Is your business maximizing employee engagement by offering a killer employee benefits survey? The Covid-19 pandemic forced a lot of companies to evaluate their benefits packages. Employees now view their types of employee benefits as the second most important reason to stay at their job. In an employee benefits survey sponsored by Aflac, 35% of employees said that having a killer benefits package would keep them at their job. In that same survey, 29% claimed to have turned down jobs in the past due to lacklustre benefits. On that note, check out these quirky perks that companies are using to attract employees!
We’re going to look at the most important components of an employee benefits survey and show you some of the best questions to ask.
Read on to learn more about this topic! Click on the sections below to jump right to your specific question.
- What Is an Employee Benefits Survey?
- Use Surveys to Measure the Pulse of the Workplace
- Why Do An Employee Benefits Survey?
- How to Create a Winning Employee Benefits Survey
- Top 21 Questions to Ask on an Employee Benefits Survey
- General Benefits Common to All Organizations
- Final Thoughts & Free Employee Benefits Survey Template
What Is an Employee Benefits Survey?
It’s exactly as the name implies – a survey that is designed to learn what employees expect from their benefits package. The problem is that so many companies ask the wrong questions. Create these surveys from the employee’s perspective.
Employees are forced to adapt their lifestyles to a transformative business landscape. What they view as important today might change a year from now. An employee benefits survey ensures that business leaders keep up, and engage with their employees’ needs and desires. If you are curious, check out this guide that answers ‘why are employee benefits are important‘.
Use Surveys to Measure the Pulse of the Workplace
Surveys help organizations identify pain points in its employees so that they’re better equipped to offer the right benefits. We see so many companies completely miss the mark here and end up offering benefits that employees couldn’t care less about having. Essentially, they are just throwing money away. This is especially important since employee benefits programs play a critical role in an employer’s recruitment and retention efforts.
The fact is that having the right employee feedback is essential to fostering a healthier, happier workplace (making life easier for any employer).
Why Do an Employee Benefits Survey?
Benefits play an important role in decreasing employee turnover but they also help organizations attract better talent to begin with. You can pinpoint all of the strengths and weaknesses of your current benefits package. Employee benefits are a critical part of an employee’s overall compensation package, so don’t neglect this!
Employee benefit surveys accomplish several essential goals and are a critical tool in the health of an organization’s workforce. An employee benefits survey will help leaders manage the benefits expectations of their employees. At the conclusion of the survey, your leadership team may find ways to improve your benefits package, or make plans to do so in the future. It all starts with understanding!
Ensures a Company’s Benefits Package is Having the Biggest Impact
Employee benefits have a huge impact on workplace culture when they are done correctly. The problem is that worker demands shift all of the time so it’s important that organizations stay up-to-date. Surveys ensure that current benefits packages are having the biggest impact on the workforce.
On that note, check out these guides to employee benefits:
- Why Employee Benefits are Important & 7 Popular Benefits Employees Love
- What is an Employee Benefits Program & 5 Easy Steps to Design One
- Guide to Employee Benefits for Mid Size Businesses
- The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Employee Benefits & 4 Ways You can Get Started
- How to do Employee Benefits Planning & Why it Matters
Identifies Employee Pain Points
Discover the issues that plague employees and identify benefits that can help alleviate some of this pain. For instance, the pandemic caused employees to start questioning their health insurance and prompted them to start looking for remote work opportunities. Companies that focused on these pain points came out of the pandemic with a lot of momentum. Surveys help organizations pinpoint these types of pain points so they can offer benefits to alleviate them.
Ensures that Employees Fully Understand their Benefits
A lot of employees don’t fully understand their benefits so surveys are a great teaching medium. Benefits should be easily accessible. Use employee benefit surveys to ensure that all of your workers fully understand the benefits they are receiving and that they know how to access those benefits.
Focus Resources on Successful Benefits
Free up money by eliminating benefits that employees don’t want or need. Surveys will identify these wasteful benefits so you can replace them with stronger benefits. Improving the quality of a benefits package attracts top talent and keeps your workforce happy.
How to Create a Winning Employee Benefits Survey
The first and most important factor in creating a winning survey is to establish clear goals. Having clear goals ensures that you squeeze the most value from every question. So sit down and hammer out a list of goals that your survey will achieve
Examples of Top Survey Goals
- Weighing employee feedback on a new benefit offered by the organization.
- Discovery of potential new benefits to offer in the future.
- Revamping current benefit packages to meet ever-changing employee demand.
Once that’s done, it’s time to focus on the survey itself. Create a survey that gets the most employees to complete it. The rule of thumb is to stick to short, direct questions. If workers are faced with too many questions, they are not going to be as engaged with the survey.
Another important factor to keep in mind is that your survey must be easy to access. There are several options here. Using email surveys is a time-honored practice that tends to convert well. But mobile surveys have also become extremely popular. This decision will depend on the demographic of your employees. For instance, older generations might not take as well to mobile surveys as they would emails. The opposite would be true of younger generation workers.
