Companies with great feedback mechanisms see a 12.5% increase in productivity because employees who feel valued are less likely to resign. Use employee feedback surveys to make your organization’s workforce feel heard and implement positive change.
Written by Gem Siocon Reviewed by Cheryl Marie Tay 9 minutes read
HR often uses employee feedback surveys to gather information from st aff and understand employee sentiment. These surveys can boost employee morale by showing them the company acknowledges and appreciates their opinions. They also provide data HR can use to make changes, track progress over time, and measure impact.
It’s important to take these surveys seriously and act on employee feedback. According to TINYpulse, only 25% of employees believe their company takes action based on the feedback they give via surveys.
An employee feedback survey contains questions about employees’ satisfaction with different aspects of their jobs, like their work environment, company culture, professional development opportunities, and relationships with colleagues and managers.
According to an ADP study, workers’ expectations for change and adaptability extend to employee feedback. Employee listening is a rising trend, with companies deploying survey tools and other real-time listening posts to quickly respond to and address feedback.
Writing an effective employee feedback survey involves a few key steps:
What do you want to learn from the survey? Are you interested in understanding the level of employee satisfaction, gauging the impact of specific programs, or measuring team dynamics? Knowing your goals will help you tailor the questions.
Use survey tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform. They allow users to customize survey questions and make it easy to distribute and analyze data post-survey.
Limit your employee pulse surveys to 10 or 15 questions, as people generally don’t complete long surveys. UC Riverside also found that surveys with too many similar questions exhaust respondents and produce inaccurate results.
Explain the benefits of participating in the survey and help employees understand how their participation can lead to greater job satisfaction for them. Be transparent about how you will use the survey results and what changes they can expect from answering the survey.
We provide a free employee satisfaction survey template to jumpstart your employee feedback efforts. It covers a wide range of topics relevant to employee satisfaction, and you can easily customize it to suit your organization’s priorities.
Did you know surveys sent on Mondays receive 13% more responses on average compared to surveys sent on Tuesdays and Fridays? This is because people are usually not overwhelmed with work yet and are likelier to have time to complete a survey.
Encourage more employees to participate by informing them that all responses will be anonymous. Leave out demographic details like name, department, age, gender, race, etc. Anonymity also results in respondents being more honest and confident in their responses, giving you more accurate information to work with.
We provide a free employee experience survey template you can incorporate into your employee feedback efforts. It covers various topics related to employee experience, and you can easily tailor it to fit your company’s priorities.
Take action based on survey results by reviewing and analyzing them, then propose solutions based on survey data. Prioritize concerns you can quickly address to show employees you take their feedback seriously, especially when the survey is still fresh in their minds.
Work closely with managers and team leaders and hold them accountable for their team’s participation in the survey. Include response rate goals to encourage their active participation in completing employee feedback surveys.
Send email reminders to employees to ensure they complete surveys. Email survey reminders are most effective within the first 42 to 78 hours of sending the initial survey invite. To avoid overwhelming employees, send four to five reminder emails spread across the period leading up to the survey completion deadline.
Share survey results company-wide to let employees know their time and feedback matter to HR and management. Highlight the company’s successes while addressing opportunities for improvement; this shows employees the organization is aware of its strengths and weaknesses and can then do what is necessary to improve.
Now that you’ve crafted, distributed, and received responses to your employee feedback survey, you must perform a survey analysis to ensure it will have an impact on your company’s workforce. Here are a few tips on how to do this:
Turn responses into numbers by assigning values to multiple-choice answers and rating scales. Categorize open-ended responses and assign numerical values to them so you can analyze them. Then, break down the data into subgroups based on department, tenure, job role, or demographics to identify variations in employee experiences.
Find recurring themes across questions, departments, or demographics. For example, decreased satisfaction scores across multiple departments may indicate a systemic issue. Implement changes accordingly and monitor them over time by comparing current survey results to past survey results to gauge their impact.
Close-ended answers provide numbers and statistics to depict overall employee sentiment (quantitative data), while open-ended responses offer insights and explanations (qualitative data) to support the former. For example, open-ended comments describing unrealistic deadlines may explain low satisfaction scores regarding workload.
Compare your survey results to internal, industry, or national benchmarks. You can include national averages for employee satisfaction within your industry or use the same information from past employee surveys. Benchmarking is important as it helps you understand your position relative to others and identify areas for improvement.
Visualization helps communicate survey results more clearly and concisely. Charts and graphs make data more accessible and allow you to better understand and identify patterns. Use bar charts for comparisons, line graphs to show trends over time, or pie charts to break down categorical data.
Focus on key trends and actionable insights to present your findings to leadership. Then, you can discuss survey results with them and develop action plans to address urgent issues. Brainstorm solutions together to ensure accountability and increase the chances of successful implementation.
Employee feedback surveys are a powerful tool for measuring employee sentiment and identifying areas for improvement. By asking the right questions, you can gather insights to help you build a more positive and productive work environment.
This list of 54 survey questions provides a solid foundation to get you started. Remember to tailor the questions to fit your specific company culture and goals, and make your surveys concise and anonymous to encourage honest participation. Finally, listening and taking action based on employee feedback will foster a sense of belonging among employees and boost employee engagement, motivation, and morale.
