How can you make employee surveys more effective?

1 Define your goals and audience

Before you create your survey, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. What are the main objectives of your survey? What are the key questions you want to answer? Who are the target respondents and how will you segment them? How will you use the survey results to inform your workforce management decisions and actions? Having a clear purpose and scope for your survey will help you design relevant and focused questions, as well as choose the appropriate format, timing, and distribution method.

2 Choose the right questions and format

The quality of your survey questions and format will determine the quality of your responses. You want to avoid asking vague, leading, biased, or irrelevant questions that may confuse or frustrate your respondents, or skew your results. Instead, use clear, specific, and neutral language, and align your questions with your goals and audience. You also want to choose the right type of questions, such as open-ended, closed-ended, or rating scales, depending on the level of detail and feedback you want to collect. Additionally, you want to keep your survey concise, attractive, and easy to complete, by using a logical structure, a consistent layout, and a user-friendly platform.

3 Communicate and incentivize

One of the biggest challenges of conducting employee surveys is getting a high response rate and ensuring that the responses are honest and representative. To overcome this challenge, you need to communicate effectively and incentivize your respondents. You need to explain the purpose and benefits of your survey, how you will protect their privacy and anonymity, and how you will use their feedback to improve their work experience. You also need to remind them of the deadline and follow up with them if they have not completed the survey. Moreover, you need to offer some incentives, such as recognition, rewards, or gamification, to motivate them to participate and complete the survey.

4 Analyze and act on the results

The final and most important step of making employee surveys effective is to analyze and act on the results. You need to use appropriate methods and tools to process and interpret the data, such as descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation, correlation, or regression. You also need to identify the main themes, patterns, and insights from the data, such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats. Furthermore, you need to share the results and feedback with your respondents and stakeholders, and involve them in creating and implementing action plans to address the issues and improve the outcomes. You also need to monitor and evaluate the impact of your actions, and repeat the survey process periodically to track the progress and changes.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?