When Should you do an Employee Benefits Survey?
Once the organization understands its goals and have an active strategy for administering employee benefit surveys, they should be conducted quarterly. You can combine these with other essential employee surveys to maximize efficiency.
How Do You Assess Employee Benefits?
The answer is simple – structure the employee benefit survey correctly. Remember to keep employee benefit surveys short and sweet. Choose a couple of categories, or topics that will offer you the highest quality data. In most cases, using a ranking system works best with benefit surveys since these answers can be weighted more directly than simple yes or no questions.
Ranked questions deliver a question followed by a series of options for the employee:
- Strongly Agree
- Somewhat Agree
- Neutral
- Somewhat Disagree
- Strongly Disagree
The benefit of asking ranked questions is that they provide a more accurate measurement of employee interest.
Finally, it’s always a good idea to end a survey by allowing the employee to write in a subjective statement. That way, they can mention things that might not be listed in the actual survey.
Top 21 Questions to Ask on an Employee Benefits Survey
Here is a list of the top employee benefit survey questions that you can include. These are sorted into specific categories, or topics. It’s recommended that you only use one or two questions per category, in the survey/questionnaire.
Employee Engagement with Current Benefits
Employee benefits are shown to increase employee engagement, so you should definitely start off with this line of questions.
- The HR Department did a good job of explaining my current benefits package, or the benefits policies.
- I understand all of the benefits being offered in my current benefits package and benefits policies.
- The organization has provided me with the right tools to learn and/or access my benefits? (This should list a specific benefit.)
Competitive Comparison Questions
- I receive benefits as good as those offered by other organizations.
- Leave a space for them to list any competitor benefits packages they feel are better.
- My organization’s benefits involving ______ is better than other comparable companies.
- List this question for each specific benefit you want to measure.
Benefit Satisfaction Questions
- I am satisfied with the current benefits package.
- I have received a fair benefits package for my job.
- How would you rate the benefits package?
- Use ranking system ranging from “Extremely Satisfied to Extremely Disappointed”
- This can be listed for specific benefits.
- Do you have any recommendations for future benefits we could offer?
- This is open-ended so leave room for the employee to write in an answer.
Health-Specific Survey Questions
- I fully understand all of the benefits received under your current health insurance plan.
- My current health insurance package is valuable.
- It is easy to access your health insurance benefits.
- I feel that my health insurance benefits will cover any future needs.
Learning and Development Questions
- I fully understand your educational reimbursement benefits.
- I feel that my tuition reimbursement benefits are satisfactory.
- It’s easy to access my tuition reimbursement benefits.
- My education-related benefits allow me to learn useful skills.
Childcare Benefits Questions
- I fully understand my family support benefits.
- Childcare services provided by the company are fair.
- How important is having childcare benefits?
- Rank this from “Very Important to Not Important At all”
- It’s easy to set up childcare through the workplace?
General Benefits Common to All Organizations
The categories above cover the most popular types of benefits in the workplace but some organizations might need to offer different, niche benefits not cover by the questions above. In that case, we’ve compiled a list of general questions that you should ask on your employee benefits survey.
- How easy is it to access (Insert specific benefit here)?
- How satisfied are you with your current benefits package?
- Are there any benefits you would like that you do not currently receive?
- Leave room for the employee to write in a response.
- How interested would you be to receive the following benefits?
- List several potential benefits along with a ranked choice for each one.
How to do a Benefits Review, Based on Survey Results
Don’t jump to making decisions without fully understanding the results on the survey. If you act too hastily, then you’re bound to make mistakes. Follow this four-step process to make sure you are getting the full value out of employee benefits surveys.
- Review Survey Results: These should be reviewed by multiple teams so that the results are interpreted by a diverse group. This gives the results more context.
- Have Leaders Reflect on the Results: All leaders within the company should dedicate time to reviewing and discussing their interpretation of the results. Leaders should also speak with workers and gather feedback.
- Create Goals: Meet again with the purpose of putting everything together. Make sure that the employees’ perception matches their survey results. There could be a break in communication somewhere and workers might not fully understand a benefit. If not, create new goals moving forward.
- Communicate Goals with Employees: Once your organization has set new goals or if you’ve discovered a break in communication, then it’s imperative that you communicate it with employees.
Final Thoughts & Free Employee Benefits Survey Template
Employees expect certain items in their benefits package with health insurance being at the top of the list. Post-pandemic demand for health-related benefits has skyrocketed. Almost half of employees in the workforce have researched their health insurance benefits to make sure they are getting the best possible coverage in their industry.
Don’t ignore other benefits though! Childcare is another big one that struggling parents will absolutely love. Add value to your benefits package by sending out an employee benefit survey regularly so that you stay up-to-date with shifts in demand.
If you would like to gauge your employees’ thoughts on their employee benefits, check out our free employee benefits survey template!