How to create and effective employee survey

1. Why conduct an employee survey?

The three main reasons to conduct an online employee survey are 1) to identify issues that can affect your employees quality of life at work; 2) identify ways in which productivity can be increased; and 3) identity issues that can affect client satisfaction.

An employee survey that is properly designed will yield results that will help you set priorities within the different actions you can take to resolve the issues identified.

When the survey targets the first factor identified above, the results will help you determine the key factors that will help with the retention of employees. This information is very valuable because the cost of replacing employees far exceeds the cost of their retention.

2. Focus on key aspects

When designing the survey, you should focus on one or two key aspects. Do not try to cover every conceivable topic. If you try to cover too many topics, you will not be able to ask detailed questions. By asking detailed questions on a few key topics you will get more accurate information then by trying to cover every topic.

Limiting the topics covered will also limit expectations. If you cover many topics, employees will expect that you will take action on all of them once the survey is concluded. If you fail do address all of them, the credibility of the exercise will be lessened and participation in future initiatives will be hurt.

For example, if you ask questions on the sufficiency of vacation time offered to employees. You must be certain that, if it is raised by many participants as a negative issue, you can address it. If you clearly cannot provide a solution once the survey is completed, it is preferable not to raise the issue.

It will also limit the number issues that need to be addressed if any are raised by the results. By having fewer issues, you can concentrate on them and more easily deliver effective action to correct them.

Another advantage of limiting the topics is that it keeps the survey shorter; that will increase participation. You can always conduct another employee survey to get information on other topics later. By successfully completing one survey and addressing the issues in a way that makes a difference, your credibility will be enhanced and employees will participate more willingly in future consultations.

3. Go beyond aggregate statistics

Aggregate statistics are generally not sufficient to understand the dynamics between individuals and groups, and organisational dynamics. Aggregate statistics may raise a doubt as to the existence of such problems, without, however, providing hints of the problem or of its solution(s).

When targeting a particular problem, you should always ask participants to identify the problem and to identify solutions.

However, you need to keep a balance between closed questions and open ended questions. The answers to open ended questions can be harder to analyse. It is important to focus the participants’ attention to specific issues and ensure they understand what is sought in an open ended question. A question that is poorly drafted and misunderstood will lead participants to answer all sorts of things and, as a result, it will be impossible to analyse.

4. Include demographics

A good employee survey will have a proper set of demographical questions. Employees should indicate their department and their age by range, i.e. less than 21, 21-30, 31-40, etc.

This information is crucial, different departments have different issues, so do people in different age brackets. The demographic information will let you focus the analysis on specific groups.

5. Limit expectations

As indicated above, it is important not to raise expectations too high. If you raise certain points, employees will expect you to act on them. If you fail to act, employees will think your organisation lacks consideration towards them. Furthermore, any future attempt to consult the employees will be met with cynicism.

6. Preserve the confidentiality of individual responses

Employees rarely feel comfortable criticizing their colleagues and employer. If you provide employees with the guaranty that their answers will remain confidential, it will increase their level of comfort and they will answer more truthfully. Obtaining complete and accurate information is paramount. If you get misleading information because the employees do not feel comfortable when answering the survey, you might take no corrective actions (no one complained), or take action on more benign issues because no one raised the more important and controversial issues.

Preserving confidentiality for employees is generally accomplished by mandating an independent third party to conduct the online survey and compile the results. You can draft your own questionnaire, and ask the third party to collect the data on your behalf.

7. Increase the response rate

For employee surveys, the key factor that will increase participation is your ability to communicate the importance of the survey to your employees. You have to let them know you are doing this to improve the quality of their work life.

Keeping the survey within a reasonable length will also help the participation rate. If the survey is too long, you run the risk that participants will abandon it mid-way through. Preferably, the online survey platform you use should offer the option of letting participants save their work and come back to it later. The Intercept online survey software offers this feature.

Another way to boost the participant rate is to give incentives or prizes: diner for two, money, tickets, electronic equipment, etc.

8. Be transparent

Provide all the aggregate statistical results to employees. When providing samples of comments, do not only select the positive comments and leave negative ones out. The absence of negative comments reflects poorly on the credibility of the results.

If you gave prizes, makes sure you inform all participants of who won the prizes.

9. Follow up with an action plan

When inviting participants to complete the survey, set out a follow-up timeframe that includes when the results will be made available and when the action plan will be presented. If possible, the action plan should also include timelines. Remember that once you have raised issues, employees will expect concrete action within a reasonable timeframe. Failing to deliver can cause further distress.

The Interceptum online survey platform offers a wide selection of features to carry out organisational online surveys and employee surveys. You will find all the information to create your online survey and invite participants here.

Using Web Survey Software and Website Visitor Intercepts

When you are evaluating web survey software, pay close attention to what each has to offer in the way intercepting web visitors to your site who are invited to participate in your survey or poll. You will want to make sure that the software does not use popups as a way to ask visitors to participate because a blocker will prevent them from showing up. Instead make sure that the message appears on your website.

Other features of these programs should include:

• An easy way for you to specify the invitation message that will display to intercepted website visitors.
• An easy way to integrate your message by adding a simple script to the page from which you want the message to appear.
• An easy way to add the specific URL you want the website visitors who accepted the invitation to be redirected to.
• An easy way to specify exactly which survey you want the visitors who accepted the invitation to complete. This way the visitor will stay on your site and not be redirected to another. They will answer all survey questions without leaving your website.
• An easy way to invite visitors from different domains to participate in your survey from which your website is accessible. These visitors should be tracked individually from different domains.
• An easy way to set the parameters that control which visitors receive an invitation to participate in the survey. These should include number of pages visited and time spent on your site.
• An easy way to prevent inviting the visitor to participate once they have declined.
• An easy way to set up multilingual invitations so you can reach visitors from all parts of the world.

These are just a tip of the iceberg of what your web survey software should offer.

What to Look for in Web Survey Software

Not all web survey software used to create online questionnaires has the same features, but there are some minimum functions that one should expect to be offered. Some of these features include:

• The ability to create an introduction and conclusion message that will be presented to respondents of the survey.

• The software should support a variety of types of questions, including categorical, multiple choice, ordinal, matrix and text.

• The survey questions should offer the options of mandatory questions, conditional questions, short answer identifiers and the ability to offer comments.

• The web survey software should allow the creator to specify access, either public, private or by web site interception.

• A question randomizer should also be included in the software.

• A progress bar should also be an option.

There is much more that should be offered by any software used to create a web survey, but the above should be available at a minimum.

Types of Questions for an Online Survey

When creating an online survey there are certain types of questions you should consider using to obtain the information you desire. The choice of questions in a survey is crucial for the analysis of results.

These are:

Categorical: respondents make one choice from a group of choices.

Multiple choice: respondents are allowed to make more than one choice from a group.

Ordinal: respondents are asked to rank a series of choices in order of preference;

Matrix: respondents are required to complete a data table. The values entered may be either numbers or text, or they could be asked to select from a list.

Text: respondents are asked to enter text in their own words.

An online survey may be composed of one type of question, or a combination of some or all of these types. Furthermore, a web survey can use conditional questions to create a sophisticated questionnaire that will be easy for participants to complete. The participants will not need to read complicated instructions on how to respond, since the question skip logic that determines which questions must be answered will be automatic and hidden from participants.