Learn how Xref Engage can help you improve employee engagement

Engagement surveys are a powerful method for understanding organisational strengths and weaknesses, enhancing employee engagement, and driving continuous improvement in the workplace.

Not all surveys are created equal. It is vital to ask employees the right questions and effectively use the data collected to obtain better results. 

When conducted well, surveys can drive positive organisational change, improve retention and enhance morale. 

Xref’s Engage platform helps organisations conduct professional, high-performing surveys every single time. 

Xref Engage's Employee Engagement Surveys are designed by behavioural scientists who have used years of data, research and experience to create best-practice surveys, questions and analytics. 

In this blog, we explore how Xref Engage works, the surveys you can conduct on the platform, and the lessons learned from different organisations. 

What is Xref Engage?

Xref Engage is an extension of the Xref platform, offering a specialised suite of surveys and a range of custom engagement surveys to help organisations better understand their people and create positive change.  

With Xref Engage, organisations can access expert-designed survey templates that can be customised or created from scratch. 

All survey templates have been designed using years of scientific research in workplace psychology, management, leadership, and statistical analysis. 

Organisations using Xref Engage also receive support from leading experts. Our highly experienced consultants help with survey and question selection, data interpretation and the best way to harness results for effective change. 

Why engagement surveys are important

Engagement surveys remain one of the best ways to measure employee engagement and gather staff insights to improve performance. 

For over 100 years, organisations have used a version of engagement surveys. Research indicates that the first surveys were conducted in the 1920s by management teams looking to improve employee relations and employee loyalty. 

Since then, engagement surveys have evolved into a more scientific practice, with organisations around the world using surveys as a proven method that drives positive change. 

New technology has made running surveys easier. Data can be automatically analysed and presented to management teams, who can then create strategies for responding to feedback and improving performance. 

While engagement surveys are a powerful tool for leaders, they are also preferred by employees. 

Research by Wakefield Research and Explorance reveals 78% of employees are eager to take company surveys. Surveys were the favoured feedback option, with 38% preferring surveys, ahead of communicating directly with managers or HR. Importantly, 98% of staff say they provide honest feedback in employee surveys.

Overall, if you are looking to improve engagement in your organisation, engagement surveys are one of the best and most effective ways to begin measuring, tracking and actioning change. 

“[With employee engagement surveys] our retention rates have increased and as an organisation we have been able to grow stronger in our culture as well as our staff numbers.” Erika Hewitt, Human Resources Manager at Windgap 

Surveys offered by Xref Engage 

Xref Engage is proud to offer engagement surveys across the entire talent lifecycle. Our surveys help organisations hire, retain, and remember their employees.  

With Xref Engage, you can conduct: 

• Employee Engagement Surveys: Measure your people's satisfaction, needs, and insights to build trust, reduce attrition, and drive performance.
• Onboarding Surveys: Assess the effectiveness of your onboarding program and maximise the productivity of your new hires
• Leadership 360 Surveys: Develop effective leaders with holistic feedback from peers, managers and direct reports; uncover leadership strengths and blind spots. 
• Pulse Surveys: Collect fast, frequent, targeted employee feedback on areas like leadership, diversity, wellbeing and more. 
• Offboarding Surveys: Ask questions to understand why people leave and make organisational changes for reduced attrition.

Here’s how Xref Engage surveys can ultimately drive change for your organisation: 

• Improve company culture, productivity and onboarding processes 
• Develop a culture of continuous improvement 
• Better understand how your people are feeling about their day-to-day work
• Clarify how well your people align with your company values and mission 
• Assess how your leadership team is performing from an employee perspective 
• Understand if current organisational strategies and processes are working 
• Gather feedback from departing staff to reduce attrition and improve retention

All Xref Engage surveys can be customised to suit your organisational needs. If there’s a specific type of survey you’d like to conduct that isn’t listed here, contact our friendly team to discuss your options. 

Why choose Xref Engage? 

At the heart of Xref Engage is a group of highly experienced professionals, including HR experts and workplace psychologists, who understand the challenge of improving culture, leadership and service quality. 

