The Best Employee Pulse Survey Ever!

Summary: Here I discuss the importance of ‘Job Satisfaction’ pulse surveys as the foundation for your ‘Employee Engagement’ programmes. In this instance I propose a basic and actionable three-statement job satisfaction pulse survey that will allow you to effectively monitor the morale of your employees in real-time.

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work” (Aristotle)

My previous blog on Continuous Listening Strategies has generated much interest among HR colleagues and has raised questions on how to implement Pulse Surveys in organisations: How frequently should organisations implement these? What is the ideal length of such employee surveys? And most importantly, what, and how many topics should it cover? All these are great questions that I plan to answer in this HR opinion blog...

Employee Pulse Surveys?

Let’s first start by defining what an employee pulse survey is. In very simple terms, it is a brief and regular set of survey statements that are sent to employees. As the term ‘pulse’ suggests, this type of survey is carried out continuously to gain employees’ opinions on their job experience and workplace related concerns.

Pulse surveys can cover very specific topics such as: Organisational Values, Employee Enablement, Internal communications, Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, Trust, Employee Relationships, CSR, Customer Centricity, Health & Safety, Innovation, Change Management, among other corporate culture matters. The list of topics you can include in employee surveys is simply too vast!

So, the idea is to first have an annual global census survey with around 40 to 60 survey statements covering all potential drivers of Employee Engagement which will help you diagnose the state of your corporate culture. This census will explain the environment for everything that happens within your organisation - the spoken and unspoken behaviours and mindsets that define how your business functions.

Since your corporate culture has a significant impact on your capacity to retain employees, the quality of your products and services, your public brand/reputation, and the overall business performance of your organisation, it needs to be measured frequently and continuously.

It is here that Pulse Surveys become relevant. Pulse surveys are mostly used to monitor those specific areas that scored low in your census survey. The aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of all the actions taken as a result of your census survey feedback. Are these actions having a positive impact on the work experience of your employees?

Your pulse surveys should not take employees more than a minute to answer, hence, should not include more than five survey statements (without open-ended questions if possible). This exercise should be a super quick real-time measurement of how your employees (perhaps a representative sample of your workforce) feel about specific areas that matter to your organisation. As for cadence, don’t forget the golden rule of employee listening: Implement surveys only as frequently as you can act on them!

Job Satisfaction?

So, by now, you must be asking yourself what sort of topics should you include in your next pulse survey? Before jumping into survey content, you need to understand the foundation of employee engagement: Job Satisfaction!

Job Satisfaction is based on how employees feel about their workplaces - the state of an employee’s happiness or unhappiness in their job. Basic job satisfaction is a prerequisite to fixing any other HR corporate culture challenges that you may have. If you do not fulfil basic employee expectations in the workplace, then it will be very difficult to implement any more advanced/sophisticated employee engagement interventions.

Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Physiological (food and clothes), safety (job security), love and belonging needs (friendship), esteem, and self-actualization, where needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied first before individuals can attend to needs higher up. In the same fashion, basic job satisfaction is also at the lower end of the scale; thus, these demands must be met first. For employees to grow and reach their fullest potential, their basic job satisfaction requirements must be prioritised.

Basic job satisfaction demands also refer to Herzberg’s hygiene factors (two-factor motivation theory) which include organisational policies and procedures, supervision, relationships with co-workers and supervisors, physical work environment, job security, and compensation.

• Read more: If Employee Motivation is Low… Then Read This!
• Read more: Employee Engagement vs. Job Satisfaction

The Best Pulse Survey Ever!

My experience of speaking to employees over more than a decade would suggest there are three areas employees care about the most: their wellbeing, how they are rewarded for the work they do, and the relationship with their line-manager.

‘People-First’ organisations do address these three key employee-centric themes to determine basic job satisfaction levels. In this respect, consider using the combination of these three actionable employee opinion statements in your next pulse survey: 1. The demands of my job are about right for me; 2. My line-manager treats me with respect; and 3. I believe I am being rewarded fairly for the work I do.

“The demands of my job are about right for me.”

This powerful survey item evaluates wellbeing and is a great indicator of any potential risk of stress at work. ?Remember, stress is not an illness, but it can make your people ill. Employees become stressed when they are unable to cope with the demands of their jobs, are unable to control the way they do their work, do not receive enough information and support, are having trouble with relationships at work (e.g., being bullied), do not fully understand their role and responsibilities.

