A checklist for testing your survey before you launch

Your survey is “final”, it’s been converted into its online form and looks great, but before you send out emails (or letters) to all staff asking for their time, you need to run through some final checks.

1. Complete the survey yourself, answering each question for real.
   Read everything on the screen. You need to carefully check detail – do questions make sense? Find typo’s, are instructions clear? etc.
2. Check that the survey has been configured to only allow one submission of the survey (not a “test” mode), and that data-capture is turned on!
   A client told me one occasion they launched a survey but failed to capture any answers after page 2 because of a configuration error (this shouldn’t be a problem unless your empoyee survey is being hosted by your IT department; easiest way to check is to look at the survey data/results).
3. Check the survey’s “thank you”, login and privacy pages.
4. Pretend to be someone else from a different department or a junior member of staff and take the survey. Do they see all the questions they’re meant to? If your survey has branches (different sections of questions for different groups), then check each branch.
5. TOP TIP! Ask a colleague (or two) who has not been involved in the project to review the survey themselves. Ask them to point out any typo’s and questions/instructions that aren’t clear.
6. Check the invite letter/email. If you are emailing invitations, send yourself a test email, read the content through (aloud if needs be), check the mail-merge fields and click on the links included in the message – does every link work?
7. You need an up-to-date employee database. It is important that this is accurate, current (check that recent leavers have been removed) and includes contact details and any demographic data required (e.g. department, length of service).
8. Has the pre-survey message from senior management been sent?

If you’re very nervous, you could also soft-launch the survey first by sending invites to a small group to check everything is ok, then roll-out the survey to all employees when you’re happy.

Continue reading: Your survey has launched – what next?

Planning an employee survey? Using a specialist survey company brings expertise and tried and tested processes to the project. It also helps ensure respondent anonymity. Learn more about our employee surveys (online and printed) here.