Once you have know exactly what your employee survey is setting out to achieve (the objective), a common mistake is to jump straight to designing the questionnaire content. This is a major part of designing a feedback study for sure, but it is essential to plan the communications before any questions are committed to the page.
Why? Because
the success of any employee survey depends on the workforce hearing and believing the message that is broadcast with the survey.
Do not rely on a letter or email asking the employee to take part in the survey, and then ad-hoc chasing of department heads and team leaders to remind staff to take that survey. As soon as you know that the project is going ahead, use your company newsletter, intranet, notice boards, team meetings, company briefings to promote the survey! Tell staff what it is, what it aims to achieve and how their feedback can make a difference.
If your organisation has conducted employee surveys before, then it is very important to share previous findings and explain the impact and benefits from the last survey. (If results weren’t shared or acted upon last time then investigate why not, and then start afresh – explain why it’s going to be different this time around!)
The aim is to get your staff interested, excited even, in taking part and to be looking out for the survey when it arrives. Your staff are busy people. They need reminders and the cynics can also feel that if serious effort is being made to promote the survey then perhaps it is a good thing afterall.
A couple of days before the survey launches, arrange for an email or letter to be sent from the CEO to all staff, asking for their help with this important project. And then monitor response rates. Use the intranet, notice boards and team meetings to report status and encourage participation (well done Leeds, come on Marketing). And of course, send a reminder email to all non-respondents a week later (or a follow-up by letter/postcard/SMS as soon as is practical).
Nothing here is rocket science, but by planning ahead and making the most of all the communication channels available, other non-survey activity will hopefully not get in the way of ensuring your staff do have the opportunity to take part.
Finally, when the survey closes and the analysis stage begins, send out a thank you message to all staff. Let everyone know how many took part, and when the findings will be published.
Continue reading …
You may also find last month’s article Getting Started with Employee Surveys helpful, or choosing to print or email your employee survey.
Thinking of outsourcing your next employee survey? Learn more about Surveylab’s employee surveys or get in touch – we’d be happy to talk!
Offering expert advice for designing and implementing online survey best practice. We share our experiences working in the fields of customer satisfaction and employee engagement research.
Harvard University is launching an employee survey to its staff today – information about it is posted on its (public) intranet here – http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/taking-the-pulse-of-harvard/
This is a good example of what the communications need to cover, starting with why and also highlighting the confidentiality.
The survey is branded as the 2011 Staff Pulse Survey and the supporting poster/flyer has a nice tag line – “What’s YourHarvard like?”. There’s also a video too (not accessible to the public).