When should you survey employees for engagement?

Timing is everything. If it’s too frequent, it’s survey fatigue. If it’s too rare, you will miss crucial feedback. Aim for semi-annual surveys to catch the vibe without overwhelming folks. But context matters. If you just rolled out a new policy or experienced a company shake-up, that’s a great time to check in. What you ask is equally crucial. Make room for open-ended questions—sometimes the juiciest insights aren’t going to be multiple choice questions. And, most importantly… Make it anonymous. You want brutal honesty, not sugar-coated ‘all is wells.’ If you strike that balance in timing, adapt to context, and give room for candid chatter — you’ll get a goldmine of insights.

Our sister company brought the churn rate from 27% down to 7% by implementing an empl. eng. solution. Here are some key takeaways: 1) It is called a "pulse check" for a reason. Weekly data points indicate problems yet to happen. 2) The best response rate is on Fridays. It allows people to have a recap of the week before they "log off" on the weekend. 3) Always ask the same "well-being" question to all. That category needs to be monitored constantly. 4) Company-wide visible praise by peers boosts morale and helps people feel seen by departments outside of their own. 5) Qualitative data from comments helps HRs gather ideas for new initiatives and projects. There are more, but there are only 750 characters here. :)

I love asking colleagues through a survey how we can be a better employer but as many contributors say, the power is in sharing the results and committing to the actions. Surveys are one part of it though and engaging with colleagues through other channels to seek feedback is also really powerful. When it comes to surveys being transparent for me is key and helps build trust 1. Share the results 2. Commit to action with timescales 3. Share what you can't commit to and why 4. Remind colleagues of the results and playback when you have completed the actions 5. Use your engagement group and get them more involved with surveys and actions

From my experience, it isn't survey fatigue that's the problem, it's the lack of action fatigue. If you ask me every day what could improve and every day you act on it, you can bet I'll be happy to provide feedback often. In my opinion the traditional long form survey followed by pulse surveys is antiquated. You need realtime data that is agile and representative of the mood of the organization. Tools like Glint and OfficeVibe are more condusive to this kind of surveying. You also need to understand your data and leverage someone who gets what to do with it. I've seen way too many orgs "think" they understand the data but they look at it with bias. Complement surveys with stay interviews. Want to know more? Drop me a line.

This is anachronistic. The implicit assumption in the 3-Bears Porridge method is that there is an optimum period or timing that’s “just right.” If that were the case, the obvious answer to the question would be, “Survey employees for engagement when they’re most engaged. That way you’ll get the best possible scores.” We’re living at a point in time when the kind of periodicity inferred here has proven to be not only completely inadequate, but misleading. I would be more than happy to share some 21st Century approaches, methods, and techniques. Feel free to contact me via DM through my profile.

The key point is the purpose eg. why do we survey and what do we aim at measuring. How are we going to utilize the results and data and make the post-survey process and action planning empowering and ensure robust data governance? How do the surveys link to our strategic focus areas and development programs and what KPIs do we get and when? How can we make the process actionable in terms of adequate resourcing, availability of the results as KPIs, creating synergies through cross-analysis of multiple strategic surveys (CLS, Engagement survey etc..) and ensuring the ownership of senior leaders and line managers to drive engagement? All this should be discussed holistically in order to define a realistic and regular survey cycle.

Keeping an employee engagement survey too close to any major event(before or after) is likely to impact the end results due to the recency effects. i.e. conducting a survey immediately after the annual appraisal cycle or a townhall/annual gathering etc. is likely to have an impact and it may sway the survey for or against the organization. The frequency of surveys plays an important role as the organization needs time to work on the action items identified from a survey. Those action points need to be worked upon and communicated to the employees to reassure them that their voice is being heard and that the feedback actually matters. That is the real purpose of conducting any employee engagement survey.

Surveys should be done before the yearly planning , take the inputs, put them as goals, assign budget and at the end of the year, ask feedback and repeat. We shouldnt be bothered about timing , let them hit with feedback

It's important to think critically about the cadence of surveys and what makes sense for your organization. Doing a survey for the sake of checking something off of a task list is simply not enough. Allow enough time for your organization to process the survey results and make actionable changes based on feedback from employees.

Employee Survey is one of the tools beings used for engagement. It gives the general out come on what and how employee feels or thinks or even engaged. Some of the other key engagement tools are direct interaction, feedback sharing, townhall meetings and training.

