanding and resolving problems. Employees should be motivated to share feedback because they know it will be listened to and responded to. Not just to get a $5 Starbucks gift card.

Employee engagement surveys are not very useful unless you: a) Provide transparency on the top issues with your team (both positive and constructive) b) Analyze the data to understand which themes are most impactful to employee satisfaction and retention c) You develop an action plan that you share with your team Asking your team for feedback is great, but if you don't develop trust AND action the feedback you're only giving your team more reasons why to not trust or believe you when you say you care about them as individuals.

This starts with who's analyzing the data. You need someone with an open mind who is hyper focused on identifying trends, diving into the root of them and brainstorming solutions with those most invested in the outcome (likely those that brought the issue up to begin with). If a biased person that created the issues to begin with reviews the results, it's unlikely any substantial change will come of it. All issues should be responded to, either with formal company-wide action plans or 1 on 1 conversations with your manager. If employees don't feel heard or feel like they know how to fix the organization's problems, but the organization won't listen, they will disengage and your engagement survey will have backfired.