Team Effectiveness Survey: Maximizing Performance and Results

According to the Kincentric Global Employee Engagement report, employee engagement has seen a decline, with engaged employees decreasing from 71% in 2020 to 62% in Q1 2022. To address this issue, organizations are seeking fast, efficient, and affordable solutions to boost employee engagement, including team effectiveness surveys. 

Today, we'll explore the power of team effectiveness surveys as a tool for creating a high-performing culture where employees feel rewarded. By utilizing team effectiveness surveys, along with employee satisfaction surveys and employee performance reviews, even underperforming teams can achieve the desired results.

Team effectiveness survey questions: examples to get started

Crafting a team effectiveness survey involves gathering pieces of a puzzle to understand your team's dynamics. The questions should cover different aspects of team effectiveness. These questions can be adapted for team effectiveness surveys, change management surveys, and performance review surveys.

Team goals and objectives

• How clear are the team's goals and objectives to you?
• How well do you think our team's goals align with the company's overall goals?

Communication and collaboration

• How would you rate our team's communication quality from 1 to 10?
• How effectively do you think our team collaborates on projects?

Roles and responsibilities

• How clear are your responsibilities within the team?
• Are everyone's roles within the team well-defined?

Decision-making processes

• How fair do you think our team's decision-making processes are?
• How efficiently do you think our team makes decisions?

Conflict resolution

• How effectively do you think our team handles disagreements or conflicts?
• Do you feel comfortable expressing differing opinions within the team?

Accountability and trust

• How much faith do you have in your team members to carry out their responsibilities?
• How responsible do you feel for your position on the team?

Rewards and recognition

• How often do you believe your hard work is acknowledged and rewarded?
• How pleased are you with our team's recognition and rewards?

The questions you ask in your team effectiveness survey may greatly impact the information you get. You may better grasp your team's dynamics and challenges and find opportunities for growth by asking the proper questions. Remember that the aim is to build a high-performing team and create an environment where with highly-engaged employees where everyone feels appreciated and rewarded.

How to conduct a team effectiveness survey to improve performance and results

‍

Knowing the questions to ask on your team effectiveness survey is only halfway through. Another important aspect is understanding what steps to follow or bases to cover to make team effectiveness surveys work. These are the things to consider when conducting team effectiveness surveys.

Determine survey goals

Clearly define your objectives and what you aim to measure with the survey. Decide whether it will be a work-life balance survey or a team effectiveness survey to ensure focus and effectiveness.

Select the right survey tools

Consider using performance management software like Peoplelogic, which offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features to optimize your surveys. Peoplelogic, a top competitor to Betterworks, allows you to design and schedule surveys, collect feedback, and analyze results in a centralized platform. It's an ideal tool for creating and distributing team effectiveness surveys, enhancing employee engagement.

Additionally, Peoplelogic offers AI-based features that provide quick report analysis, smart AI suggestions for goals and feedback, and valuable insights about your organization and team. Leveraging such tools saves you time and ensures you have the best resources available.

Craft relevant and actionable questions

Creating effective survey questions is key. They should assess team effectiveness aspects like communication, collaboration, and goal alignment. Here's how to make them SMART:

1. Specific. Questions should target a particular aspect, like "How would you rate our team's communication quality?"
2. Measurable. Make responses quantifiable, for example, using a Likert scale (1-5 or 1-7) to measure agreement levels.
3. Achievable. Frame questions to yield actionable insights, like "How can we improve team communication?"
4. Relevant. Questions should be pertinent to the team and organization. Irrelevant ones may cause confusion or disengagement.
5. Time-bound. Consider the time frame your questions address to identify trends over time, such as experiences over the past quarter.

Ensuring your questions are SMART allows you to gather valuable data to improve team effectiveness. Besides, you can also try this approach for other tools, a career development survey perhaps.

Distribute the Survey

Once your survey is ready, it's time to distribute it to your team. Sharing the team effectiveness survey allows both teams and individual members to contribute and learn from the feedback. With Peoplelogic, you can easily schedule and send out surveys, ensuring they reach the right teams and members at the appropriate time.

Analyze Results

Analyzing the survey results provides a comprehensive overview of your organization's team effectiveness and employee engagement. However, manually reviewing responses and identifying trends can be time-consuming. Metrics to consider include average scores, response distribution, and trends over time.