DISAGREE. Frequency becomes an issue when: 1) your questions are mentally exhausting, 2) there are too many of them, 3) you are not taking action on the data you collect. That is why traditional annual and bi-annual employee surveys are outdated. By the time you get them, the answers are irrelevant but you put the organization through hell to obtain them. Weekly pulse check surveys are a trend for a reason. 1) The questions in weekly surveys are digestible, and there are only a few per week. 2) Management gets real-time information about the well-being of their employees, burnout, likeliness to quit, motivation, autonomy, etc. Bonus: A custom survey you can send ad-hoc to survey for the SPECIFIC issues is always a plus.

It is not just the frequency of surveys that can cause fatigue, but also the number of surveys. We often find that organisations can lack co-ordination when it comes to deploying surveys and they end up with lots of different surveys crossing over each other, often with similar objectives. It can be helpful to review what surveys are in place, but also ensure that the whole organisation is aware of the survey strategy so they don't go off and do their own thing.

I disagree with this point. Honestly, survey fatigue will become an issue if you're repeating questions across surveys and/ or not acting on the feedback received. That is when employee morale goes down because they may feel their opinions do not matter or the time & effort invested in sharing the feedback was not productive. If we regularly communicate how feedback is being utilized to enhance employee experience, I don't think employees will lose focus. Rather, they might share more details in the following pulse/ engagement surveys. Also, no amount of data will be an overload if we have the right set of tools (data cleaning, data mining) & competencies to analyze the data. The only conscious effort is governance to eliminate redundancy.

Surveys can be considered 'too frequent' if they are very time-consuming. However, engagement can also be measured by frequent micro-surveys that take less than a couple minutes to complete. If the surveys are short, employees are less likely to suffer from survey burn-out.

On the flip side, conducting surveys too frequently can lead to some downsides. One major issue is the risk of survey fatigue, where your employees become disinterested or demotivated to participate. They might start providing shallow or insincere responses. Also, excessive surveys can create a sense of unrealistic expectations or even frustration if employees feel their feedback isn't being genuinely acknowledged or put into action. Furthermore, the sheer volume of data and analysis from too many surveys can become overwhelming, diverting attention from addressing the most critical concerns and taking necessary actions.

How many times are we presented with requests to fill in a short survey when visiting retail websites? How many times do you fill them in? I’m guessing not very often. So imagine being an employee presented with frequent micro surveys. They are unlikely to respond to every one.

You should survey employees for engagement at regular intervals, typically annually or semi-annually. Additionally, consider timing surveys strategically, such as after major company changes, to gauge their impact. Real-time feedback tools can also be used for continuous monitoring. Tailor the frequency to your organization's needs while ensuring that surveys don't become burdensome for employees.

Moreover, the risk of creating unrealistic expectations or frustration is valid; employees may disengage if they feel their feedback isn’t leading to concrete actions. Lastly, the data overload issue is crucial, as drowning in information can hinder your ability to prioritize and act on the most critical issues. Striking the right balance in survey frequency is essential to maintain the effectiveness of your feedback mechanisms.

Conducting too frequently cause survey fatigue, where employees become overwhelmed with multiple surveys and may not provide thoughtful responses. This can result in inaccurate or unreliable data. And also too frequent surveys may not allow sufficient time for meaningful changes to be implemented before the next survey is conducted, limiting the impact of the feedback provided. continuously surveying employees without taking appropriate actions to address their concerns may create a perception of insincerity or a lack of respect for their opinions, ultimately leading to decreased employee morale and engagement.

How often you collect and review data says a lot about how important it is. Companies do a monthly deep dive into financial and other metrics. Engagement should be the same.

Surveys should be done on quarterly basis and shouldn’t be a full essay, you should get the pulse and the areas that ring bells should be drilled down. Once a year can be a detailed level exercise

The optimum cadence for running employee surveys will depend on the organisation I disagree that once a year or twice a year is a good practice, this feels a little generic For some it may be a larger survey every other year and smaller surveys targeted to specific groups is the right approach The important thing is to design this upfront and understand: How often do things change around here How stable is our headcount What is our pace of change (if it takes 18 months to land change, then a survey every 12 months might not be helpful) Is the above different in different parts of the business Building an employee listening strategy comes first, surveys come later

Determining how often to conduct surveys depends on your goals, available resources, and the situation. As a general guideline, it's advisable to conduct a thorough survey once or twice a year to assess all aspects of employee engagement comprehensively. In addition, conducting shorter pulse surveys every quarter or month can help you concentrate on specific topics or areas that require attention. Event-based surveys are crucial to capture insights during significant organizational changes or events. Furthermore, don't forget the importance of onboarding and exit surveys, which provide valuable feedback from new hires and departing employees, respectively. The right survey frequency is tailored to your organization's unique needs.

