What are you hoping to assess in the survey?
Before you write your pulse survey, there are a few considerations we recommend. To gain the most effective response rates and overall results, we detail these considerations below. How will your pulse survey interact with other employee feedback rounds or initiatives that your people team might be planning?
How do you plan to evaluate and implement changes brought about by the survey’s results?
The most common reason for employees not completing a survey is their belief that results will not be acted upon. It’s important that you have a mandate, and the time, to act on any results that the survey may provide.
Preparing and planning your questionnaire
When writing your pulse survey questions, watch out for bias. Consider your goals, and ultimately what action you could take in response to your results. Pro tip: keep your statements positive!
At this early stage, you will also want to consider:
- Who you will survey?
- How frequently the pulse survey should run?
- How long will employees have to respond?
- Consider what frequency of surveys is appropriate to avoid survey fatigue among your people.
A note on data quality:
The quality of your data will have an impact on your ability to analyze results effectively. Inconsistencies in, for example, employees’ department names (eg “Dev” or “Development”) can make your analysis of results tricky.
Data inconsistency can increase the chances of our confidentiality settings impairing your analysis of respondents from particular departments or locations – we won’t show you the results of groups of less than 3 people.
So, before you design and launch a survey, have a quick look at your employee data. If you’re using BambooHR or another one of our supported HRIS systems, this data is updated automatically. If you’re using excel, check out our below guide.