Gaining actionable insights to enhance employee engagement.
Understanding how employees are feeling is the first step towards creating a better work environment. With numerous tools and techniques available it’s sometimes hard to know which—and when—surveys should be administered. While surveying once a year on a large scale is important, sometimes you shouldn’t wait an entire year to see how your employees are feeling.
Annual employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys serve a unique purpose in your employee engagement strategy. Pulse surveys help you gain insight on a smaller, specific scale and are a compliment, not a replacement, for employee engagement initiatives. They are an important tool for pulsing employees identified as hotspots during your annual engagement survey, checking in on attitudes about new leadership, or important company initiatives. Annual engagement surveys measure the drivers of employee engagement and sentiment while pulse surveys measure more tangible things.
Pulse – “I feel the new process for product launch was a good change for our company.”
Pulse – “Rank the following three benefits in order of importance: health insurance, matching retirement, vacation time.”
Annual – “I trust the leadership of this organization.”
Annual – “I rarely look for a job at another organization.”
By continually gathering insights on how employees are feeling, you’ll have more-informed decision making and be able to pinpoint areas that require improvement more regularly.
At WSA, we always say “Just because you can survey, doesn’t mean you should”. Before deploying any pulse survey it’s important that the organization has determined what they need feedback on and that they’re ready and willing to act on the information from the survey. A successful pulse survey implementation includes:
Aligning the frequency of pulse surveys with your organization’s ability to deliver on employee priorities is key to a successful pulse survey. If you can’t deliver action from the feedback—don’t ask for the feedback. And, don’t ask too often. Without proper organization, readiness, and frequency, the effect of the pulse survey diminishes.
Identifying changes in employee experience early on enables you to respond faster as an organization.
Getting feedback in the moment ensures you’re problem-solving issues that aren’t outdated or no longer important to your employees.
Listening more frequently illustrates that leaders care about employee opinion.
Gathering feedback in real-time, on targeted issues alone won’t serve as a solution for increasing employee engagement within your organization. Determining high-level priorities through an engagement survey and what’s important to employees at key moments in their careers through lifecycle surveys, are significant factors in enhancing engagement. Integrating insights from pulse surveys, annual engagement surveys, and lifecycle surveys improve the effectiveness of your engagement strategy. The frequency, scope, and timing of each survey type contribute to the unique purpose that each survey serves.
Organizations that are successful in attracting and retaining top talent use various methods to improve their employee engagement. Gathering data at each important stage and taking action from your employee’s feedback demonstrates a commitment to the employees, fostering engagement and minimizing turnover.