Our research and decades of experience giving employees a voice enable us to tailor data-driven surveys that drive real change.

From our foundation as Voice Project at Macquarie University, we have committed to building a people-first platform that delivers deep, actionable insights at every stage of your talent journey.

Customers who choose Xref Engage enjoy four significant advantages: 

• Access to expert-designed survey templates that can be customised for simplicity and high performance. 
• Assistance from our in-house professionals, who have helped conduct thousands of surveys in various industries. 
• In-depth data insights, including industry benchmarks, so you can drive meaningful change and understand performance from a wider lens. 
• Use of cutting-edge technology. Our platform is designed with every user in mind. Both employers and employees enjoy using the intuitive Xref Engage platform. 

In short, with Xref Engage, you can be assured that your survey will be created according to industry standards and tailored to suit your organisational needs. 

Data insights from Xref Engage 

Xref Engage surveys are available globally on any device, allowing employees worldwide to provide feedback quickly and efficiently. 

Once all feedback is in, it’s time to assess the data. That’s where our Data Studio comes into play. 

Identify trends and patterns 

• Survey data is presented in easy-to-read graphs, making identifying organisational trends and patterns easy. 
• Interactive reports can be shared so HR and department managers stay aligned on the insights.
• Survey data are also presented in a Priority Matrix, which uses traffic light colour coding to illustrate high and low-performing areas. The Priority Matrix feature can help you identify and prioritise action planning with the biggest return on investment.

You can also look at survey feedback on a question level to get more granular insights and use filters to drill down into different demographics areas such as department, tenure length and more.

Understand how you track against competition 

With industry benchmarking, the Xref Engage benchmarking tool allows you to compare and contrast your survey results with those of competitors and others in your industry. 

The benchmarking functionality allows you to understand where your organisation stands out and opportunities for improvement. 

Track data over time 

We provide historical comparisons over time to track impact and celebrate improvements. 

The data insights unique to Xref Engage allow you to assess your organisation's performance and help you improve processes, innovation and customer satisfaction while reducing attrition.

eNPS

When conducting repeat surveys to check and recheck the evolution of your employee engagement over time, Xref Engage can deploy an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). The eNPS score is used to understand how likely your people will be to recommend your organisation as a place to work to friends, family or peers. 

Xref Engage customers 

Xref Engage customers range from large corporations to not-for-profits and educational institutions. We’re proud to help all kinds of organisations better understand their people and create improvements. 

Interested in learning how our customers use Xref Engage? Here are four highly successful use cases: 

• Cancer Council Victoria regularly uses employee engagement, onboarding and exit surveys to understand how its people are doing. 
• Windgap has improved retention rates and grown a stronger culture using regular employee engagement surveys. 
• Deaf Connect runs employee engagement surveys to understand how employees cope with organisational changes. 
• Swinburne University has conducted engagement surveys for over a decade, making use of in-house experts to tailor surveys to meet complex governmental requirements. 

You can also read what customers have to say about Xref Engage on our G2 profile. 

We’re passionate about helping our customers run the high-performing surveys that drive organisational change. That’s why we also run the Xref Engage Awards. 

Our Change Champion Award recognises organisations who achieve exceptional improvements in work practices and employee engagement over time. 

The Best Workplace Award recognises organisations that have achieved exceptional levels of employee engagement and satisfaction as well as demonstrating effective management practices. 

View past and present winners for both awards here. 

Final thoughts 

When you choose Xref Engage, you join a community of experts dedicated to your success. Xref Engage customers around the world are committed to giving their people a voice and improving employee engagement with the goal of higher retention and performance. 

By choosing Xref Engage, you can access a simple-to-use yet technologically advanced platform offering a suite of expert-designed surveys. All our customers enjoy advice from our in-house experts, who range from HR professionals to workplace psychologists. With Xref Engage, you can ensure your surveys are high-performing and that the data gathered can be used to drive real organisational change. 

Keen to learn how engagement surveys can benefit your organisation? Get in touch with our friendly team today.