Moreover, working remotely and technology are making it more difficult to switch off, with email, social networks and numerous other apps blurring the lines between work and home. Today many employees work 50+ hours per week, keep on working through most health problems, take almost no real annual leave, and on top of that, they are not counting on any guaranteed job security. No wonder a large proportion of employees feel stressed at work.

In general, around 25% of employees tend to answer this survey statement in a negative way. If your favourable survey results score below 75% this may mean that you are not matching work demands to each of your employee’s capacity, skills and knowledge, or perhaps you are not providing the right work environment for your employees to thrive.

• Read more: Creating a culture of ‘Wellbeing’
• Read more: Dealing with Chronically Overworked Employees

“My line-manager treats me with respect.”

This survey statement evaluates the quality of supervision. The relationship between line-managers and their direct reports requires constant nurturing. How employees perceive their line-managers has a positive correlation with motivation and a negative correlation with stress at work. Poor manager-employee relationships do negatively affect productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

In this respect, trust is an essential factor in the acceptance of duties and information from line-managers. Employees become dissatisfied when they feel their managers are not receptive and responsive, e.g., they are constantly ignoring employee’s suggestions, questions, or concerns. Employees feel disrespected not only when their line-managers show no empathy but also when they feel they waste their time with meaningless tasks or unmanageable requests.

In general, opinion surveys show that the manager-employee relationship tends to be good. The survey statement that I suggest tends to show a favourable score of 85%. However, anything below that score should be taken seriously. This could mean that some of your managers are not observing or practicing adequate people-management etiquette.

• Read more: Creating a culture of ‘Respect and Trust’
• Read more: Eight Essential People Management Skills

“I believe I am being rewarded fairly for the work I do.”

This third survey statement will uncover your employees’ general opinion of your current pay and reward structure. Have no doubt that poor reward perceptions will push your high-quality talent away from your business. Reward is the biggest driver of employee retention.

This survey statement will help you identify those specific teams that feel most underpaid and/or underappreciated in your organisation. If there are multiple complaints, consider investing in salary benchmarking services to enable a comparison between your reward strategy and that of other organisations in your sector/country. Perhaps your pay level is OK but you are not properly communicating your reward packages to employees?

In general, if your favourable scores in this survey item are below 45% you may want to have a closer look at those specific business units that are bringing your scores down.

• Read more: If Retaining Top Talent Is a Struggle… Then Read This!
• Read more: Time to Stop Organisational ‘Brain-Drain’
• Read more: Ethical Pay in a Fair Society

Note: For the three survey statements that I suggest, I advise to use a five-point Likert-type response scale (e.g., Strongly disagree; Disagree; Neither agree nor disagree; Agree; Strongly agree). The favourable score refers to the combination of the ‘Strongly agree’ and ‘Agree’ responses.

Some Final Thoughts…

Let’s first clarify the relationship between employers and their employees: Organisations do not need to satisfy every single psychological need of their employees, and employees do not need to feel passionate about their employers. However, as I mention in this blog, there are those three basic employee experience concerns that employers must respect.

The three-statement pulse survey that I suggest concentrate on the contractual relationship of mutual respect and clearly defined obligations between an employer and their employees. Also, it is worth highlighting that these statements are the main drivers of job satisfaction and employee retention. You cannot engage your employees if you do not meet their most basic job satisfaction first.

Those organisations that build their business model on employees constantly going ‘above and beyond’ on their job descriptions, without extra pay or benefits, with constant line-manager pressure to achieve unworkable objectives, are on a very dangerous path. This business model is not sustainable, and it will reach the point where people simply realise they are being abused, ripped-off, and burnout… and as a consequence, will leave your organisation as soon as they get their first chance!

• Read more: Select the Right Partner for your Next Employee Survey
• Read more: Ensure ‘authentic and meaningful’ employee survey participation
• Read more: Don’t survey employees just because you can!

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Disclaimer: The author is making this ‘Opinion Blog / Guide’ available in his personal effort to advance the understanding of best practices in workplace related matters. The author assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this ‘Opinion Blog / Guide’ or for the results obtained from the use of the information provided. The information is provided on an ‘as is’ basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or timeliness and without any warranties of any kind whatsoever, express or implied. The views expressed are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any entity whatsoever with which the author has been, is now, or is to be affiliated in the future.