How to run a successful survey on employee motivation [+templates]

With the declining employee engagement rates globally, it's more vital than ever to regularly check in with your team to see if they feel satisfied and fulfilled with their job. 

‍

But where do you start? 

‍

As team building and employee engagement experts, we believe a quick survey on employee motivation will best map out the future action plan.  

Survey questions for employee motivation

Even if you choose to use an employee motivation survey template for your next round of questions, you might want to add some of your own. After all, every organization has its unique climate you wish to preserve. 

‍

That’s why, before we jump to the templates themselves, here are some must-have questions you might want to use next time: 

• How would you rate your overall motivation at work? 
• How much do you enjoy working on your day-to-day tasks?
• What is the career path you see for yourself at this company? 
• How confident do you feel about your role and responsibilities? 
• How well do you get along with the team? 
• What are the most important factors of your current job to you? 
• What would you change about your work model? 
• What do you like about your job the most? 

‍

We always suggest using open-ended or score-based questions instead of multiple-choice ones. 

‍

Although, you can gain some valuable insights even from simple yes-or-no questions if you ask the right ones: 

‍

• Do you feel like your skills are being used to the fullest?
• Do you feel recognized for your efforts?
• Would you change anything in your day-to-day interactions with your colleagues? 
• Can you openly communicate your likes/dislikes? 
• Do you see yourself in this organization in X years?

‍

Check the proven and tested Gallup survey on employee engagement for more ideas!

‍

OK, let's say you've got your questions noted down. What next? 

‍

Tools to create a perfect employee motivation survey questionnaire

Distributing your surveys and making sure people fill them in - that's the real struggle. Fortunately, there are plenty of solutions and platforms built just for that. This includes both simplistic survey providers and more holistic online team building tools. You must have heard of some of these, for example: 

‍

• Google Forms 
• SurveyPlanet
• SurveyMonkey
• Jotform
• CultureAmp

3 best free survey templates to measure employee motivation

There are many virtual employee engagement platforms or solutions designed to improve your teams' professional motivation in addition to the platform mentioned above. Even if you're just getting started and want to assess your team's motivation, many ready-made templates will help you get started. 

‍

Here are some of our favorite ones.

‍

1. ProProfs

This short but sweet minimalist employee motivation survey template only features 10 questions. Each asks the participant to express their satisfaction with different aspects of their job on a scale from 1 to 5. 

‍

Who is it for: smaller companies and startups that want to dabble in employee motivation for the first time  

‍

2. Survio

More advanced than the previous example, this free employee motivation survey template experiments with different types and formats of questions to effectively measure your team's sentiment towards their jobs. All that in just 8 simple fields! 

‍

Who is it for: team leads and managers who want to take charge of their team spirit without involving the HR department. 

‍

Do you know what else is great for just that? These top employee engagement apps!  

‍

3. Typeform 

Typeform's template for employee motivation surveys stands out because it's highly visual. Hence, it's more likely to draw more people's attention, and your results might be better than with a basic template designed with Google Forms. 

‍

However, good things always come with a price. So even though you can access this template for free during the trial period, using Typeform regularly will cost you $25/mo and more. 

‍

Who is it for: organizations with 100+ employees who may be too busy/disengaged to participate in a basic survey.

‍

Why you should regularly run employee motivation surveys

Employee motivation directly correlates with employee engagement, which, in turn, directly affects your entire organization. 

‍

Employee motivation survey shows which aspects of your company culture may require some adjusting and what your talents may be lacking to perform to their best ability. 

‍

As such, a single course of action based on the successfully completed survey measuring employee motivation can help you achieve:

• Increased productivity;
• Reduced turnover; 
• Improved engagement;
• High-quality talent acquisition and more! 

‍

Employee motivation survey best practices 

Here's a quick cheat sheet for you: 

‍

• Don't rely on the ready-made employee motivation questionnaires PDFs and templates too much - make sure to add something authentic to your organization;
• Don't ask too many close-ended questions - let people express themselves;
• Make it as easy as possible for the participants to find, access, and submit their answers to your survey;
• Ask as many questions as you need to get the complete picture - but try to stay within a reasonable limit on under 20 easy-to-answer questions not to annoy anyone 
• Don't just gather information for the sake of gathering - analyze the replies and act accordingly! 

‍