9 Steps to Creating Valuable and Effective Employee Surveys

Companies like yours need to know what’s on their employees’ minds, which explains why many of them use employee surveys on an organizational scale. But how good – and accurate – is the information gleaned from them? Are you getting the truth or just what your workers think you want to hear? Even worse, are you causing more harm than good with the surveys you’re giving? Is it that hard to create a great and informative survey?

It can be if you’re not sure what you’re doing.

 

Why employee surveys are important

Successful companies know that the right survey given the right way still provides terrific business benefits. These include:

• Measuring employee engagement
• Providing every employee a voice in how the company does business
• Increasing employee engagement and trust in your leadership group
• Benchmarking key business results, policies, or procedures both on an industrial scale and specifically to the company
• Helping to set individual and organizational goals for the future

There is no doubt that knowledge is power, and effective surveys provide company leadership with the information they need to make better business decisions.

For instance, if a survey shows that only 28% of your employees are satisfied with your company’s professional development opportunities, you can compare your results with your industry’s to see where you stand. From there, you can make necessary changes to improve that process, which increases your current employee engagement and productivity and makes you a more attractive company to work for to future employees.

 

 

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Nine steps to giving great employee surveys

Conducting an internal employee survey can be tricky. You want to ensure you gain all the information you need, but you also have to ensure it’s discreet. Otherwise, employee responses may be less than honest. Here are the steps you can take to craft a productive employee survey:

1. Anonymous versus confidential – which should you use?

Regardless of the platform you use to administer your surveys and their results, employee anonymity is essential, and confidentiality of the results is critical for you to get valuable and honest information to make better business decisions. You might think of anonymity and confidentiality as indistinguishable. But when it comes to employee surveys, it’s important to know the difference between the two:

• Anonymity means the respondent’s identity isn’t known by anyone administering the survey.
• Confidentiality means the survey’s administrator knows the identity of the respondent, but their identity is never revealed to anyone else in the company.

While both anonymity and confidentiality protect the employee’s identity, many workers trust confidential surveys less than anonymous ones. They fear that somehow anything critical they write will make it back to the wrong people and they’ll be retaliated against later.

Regarding which one you should use and at what time, there are reasons to use either depending on the survey type and what you’re trying to find out. Consider the survey topic and the problem it’s trying to solve before settling on a format.

2. Be specific in figuring out what you want to know

Giving surveys randomly will make busy employees mad and will affect results. Decide if what you’re trying to discover needs a survey or if you can find it out in other ways. Your goal is to get as many participants as possible.

3. Make sure the timing is right to do a survey

If you’re experiencing tumultuous times as a company, it might not be helpful for a survey at that moment because your employees will be nervous about their jobs. Try to do surveys during more “normal” times.

4. Choose the right survey format

Does the information you want need open-ended essay-type answers, or can you get it from the scale-type answers (using the familiar “1 – Strongly Disagree, 5 – Strongly Agree” format)?

5. Keep surveys short and sweet

People are busy and don’t have time or patience for long surveys. If it takes more than 10 minutes, re-think what you’re doing with the survey.

6. Don’t ask two survey questions at once

Many companies will ask things such as, “This company has excellent pay and benefits,” and then give the employee the 1-5 scale to answer. Benefits and salaries aren’t the same, and an employee might love the benefits provided but feel the company doesn’t pay anywhere near industry standards. Be simple and direct.

7. Involve employees in the survey process and design

Before rolling surveys out to the company, use a focus group of employees to run it by first. They can help you fine-tune any kinks in the survey and stop you from causing potential problems with them.

8. Use neutral language in all survey questions

When you ask positive questions like, “My boss is very helpful” your results will tend to be a bit too rosy. On the other hand, negative-leaning questions like “My department is always understaffed” will skew results the other way. You might phrase it as, “I feel my department is adequately staffed” with answers ranging from 1 – strongly disagree, to 5 – strongly agree.

9. Share the survey results with employees

Employees will naturally want to know the results of every survey if only to see where their answers stood against their co-workers. Sharing the results AND what leadership is going to do to make improvements in the company only strengthen the bond of trust between management and staff.

 

Use surveys the right way and reap the rewards

If your company isn’t using employee surveys, you’re probably missing out on finding serious cracks in your processes and employee engagement. Considering the rate of employee engagement is currently estimated to be around 30% nationwide, it’s time you asked your employees how they feel. You might find a plethora of useful information.