15 Best Employee Recognition Survey Questions to Measure Employee Satisfaction

1. What Are Employee Recognition Surveys?

Employee recognition surveys are questionnaires designed to gauge the opinions of the staff at your business. Using the data gathered, you will be able to assess the efficacy of the employee recognition strategies within your company, to see where they are succeeding and where they can be improved.

2. Why Are Employee Recognition Survey Questions Important in a Workplace?

• Boosts employee engagement and productivity

Employee recognition survey results can be used to refine your existing recognition program, so that it is more effective and boosting employee engagement and productivity. Research has shown that properly acknowledging staff contributions has a causal impact on a company’s profitability. 

• Enhances employee morale

When people are consulted about company initiatives, they feel more involved and valued, which in turn boosts their morale. If individuals are asked their opinions, they are more likely to feel invested in a business.

• Helps identify areas of improvement

One of the most practical benefits of utilizing recognition questions in research is that they give you actionable feedback. Through the responses, you can more accurately identify areas of your recognition strategies that aren’t delivering the desired results. 

• Fosters the culture of appreciation

Focus group questions for employee recognition help identify ways to incorporate praise and acknowledgement as part of the fabric of your company culture. Simply through the act of completing the survey, your staff will be more self-aware regarding how they express their appreciation for their colleagues.

• Improves communication

Surveys are a tried-and-true method of establishing dialog with your staff. Regular feedback on your employee recognition initiatives provides a channel for communication, leading to more productive conversations about how your staff feel about your existing initiatives. 

3. 15 Best Employee Recognition Survey Questions

3.1 On a scale of 1-10, how valued do you feel within the organization?

Asking staff to rate how valued they feel is a good way to open your employee recognition survey questions. It allows you to obtain a quantitative measure of overall satisfaction, before getting into more detailed queries regarding recognition.

3.2 Are you aware of the specific behaviors or achievements that are recognized within the company?

It’s important for staff to know what actions and/or achievements are prized in your organization, in order for them to actually meet those expectations. If people are responding ‘no’ to this query, there is clearly a problem with feedback specificity or your performance review framework.

3.3 How effectively does the company communicate its recognition programs to employees?

Hopefully, all your staff should be aware of the details of the recognition programs within your business. If they aren’t, it might be time to consider how you are promoting these schemes. If individuals aren’t aware the programs exist, they certainly aren’t having an effect on morale, engagement or other factors.

3.4 Have you received recognition for going above and beyond your regular job responsibilities?

Once you’ve gauged whether or not staff are aware of the basic tenets of your company’s policies, your employee recognition survey questions can turn to whether or not these policies are being enacted. The number of people that respond affirmatively to this question will allow you to see whether there is actually a culture of recognition in existence at your organization.

3.5 How well does the recognition you receive align with your personal values and aspirations?

This question is principally about possible improvements to your recognition programs. There might be certain behaviors that managers or HR have overlooked but that rank-and-file staff feel should be more broadly acknowledged and praised.

3.6 Do you believe that recognition at the company is distributed fairly across different teams and departments?

The perception of fairness can have an impact on both productivity and retention within a company, so it’s worth assessing staff sentiment regarding the share of praise they receive. This might also help you identify team leaders who need additional training with regards to how to acknowledge their team’s contributions.

3.7 Are there any specific individuals or teams within the organization that consistently demonstrate exceptional work and should be recognized more frequently?

This question encourages staff to be more thoughtful about their own acknowledgement of the contributions of their fellow colleagues. Too often, the onus for a culture of recognition is placed solely on managers, whereas it is at its most effective when it is incorporated throughout an organization.

3.8 How well does the company celebrate work anniversaries, milestones, or special achievements?

A culture of recognition is not just about acknowledging job success, it’s also about demonstrating appreciation for loyalty or an interest in personal milestones, such as marriage or the birth of a baby. This kind of recognition helps build bonds between an individual and a business, so make sure to include celebration survey questions as part of your research.

3.9 Have you ever received recognition from senior leaders within the organization?

Here, respondents are being encouraged to appraise the organization’s stated initiatives versus how well they are implemented by senior leaders. It’s important to distinguish between these two aspects: it may be that your business actually has excellent policies already, but perhaps they are not being properly applied by manager-level staff.

3.10 How well do the company's recognition efforts motivate you to perform at your best?

Another example of the kind of employee recognition survey questions that can be used to create quantitative data, this query could also utilize a 1-10 scale to illustrate the effectiveness of your existing recognition schemes on bolstering morale and performance. 

3.11 Are you encouraged to recognize the efforts of your colleagues and team members?

Peer feedback is a pillar of the overall recognition process. Through peer-to-peer recognition survey questions, you will be able to see how ingrained the process of acknowledging other people’s hard work is on an individual level, rather than a manager-led level.

3.12 How frequently do you receive recognition from your manager?

In most cases, a person’s manager will be their primary source of recognition, which makes it all the more important to ensure that there is sufficient praise and positive reinforcement occurring on a regular basis. Managerial feedback motivates staff and builds a relationship between employees and their bosses. 

3.13 Are there any specific types of recognition or rewards you would like to see implemented in the organization?

There are lots of ways to reward desirable behaviors and hard work, including gift vouchers, days off and recognition cards. Asking your staff how they would prefer to be recognized ensures you aren’t barking up the wrong tree when it comes to showing your appreciation.

3.14 How effectively does the company provide timely recognition for exceptional performance?

Timely feedback is important for establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between a good performance and receiving praise. If there is too long a delay between a positive action and a reward, either written or verbal, it diminishes the impact.

3.15 Overall, how satisfied are you with the employee recognition programs within the organization?

By the end of your employee recognition survey questions, your staff will have a clear picture of the different facets of your recognition program and its successfulness. That’s they the final question is the optimum time to ask them to provide an overall rating for their satisfaction, which you can then turn into a measurable metric.

4. FAQs

4.1 What questions should I ask an employee about recognition?

Start by asking more general questions about how much they know about your existing recognition programs, before asking more specific questions about how these are implemented and the degree to which they are effective at boosting morale and productivity.

4.2 How do you survey employees about recognition?

There are numerous pieces of software, both free and paid, that you can use to survey your employees about recognition. If you want to encourage honest responses, you can even ensure that all answers are kept anonymous.

4.3 What is a recognition survey?

A recognition survey is a questionnaire where staff are asked to assess the efficacy of your organization’s rewards and recognition framework. This can include quantitative and qualitative feedback, such as rating aspects of the system on a scale of 1-10 as well as asking for suggestions for improvements.

4.4 What are employee satisfaction survey questions?

They are questions designed to help HR teams and senior leaders gauge how happy staff feel with their workplace environment. Recognition is often a part of an employee satisfaction survey, but it can also extend to topics such as compensation, benefits and corporate social responsibility.