Peoplelogic simplifies this process with its data analysis and visualization tools. It automatically calculates key metrics and presents data through user-friendly graphs and charts. Additionally, Peoplelogic offers insights and recommendations based on the results, saving you time and effort while providing deeper insights to enhance team effectiveness. Furthermore, Peoplelogic can also serve as a 360-degree feedback software.

How to enhance team effectiveness based on survey insights - HR Tips

‍

So, at this point, you've come up with the questions, conducted your survey, and analyzed the results. Now what? Here are some tips from HR professionals on how to leverage your survey insights to maximize your team performance, employee engagement, and company productivity:

1. Identify strengths and areas for improvement

Survey results are a goldmine of information, offering valuable insights into team strengths and areas needing improvement. Gallup indicates that measuring employee strength is a direct way to boost employee engagement.

Pro HR Tip: if collaboration scores high, but communication doesn't, you know where to focus your efforts. Performance review software like Peoplelogic comes with advanced analytics, and dashboards can help identify these trends, streamlining the process and fostering awareness for improvement.

2. Align team goals with organizational objectives

With only 21% of employees in the U.S. feeling engaged at their work, it is crucial to deal with such an issue to achieve the company's goals. Besides, alignment with organizational goals is a key factor to measure by a team effectiveness survey.

Pro HR Tip: if your survey lacks clarity in this area, it's time to revisit your team goals. Remember that this aspect is crucial for leaders, managers, and employees. Luckily, you can have tools like Peoplelogic, whose goal-setting feature allows for easy setting and tracking of team goals that align with your company's vision, ensuring your team understands how their work contributes to the organization's overall goals.

3. Facilitate open communication and collaboration

Harvard Business Review reports that 55% of employees lacking engagement at work considered looking for a new job. Communication and collaboration are the lifeblood of any effective team. If your team effectiveness survey or communication effectiveness survey results indicate a need for improvement in these areas, there are some things you can do.

Pro HR Tip: encourage employee feedback and demonstrate respect for their input. Tackle problems head-on, and don't shy away from difficult conversations. Make an effort to get to know your team members personally, as this can break down barriers and foster a more open communication environment.

4. Provide training and team development opportunities

Survey results highlight areas where your team could benefit from further training needs assessment, whether technical or soft skills like leadership and communication.

Pro HR Tip: Benchmark against the competition. Before starting a new initiative, find out what the competition is doing regarding training and development. Naturally, Peoplelogic's growth plans feature can help identify these opportunities, showing your team members that you're invested in their growth and improving team effectiveness and employee engagement.

5. Promote a positive team culture and accountability

Forbes indicates that 71% of employees will seek a new job if their workplace culture deteriorates. Positive team culture and accountability among team members can significantly enhance team effectiveness, increase employee engagement, and result in high-quality work. Regular feedback and recognition are crucial for success.

Pro HR Tip: create an employee recognition program: Recognize and reward employees for achieving outstanding results. Doing so will encourage employees to continue performing at impressive levels and make them feel valued. Team management tools like Peoplelogic include a praise feature that rewards excellence and reinforces company culture.

Please remember that team effectiveness surveys are more than simply a tool for frequent feedback. It is the first and most important stage in developing a great team. You must pay attention to this at the very beginning to get the results you expect.

Team Effectiveness Survey Template

1. Team Goals and Objectives

How clear are the team's goals and objectives to you?

1 (Lowest)

2

3

4

5 (Highest)

How well do you think our team's goals align with the company's overall goals?

1

2

3

4

5

2. Communication and Collaboration

How would you rate our team's communication quality from 1 to 5?

1

2

3

4

5

How effectively do you think our team collaborates on projects?

1

2

3

4

5

3. Roles and Responsibilities

How clear are your responsibilities within the team?

1

2

3

4

5

Are everyone's roles within the team well-defined?

1

2

3

4

5

4. Decision-Making Processes

How fair do you think our team's decision-making processes are?

1

2

3

4

5

How efficiently do you think our team makes decisions?

1

2

3

4

5

5. Conflict Resolution

How effectively do you think our team handles disagreements or conflicts?

1

2

3

4

5

Do you feel comfortable expressing differing opinions within the team?

1

2

3

4

5

‍

Conclusion

Conducting a team effectiveness survey is a powerful way to understand various aspects of your team's dynamics, identify areas for improvement, and know where you stand regarding employee engagement. With the right tools, like Peoplelogic, and a strategic approach, you can leverage your survey insights to maximize team performance and results.

Ready to take the next step? Contact us to request a demo and see how Peoplelogic can transform your team's performance.