5 things employee engagement surveys don’t tell you

There’s a catch-22 when it comes to employee surveys: You need to establish a baseline for employee engagement to know if your programs are effective, but if your employees are disengaged, you can’t trust their answers.

Workers who feel their employers don’t recognize or care about their efforts may not give the most forthcoming answers. Some employees think, “I’ll just tell them what they want to hear. They’re not going to do anything anyhow.” Other employees may even feel their employers would use their answers against them.

Here are five things your employee engagement survey won’t tell you:

1. The true level of disengagement

Many HR professionals agree that employee engagement surveys suffer some biases that skew results to look better than they actually are.