Maintaining high employee engagement is crucial for organizational success, yet can prove uniquely challenging in distributed work environments. This makes proactively asking quality questions and taking the pulse of your workforce even more vital. Facilitating recurring two-way dialogue enables leaders to understand employee priorities, address concerns, and foster alignment on mission-critical goals.

Definition & Importance of Employee Engagement

What exactly is employee engagement? It refers to the level of enthusiasm, connection, and commitment staff feel towards their work and organization. Highly engaged teams frequently go above and beyond basic responsibilities out of passion for their roles. Disengaged employees, on the contrary, may only contribute minimal required effort. They are unlikely to champion organizational initiatives without prompting.

Making employee engagement a priority delivers immense dividends, while neglecting it takes a heavy toll, especially for companies embracing flexible work models:

A recent Gallup study found only 33% of remote employees reported feeling engaged, versus 41% for on-site staff. Companies falling in the bottom quartile of engagement levels faced 41% higher absenteeism and 60% more safety incidents.

However, Glassdoor notes that organizations prioritizing culture and engagement realize 14% better financial performance. They also enjoy 2.3x higher revenue per employee - meaning higher returns without inflating staff costs.

These stats clearly show why facilitating robust engagement across distributed teams makes sound leadership and financial sense. The remaining sections will cover intelligent approaches to understanding your workforce’s needs through targeted questions across a variety of facets.

Types of Employee Engagement Questions

The questions you ask employees deliver insights into a variety of factors impacting their performance, connectivity, and longevity within your organization. Categorizing question types helps identify gaps and touch on all crucial areas from leadership trust to inclusion.

Obviously we don't recommend you ask all 50 questions at once, as that would be overwhelming. However, selecting the best questions for your team will be easier with some ideas in mind.

Here is an expanded list of 50 employee engagement questions, organized by type:

Culture & Values Alignment

1.On a scale of 1-10, how aligned are daily work activities with stated cultural values and behaviors?

2. Which 1-2 cultural pillars or behaviors do you believe the company can better embody?

3. What suggestions do you have for improving alignment between our espoused and actual values?

4. How often do you see leaders and managers modeling our cultural values in their decisions and actions?

5. Do you believe our organization’s values truly guide business decisions here?

6. What behaviors do you see rewarded and celebrated most often in our workplace?

Manager & Leadership Effectiveness

7. How confident are you in leadership's handling of COVID impacts and adjustments?

8. How responsive is your direct manager when you come to them with questions or concerns?

9. Do you feel fully supported by your manager to take time off as needed?

10. Do you receive enough communication and clarity from management on organizational goals?

11. Do leaders demonstrate care for employees’ well-being as much as the bottom line?

12. Do you feel fully empowered by leadership to make smart decisions in your role?

Job Satisfaction & Meaning

13. When you wake up in the morning, how often do you look forward to the work you’ll do that day?

14. How often do you feel fully engaged in your work responsibilities lately?

15. How meaningful are the current projects and tasks you’re working on?

16. Have you been assigned responsibilities you find unfulfilling or not well aligned with your skills lately?

17. What parts of your job provide you with the most meaning and fulfillment currently?

18. What parts of your job would you be excited to tell your friends or family about?

Workplace Belonging & Inclusion

19. How comfortable do you feel being your authentic self at work culturally?

20. Do you feel like an equal and valued member of the organizational community regardless of background?

21. Have you felt excluded from important meetings or email communications lately?

22. How supportive is our culture around work-life balance for parents?

23. Does our organization actively invest in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives?

24. Have you felt comfortable being your authentic self at group meetings and events?

Growth Opportunities

25. Do you feel encouraged to develop new skills to advance your career here?

26. How satisfied are you with access to learning and development opportunities relevant to your role?

27. If interested, how clear is the path to promotion at our company?

28. Have leaders supported any desires you’ve shared around career growth?

29. Does our workplace culture motivate you to innovate and push your abilities?

30. Are you provided opportunities to develop skills outside your formal job scope should you show interest/aptitude?

Organizational Communication

31. On a scale of 1-10, how transparent do you feel communication is from leadership?

32. How quickly are organization-wide updates shared with your team?

33. Have you ever felt caught off-guard by a company announcement that leadership was aware of in advance?

34. What percentage of meetings you attend are a valuable use of time vs inefficient?

35. What suggestions do you have for improving communication across distributed teams?

36. Do you read company-wide emails and publications to stay informed?

Collaboration & Connection

37. Have bonds of trust been built between team members to enable fluid cooperation?

38. Do you interact enough with colleagues in other departments to understand their priorities?

39. How comfortable do you feel reaching out to senior leadership when you have an idea to share?

40. Do you feel recognized by peers for your unique contributions and strengths?

41. Who are your closest friends within the company? What connections would you like leadership to help facilitate?

42. Have you connected in person with a colleague you usually only communicate with virtually?

Remote Work/Life Balance

43. On a scale of 1-10, how hard is it for you to “unplug” from work and be present with family?

44. Do you feel your workload can be reasonably managed during business hours?

45. Is leadership supportive if you need to adjust your schedule temporarily for personal reasons?

46. Do you feel comfortable taking breaks while working remote, including vacation?

47. What benefits or programs could the company add to better support remote employees?

48. Do you feel pressure, stated or unstated, to be available nights and weekends?

49. Has working remotely made finding time for non-work hobbies and passions easier or harder?

General

50. What is the one piece of advice you would give a new hire on how to thrive here?

Best Practices for Collecting Feedback Remotely

Distributing an annual engagement survey is no longer enough. Regular check-ins across multiple channels are key for detecting emerging issues before they escalate with remote staff.

Proactive and recurring 1on1s:

Schedule monthly or biweekly one-on-one meetings with individual members of your distributed team. This provides a reliable forum for surfacing honest concerns in a trusted environment.

Anonymous digital feedback channels:

Digital mailboxes, short weekly polls, and anonymous questionnaires enable teams to transparently voice suggestions without fear of judgment. Act promptly on constructive criticisms submitted.

Analyze multichannel data in the aggregate:

Combine insights from polls, questionnaires, 1on1s and exit interviews to spot trends around management trust, inclusion or strategic alignment across the organization.

Final Tips

As this guide demonstrates, thoughtfully crafted and inclusive employee engagement questions provide immense visibility into the health of distributed teams. They allow remote staff to feel heard, while helping leaders refine cultures and processes to better support flexibility.

Now is the time to take employee engagement into your own hands. CultureBot’s dedicated surveys and feedback solution integrates seamlessly into your remote collaboration stack. Maintain your unique culture while enabling the resilient flexibility of distributed work. Request a demo today to learn more!