How to Choose the Right Employee Engagement Survey Provider: A Guide
Employee engagement surveys are essential tools for understanding the sentiments, motivations, and challenges of your people. Choosing the right survey provider can positively impact the effectiveness of your employee engagement strategy. This guide will help you navigate through the options and make an informed decision.
What Are the Best Employee Surveys?
The best employee surveys are those tailored to your organisation’s unique needs. Providers like The Survey Initiative offer comprehensive employee engagement surveys that delve deep into various aspects of the employee experience. These surveys often include ‘core’ questions around job satisfaction, management effectiveness, work-life balance, and opportunities for personal and professional growth as well as leadership and wellbeing. Additionally, your survey provider should offer customisable options to address specific organisational issues, so that your employee engagement survey is tailored to your needs.
Are Employee Surveys Worth It?
Absolutely, if run properly! Employee surveys provide valuable insights that can drive strategic decisions. They help identify areas of improvement, highlight strengths, and give employees a voice in shaping an organisations culture. By acting on the feedback collected, organisations can improve employee engagement, reduce turnover, and enhance productivity. Engaged employees are more likely to be loyal, motivated, and aligned with company goals, making these surveys a worthwhile investment.
The survey is the ‘easy bit’ – it’s what you do with the data and information collected that is the most important part!
How to Set Up an Employee Survey
Setting up an employee survey involves several key steps:
- Define Objectives: This is essential – it’s not enough to simply want to ‘run an employee engagement survey’. You need to clearly outline what you aim to achieve with the survey and why. Are you looking to improve engagement, identify training needs, or assess leadership effectiveness?
- Choose the Right Provider: Select a provider that offers the features you need. Look for customisable surveys (not ‘off the shelf’ surveys), robust analytics, and actionable reporting. Look for an organisation you can partner with over the long term. Providers like The Survey Initiative offer various options, including pulse surveys for frequent, real-time feedback.
- Design the Survey: Work with your provider to create a survey that covers all relevant areas. Ensure the questions are clear, unbiased, and encourage honest responses.
- Communicate with Employees: Inform your employees about the survey’s purpose, how it will be conducted, and the importance of their participation. Assure them of confidentiality to elicit genuine feedback. When running follow up surveys, ensure you communicate the positive changes you have made as a result of previous surveys.
- Launch and Monitor: Distribute the survey and monitor the response rates. Make use of real-time response rate feedback to maximise your survey participation rate.
- Analyse and Act on Results: Once the survey closes, analyse the data to identify trends and areas for improvement. Develop an action plan and communicate the findings and next steps to your employees. It is imperative that local managers own their results and act on the feedback with their teams – with HR support if needed
What is a Good Participation Rate for an Employee Survey?
A good participation rate is crucial for obtaining representative and actionable insights – a high response rate gives your data rigour and validity but also shows that your people value the survey process.
Generally, a participation rate of 70% or higher is considered excellent. However, achieving this can be challenging. The single biggest factor that will affect your survey response rate is the perception that something positive will happen (or has happened if running follow up surveys) as a result of the survey feedback.
Strategies for increasing response rates include:
- Act: Take positive action on the survey findings, empower managers to own their own results and implement change locally, ensure that Leaders own and action organisation wide challenges and issues, communicate that you have taken action.
- Ensuring Anonymity: Employees are more likely to provide honest feedback if they believe their responses are confidential.
- Effective Communication: Clearly explain the survey’s purpose and how the results will be used.
- Convenient Access: Make the survey easily accessible through various devices.
- Follow-Up Reminders: Send regular reminders to encourage participation, but avoid being too intrusive.
Conclusion
Choosing the right employee engagement survey provider is a critical step in fostering a positive and productive workplace. By selecting a provider that offers tailored, actionable surveys and by implementing strategies to boost participation, you can gain valuable insights into your workforce’s needs and drive meaningful improvements. Remember, the goal is not just to collect data but to create a more engaged and motivated workforce that propels your organisation towards success.
Ready to transform your workplace? Start by choosing the right employee engagement survey provider today. Understand your team’s needs, take meaningful actions based on their feedback, and watch your organisation thrive. Don’t just gather data—make a difference. Call us now to get started and create a more engaged, motivated, and successful workforce – info@surveyinitiative.co.uk