Collaboration is one of the most important elements in any organization. According to Salesforce, 86% of executives say that ineffective collaboration and communication is a major cause of failures in businesses. At the same time, only 18% of employees report getting communication evaluations during performance reviews. If communication and teamwork are so important and have a positive impact on the overall company culture, why aren’t more organizations asking individual team members about it?
If you want to change this within your organization, a key tool to use is a team performance survey. A team performance survey asks your team members about different performance elements, such as their thoughts on team effectiveness, leadership and communication. A simple team survey only takes your employees a few minutes to complete but can provide you with some very useful feedback. Below, we’ll detail how you can get started with an effective team performance survey of your own.
Understand What Makes Teams Effective
Before you start creating your team survey, it’s a good idea to take some time and ensure you understand what makes teams effective. There are certain traits that effective teams have that help them complete tasks faster and more accurately, while also having happy team members. By identifying these traits first, you can better tailor your survey to ensure you’re measuring for these characteristics. Here are 4 traits that make teams effective.
Goals
First, effective teams set reasonable goals. They decide what they want to achieve in both the short and long term. Effective teams also map out the steps necessary to achieve those goals, creating a detailed blueprint for reaching their desired endpoint. Without reasonable and specific goals, teams are more likely to drift along and not achieve the desired results. If you want to improve your employee productivity, it’s essential that you set goals.
Communication
Effective teams also communicate well with one another on a regular basis. Team members keep one another up-to-date on their progress and discuss issues as they arise, making sure there aren’t any inconsistencies in team dynamics. Good communication also includes seeking feedback from team members and listening to the ideas of others. Finally, to communicate effectively with one another, teams often rely on communication software tools, such as group messaging, project management software, and emails.
Accountability
Accountability means that you can rely on each person to perform their assigned tasks. Within any team, it’s important that team members and team leaders hold one another accountable. A team is only as strong as its weakest link. If one team member doesn’t perform up to standards, it can drag the entire team down. When this happens, it’s important that either another team member or the team leader works to hold that member accountable to improve performance.
Work Environment
Finally, a team’s work environment can impact its effectiveness. To achieve the best results, team members need to work in a positive and motivational atmosphere. It should be an environment where team members encourage one another and all want what’s best for the organization. A strong work environment also doesn’t necessarily have to be in-person. There are plenty of ways that team leaders can motivate their remote employees, creating a positive virtual work environment.
Speak with Team Leaders
If you have team leaders besides yourself, it’s often helpful to talk with them before you start developing your team survey. A conversation with them can help to reveal what they believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of their team. You can then use this feedback to better create your team survey and ensure you are including the right types of questions.
Speaking with team leaders can also help you check if your leaders have a good sense of their own team. You can compare the results of your survey with the feedback you received from your team leaders and ensure they align. For example, if a team leader says their group has great communication, but the team performance survey reports otherwise, you can work with your team leader to better identify issues within their team.
Choose Your Questions
The biggest part of your team survey is the questions you choose. You need to think about not only what you want to ask but also how you want to ask it and how many employee questions you want to include on the survey. Asking a wide range of questions can provide you with more feedback but it will also take longer for your team members to complete. If you include too many employee survey questions, your team members may not spend as much time carefully considering each question as you would like, not to mention this takes away from their other responsibilities.
A great way to get started is with simple rating questions. For example, you can provide your team members with a series of statements and ask them to rate how strongly they agree or disagree with the statement. Using this format makes it easy for the team members to complete and can provide you with valuable data for analysis.
Example Team Performance Employee Survey Questions
Here are some example statements you can ask your team members to rate with the options Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, and Strongly Agree as possible answers:
- My team leader listens to the opinions of others
- I feel comfortable expressing my opinions in team meetings
- I feel inspired to come to work each day
- My team communicates well with one another
- The team leader sets reasonable goals and deadlines
- Everyone on the team pulls their own weight
- I feel like I can turn to my team members for assistance
If you do not want to use this format, some other employee questions you can ask in a team survey include:
- Do you feel your team leader communicates goals and expectations well?
- What improvements would you like to see within your team?
- How could your team improve communication?
- Do you feel the team leader handles inter-group conflicts well?
- Is there anything we can do to improve the project management process?
Reevaluate Your Survey
After you send out your survey and start to receive results, it’s important that you reevaluate the survey. Ask yourself questions like:
- Did we get a high response rate?
- Did we learn what we needed to from the survey?
- Could we improve any questions for better results?
Doing so will allow you to improve your survey for the next time you send it out and increase the overall level of employee satisfaction. To get the most from your team performance survey, you need to send it out regularly so that you can compare results and see if you’re making progress. By analyzing the survey after you send it out and looking for ways to improve it, you help to ensure you’re getting the most from your survey each time you deliver it to your team. You’ll then get better data and, as a result, be able to make better decisions for your organization.
Get Started with Your Team Performance Survey Today
Creating and delivering a team performance survey is an excellent way to learn more about how well your team operates. You can create a team performance survey in a short amount of time and gather some very useful data from the results. As long as you include some useful questions and take the time to improve your survey as you go along, there’s no reason why you can’t create an effective team performance survey and start to make improvements based on the data before long.