How We Used Employee Engagement Surveys and Improved Productivity by 20%

When people work in a healthy environment, they engage more positively and stay at their jobs. Therefore, we wanted to make our employees’ work life as fun as it was inviting. Whether workers feel good or bad, their demeanor impacts your entire workplace.

We noticed that productivity levels starts to wane when workers are not happy or committed. They no longer have the energy needed to perform well and contribute successfully. To overcome this dilemma, we decided to survey our workers to get their input about their work life. As a result, we were able to increase our employee productivity at Spider Solitaire Challenge and our parent company by over 20%.

What We Found Employees Wanted from Their Job

From our engagement surveys, we discovered that most of our employees had 3 major concerns:

• Did their job title truly match their responsibilities?
• Did they have future opportunities for making an impact or to grow professionally?
• Was their job truly secure?

We also learned that employees seek the following:

• More transparency about products and services
• Increased professional opportunities to learn
• Flexible work schedule

Through surveys, we gained some keen insights about what our employees expect and want. These revelations helped us put together a plan that would improve company culture where people stay and feel motivated to work.

We Learned Not to Make Assumptions and to Listen to Our Workers

Outside of the takeaway from the surveys, we realized as a company:

• We need regular feedback from our company. These surveys should not be a one time event, but rather a tool to keep an honest dialogue with employees
• We have a positive bias towards the status quo. In our eyes, everything was fine at the company. When we received this feedback, we started to realize not everything is rosy.

Addressing the Issues

To improve transparency we started sharing more of our overall company roadmap. For example, everyone wanted to know what games we’d build outside of our free Spider Solitaire game, and we provided a two year plan on the games we hope to build.

When it comes to growth, we also discovered that employees do not necessarily want to take on a leadership role. Their primary motive may be to learn more as an individual contributor. As a result, we spent time understanding what the goals were of each of our employees and tailored plans to help them reach those goals.

To address a more flexible work schedule, we began to allow employees to work at different times. However, we established a 2-hour timeframe where everyone must be online at once to have meetings or work through problem.

Improving Productivity

After 6 months, we conducted the same survey again to see how well we addressed these issues, and its impact on the team. We saw close to a 20% improvement in productivity, and we had no employee turnover in that period.

These employee engagement surveys keep everyone on the same page communication-wise. By conducting this type of research, we learned that our employees felt like we really cared. As a result, our employees wanted to give back to the company even more.