Employee Surveys – to outsource or manage in-house?

On the face of it, conducting an employee survey in-house is cheaper, but it requires a greater investment in time.

Shaded area represents the minimum of effort (time)
[x] is Surveylab!

When you factor in the time investment and other benefits, outsourcing is more likely to look excellent value.

What are the benefits of outsourcing to a survey company?

Expertise, technical capability, resources, experience and speed.

One major benefit of outsourcing – when it comes to employee surveys – is the extra layer of confidentiality introduced by using a third party. It is impossible to guarantee anonymity to employees when H.R. (or I.T.)  is processing the responses! Yet a survey company can monitor responses and follow-up with non-respondents without having to identify individuals to the employer.

There are some very good DIY services available, but while they can eliminate a lot of the technical aspects of creating the survey and capturing responses, they still take up a lot of personal time to implement effectively. A certain level of knowledge and confidence is still required to design an actionable questionnaire, and this is where a professional survey company helps.

Planning an employee survey? Take a look at Surveylab – we offer both full-service or just the setup/fielding if you only need support to create an online survey and capture responses.

This chart probably applies to any survey, not just employee surveys.