Are your remote employees engaged? Do they feel like they have the same opportunities to grow and advance in their careers as those based in the office? Is their work meaningful, and are their skills being used effectively?

If you're not entirely sure, then a Paperform remote employee engagement survey will give you insights into how your team members are feeling and what, if anything, you can do to improve their engagement.

Why Is Remote Employee Engagement Important?

First up, what do we mean by an "engaged employee?" Gallup's definition is a worker who feels "involved in, enthusiastic, and committed to their work and workplace."

But employee engagement figures have been tanking in the US. This report reveals a drop from 36% engaged workers in 2020 down to just 32% in 2022. And further Gallup research finds fewer than one in four employees believe their employer cares about their wellbeing—this is the worst percentage in almost ten years.

Paperform employee satisfaction survey.

In a remote working environment, it’s hard for employers to track how engaged their team members are. But monitoring employee engagement is important for these key reasons.

Boosting Employee Retention

According to the 2022 Employee Experience Trends report, only 69% of employees intend to stay with their current employer, meaning employee turnover is at unprecedented levels. However, Chally explains, this churn can be reduced by 29% when employees are engaged and aligned. When companies achieve this goal, they can save themselves the high recruitment costs of replacing an employee, which typically equals a third of a person’s annual salary.

Enhancing Remote Collaboration

Effective communication is a challenge in any remote organization. But the more engaged your remote employees are, the more likely they are to share information and follow the best communication practices (for example, adhering to preferred Slack etiquette.) Strong collaboration also prevents silos from forming.

Improving Productivity

According to this study, lost productivity caused by disengaged workers comes at an annual cost of $605 billion in the US alone. Common problems include missing shifts, demotivating colleagues with negativity, or being consistently late to work.

Promoting Inclusivity

If you follow a hybrid business model, it's critical that your remote team members are made to feel as equal as your office attendees. Your survey will highlight if there are any imbalances, giving you a benchmark to build on and improve remote employee engagement in the future.

Why Should You Survey Your Remote Employees?

Distribute a Paperform survey to create a feedback culture and uncover the specific concerns, needs, and aspirations of your remote staff. From here, you’ll create better policies and practices to promote engagement and improve the overall employee experience.

When done right, an engagement survey will also give you a better understanding of your employees as people—not just as cogs in a machine. You'll learn about their motivations, what drives them, and what makes them happy (or unhappy) at work.

What Types of Survey Can You Create With Paperform?

Paperform offers access to 650+ customizable templates to produce the precise survey you want, complete with your unique branding. Of these, here are some survey templates you might find useful for your remote team.

  • Employee engagement: Gathers responses on engagement related to role satisfaction, team collaboration, quality of supervision, work-life balance, and potential career growth at the company.
  • Employee satisfaction: This survey monitors satisfaction in areas like company culture, benefits, role fulfillment, stress, quality of feedback, or workplace complaints.
  • Remote employee management: To determine the best working conditions for a current or new remote team member in their specific company role.

How to Create a Survey in Paperform

Begin by signing up to Paperform for a free 14-day trial. After your trial, the Essentials package for a single user is priced at $20 per month. This provides access to unlimited forms, with 1,000 submissions and 10,000 form views permitted each month.

Template dashboard in Paperform software.

From the Dashboard, choose a blank form to customize from scratch, or use the Search Templates option for a pre-designed form. We'll enter the term 'Employee Engagement form’ for this example. Select Use Template to load the form and begin your customizations.

Employee engagement survey template in Paperform.

1. Designing Your Paperform Survey

The survey is pre-loaded with 15 questions, which you can change to match your requirements. Add help text beneath each question if you need to provide more context. The questions are set with a mix of Scale questions (the survey recipient will choose a response from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) and Text questions (encouraging more detailed notes to be submitted).

Switch to Slider, Multiple Choice, Dropdown, Rank, or Rating questions if you prefer. It’s also easy to Add a Question or reword an existing question by highlighting it and editing.

Configuring multiple choice questions in Paperform.

2. Configuring Your Paperform Survey

Next, you’ll configure your survey. Along with changing the Title, Description, and Cover Image of your survey, set Form Behaviour toggles such as:

  • Require captcha verification.
  • Hide form from search engine results.
  • Disable submissions after a maximum number.
  • Submissions close after the date/time.
Form Behaviour toggle within Paperform's configuration settings

The in-built Analytics function connects with Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel, so you can better understand your form users and their behavior.

3. Sharing Your Paperform Survey

It's easy to distribute your Paperform survey to your remote employees. Share by URL and send to your team via an email, an async message platform such as Slack, or even Facebook or Twitter if you prefer. Alternatively, you can embed your form in a password-protected area of your website or a company Wiki page.

Paperform share employee engagement survey tab.

View incoming surveys through the Share > Results tab.

Bonus features: send your forms to a Notion database for review at a later date. Alternatively, you can share the results in a dedicated Slack channel or integrate with Zapier in numerous ways to extend the functionality of your form.

Get Started Improving Employee Engagement

Paperform makes it easy to set up an employee engagement survey and get to the bottom of what’s working (and what isn’t) for your remote team. With insightful data in hand, you can make the changes necessary to create a high-performing team engaged in their work while avoiding the common stressors of remote work.