Becca asked me this question last week. She’s a Head of People and they are starting to think about running an update for their next employee survey. In recent years, it’s been run around October – November time.

^{Photo by Chris Lawton}

Is there a good time to run a survey?

In as far as… if you are a school and you are in the run up to exams for example – then there are better times to run (an employee engagement) survey. It does depend on what the survey is for. I’m sure there are some types of research where it could be very relevant to run a survey during that time.

Once or twice over all the years we have been asked to delay launching a survey until after the announcement on bonuses (one sticks in my mind because it was about new or improved pensions). But each time the results showed that the payout didn’t fundamentally change people’s views.

The best time to run your employee survey is when you have a clear idea of what the follow up after the survey will look like, and having the time and resources to do that.

There are times when it makes good sense to delay the survey because temporarily there are other events disrupting the everyday at the organisation. Does that overshadow the data? Again, it depends. What do you need to know? A survey with a different focus may offer crucial insight. The key is how does your survey support planning and actions after the results are in?

I would love to say run your survey without fail every year (even better – run a survey every 3 months!) but if it won’t help you or your teams … come back to it when you’re ready.

Does it matter if the survey changes to running at a different time of year? Or every 18 months or 2 years, or even 9 months? No, not if the survey leads to meaningful information sharing and improvements.

Are scores influenced by holidays or certain events during the year? Yes and no. Two things here: (1) What’s the ‘story’ that comes out of the findings? Is it ‘constant’ or variable? (2) A score of 67 is the same as a score of 65. If you’re reporting scores, be careful not to end up chasing scores.

Should you run an ’employee pulse’ survey in the annual survey’s place?

All of the questions / answers above still apply!

More Reading

On data overload and sharing the survey results:
When Employee Surveys are completely useless

Employee survey benchmark trends since 2012 (UK Workplace Study):
Work is a bit sh*t isn’t it?

Another staff survey! Why will it be any different this time?

When are you running your survey?

Can we help?