Why Your Company Needs To Invest In Pulse Surveys

Best practices of employee surveys

In today’s fast-paced world of work, checking in on employees on an annual, quarterly, or even monthly basis is simply not frequent enough.
 

Maintaining a pulse on your employees’ engagement and collecting their feedback is an essential part of modern leadership. It helps you manage change, coach for development, and increase team performance—not to mention spot issues and take action before things take a turn for the worse or good employees leave.

Pulse Surveys are the answer to the call for a replacement of the dreaded and dusty Annual Review. Short, frequent, fun, and simple, the Pulse Survey offers real-time, digestible data into how your team really feels.

Like checking your online banking, keeping an eye on engagement data becomes a natural, frequent reflex to help you know where to spend more energy and how to best allocate your resources for the overall health of your team.

1. Offer anonymity
Offering an anonymous space shows employees that the goal is understanding, and there won’t be any reprimand or finger-pointing for honest constructive or critical feedback. Providing the opportunity for anonymity gives safety to those who are more introverted or might want to touch on more sensitive topics.

2. Share results
Share your team’s results with them! They’re likely curious, and this is a great way to be transparent with your team, let them know how you plan to take action, and ask them for their ideas.

3. Follow through
The cardinal rule of surveying employees is to follow through on the results. Showing that you’re willing to turn insights into action builds trust and reduces turnover, and Pulse Surveys help you implement incremental change, rather than attempt a total overhaul after sifting through a mountain of annual survey results.

It’s great to ask questions on a variety of topics in your survey, and then dig deeper where you see issues or inconsistency. Or, if you already know an area that needs attention, you can focus on that topic specifically.

Here are some examples of questions on specific topics:

1. Relationship with manager
•    Are you satisfied with how frequently you meet with your direct manager for a feedback session?
•    When you ask your direct manager for help, can they devote time to help you?
•    Do you feel like your direct manager is aware of employee pain points?

2. Relationship with peers
•    Can you count on your peers when you need help?
•    Are communications among peers honest and transparent?
•    On a scale from 0-10, how much do you trust your peers?

3. Feedback
•    Is the feedback you receive frequent enough to help you understand how you can improve?
•    On a scale from 0-10, how valuable is the feedback you receive?
•    How would you rate the importance that your organization gives to your opinions and suggestions?

4. Personal growth
•    Do you feel you have enough freedom to decide how you do your work?
•    Is there someone at work who helps you grow and develop?
•    Do you feel that your work has an impact on your organization’s purpose?

Once you’ve integrated Pulse Surveys into your organization’s feedback cycles, you can start tracking trends. Cycling through the same questions over time helps you see how things shift and understand the impact of your efforts.

This article originally appeared here. 

Nora St-Aubin is a Content Marketing Specialist at Officevibe.  Visit www.officevibe.com  Connect Nora St-Aubin Follow @Officevibe