Employee engagement: The difference between a good and a great QSR

Get insights into how employees feel about their work and why it matters.

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When it comes to ensuring that your employees are satisfied with their work, nothing is more important than measuring and understanding employee engagement. A disengaged team is strongly linked to issues with staff turnover, not turning up for shifts, a lack of productivity and ultimately a direct impact on your bottom line.

For QSRs in Australia, this is especially true - with the high-pressure and fast-paced nature of the industry, it's essential to make sure that your teams are feeling connected and motivated. 

An employee engagement survey can help you do just that. Employee engagement surveys are designed to understand how employees feel about their work, their company, and their career prospects. They provide an opportunity for employees to have their say on a range of topics, from job satisfaction and motivation, to how they feel about company culture and leadership. This feedback is essential for QSRs in Australia, as it can help to identify any areas where employees are feeling disengaged or demotivated. Right now, it’s hard enough to attract talent into your business and by understanding the root causes of employee dissatisfaction, business owners can take steps to improve satisfaction and retention rates. After all, satisfied employees bring bottom-line results. Happy employees mean happy customers, and that means more repeat business for your QSR.

Tips for Conducting an Employee Engagement Survey

So how do you make the most out of your employee engagement survey? We've put together a few tips to help you get started:

1. Be clear about what you want to achieve

Before you even start designing your survey, it's important to take a step back and think about what you want to achieve. What are your goals? What do you hope to learn from your employees? By being clear about your goals from the outset, you'll be able to design a survey that is focused and relevant. This will make it more likely that you'll get the results you're looking for. For example, if your business is looking to improve customer satisfaction scores, you might want to focus your survey on questions about employee attitudes towards customer service. Or if you're looking to reduce staff turnover, you might want to ask questions about job satisfaction and motivation.

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2. Keep it short and sweet

When it comes to employee surveys, less is more. The longer your survey is, the less likely employees are to complete it. Keep your questions focused and to the point, and limit the number of questions to around 10-15. This will make it more likely that your staff will complete the survey.

You can also vary the question types to keep things interesting and gather more accurate data. For example, you could include a range of multiple-choice, single select and open-ended questions. Questions answered on a scale from 1-5 or 1-10, rather than a simple yes/no, for example, are a better way to gauge employee satisfaction levels.

Allowing your teams to add comments is always a great option. Often comments will add perspective to a particularly low, neutral or high score. You’ll find some of your team incredibly passionate, and this feedback is highly valuable for you and your management team to dive into. 

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3. Offer an incentive

Offering an incentive for employees to complete the survey is always a good idea. This could be anything from a gift card to a chance to win a prize. The incentive doesn't have to be expensive - even something as simple as a $5 gift card can be enough to encourage employees to take the time to fill out the survey.

Keep reminding people of the deadline! The real key to survey completion is that your teams know that change will come about by participation.

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4. Make it anonymous

If you want honest feedback from your employees, it's important to make the survey anonymous. This way, employees will feel more comfortable being honest about their thoughts and feelings.

An anonymous survey will also help to ensure that employees don't feel like they're being singled out or that their responses will be used against them in some way.

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5. Be ready to act on the results

Finally, it's important to remember that your employee survey is only as good as what you do with the results. Once you've received the feedback, it's up to you to take action. This might mean making changes to your company culture, implementing new policies, or even letting go of underperforming employees.

Whatever you do, make sure that you communicate the results of the survey to your employees. This will show them that you're taking their feedback seriously and that you're committed to working with them to improve your business.

Working with a trusted partner

Employee engagement surveys take time and effort to get right. If you're not sure where to start, or if you need help designing and administering your survey, Ideagen Op Central offers a range of services to help. Ideagen Op Central's People Central module makes it easy to collect and manage employee feedback. With real-time reporting, you can see how your employees are feeling and take action if necessary. You can also set up staff surveys to go out automatically, so you can monitor employee engagement over time.

If you're looking for a way to improve employee satisfaction at your QSR, employee engagement surveys are a great place to start. By working with a trusted partner like Ideagen Op Central, you can be sure that you're getting the most out of your survey. Get in touch with Ideagen Op Central today to find out more.

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This article was first published in QSR Media. View the article here.