A much discussed topic that I think we have a great case study for: if you’d surveyed your employees just once in a calendar far year and that month was March 2020, what would that tell you about your people that year? In March 2020 the Covid pandemic hit and significantly affected peoples work experience. What they needed that month and then again the month after was likely wildly different. Annual surveys no longer have a place.

It is generally recommended to conduct surveys at least once a year to assess overall employee engagement levels. This annual survey will provide a comprehensive view of employee satisfaction, their connection with the company's mission, and their overall commitment to their work and the organization. And also, organizations can also implement pulse surveys on a more frequent basis, perhaps quarterly or bi-annually, to gain real-time insights into specific areas of concern or to track the progress of initiatives undertaken to improve employee engagement. Ultimately, the key is to find the right balance between gathering enough data to measure engagement effectively and not overwhelming employees with constant survey requests.

I want to reword this to optimal "listening" frequency. The tips shared are good, but must be extended to address the growing need to listen more continuously without fatiguing employees. Technological advances have made it possible to have an ecosystem of listening that includes traditional surveying (semi/annual, pulse, lifecycles-Onboarding, Exit, etc.) but also unstructured and unsolicited feedback. Gartner estimates that nearly 90% of feedback is unstructured and is growing 3x the rate as structured data. Organizations need to think about how to add unstructured listening in a mindful and purposeful way to their strategy. This is a big part of the future of experience management and leading companies are investing in it now.

Optimal frequency is hard to be definitive on as, like many aspects of employee surveys, context is key - there's no one-size-fits-all. Working with hundreds of clients in this area, frequency ranges from every other year, to monthly pulse checks (annual with and interim check-in is most popular). The absolutely critical things when deciding what is best for you are to be clear on 1) the purpose of the survey/s 2) how you'll use the results and 3) how you'll support action-taking / playback of what's changing. Surveys that don't lead to any action are, honestly, a waste of everyone's time. Also, without 'closing the loop' by telling people what you are acting on, confidence in the process will be undermined and response rates will fall.

Survey fatigue we've all been there. An annual survey with a 6 month pulse tends to suffice to understand the big picture, but don't forget to open up listening circles for the day-to-day feedback, keep these informal and anonymous to encourage participation and reduce barriers to entry. Psychological safety is paramount.

Utilize one of your key audiences in your organization to share results on a deeper level - your people managers. Providing them the tools to be able to have conversations with their teams, like talking points or FAQS, allows them to take action on a team level and make improvements based on their results, ultimately benefiting the entire company.

When it comes to survey design, adhering to best practices is paramount for meaningful results. Start by defining a clear purpose and goal, communicate it effectively, and keep the survey simple. Use various question types for depth, maintain anonymity and confidentiality, and analyze and share results transparently. Most importantly, involve employees in the action plan based on their feedback. It's the key to driving positive change.

To ensure the effectiveness of an engagement survey, certain best practices for survey design should be followed. Firstly, clear and specific questions should be used to gather accurate data. Questions should be designed to measure different aspects of employee engagement, such as job satisfaction, communication, and feedback mechanisms. Additionally, the survey should be easy to comprehend and concise, avoiding complex jargon or technical terms. Anonymity and confidentiality should be promised to encourage honest and open responses. Finally, the survey results should be analyzed and communicated transparently to employees, along with the organization's action plans to address any issues identified.

There's a number of tools you can use from expensive to free and cheap such as MS Forms. Surveys need to be free from bias, and user friendly, short and to the point. However beyond that having a way to interpret the data easily can be the challenge. Understand what you want to learn, what problem needs solving and work backwards from there.

Design the survey to measure what you are trying to measure. This is linked to the purpose of the survey - it is to find out how people feel about a specific topic, or topics; is it to understand how a particular initiative is landing; is it to gather more detail about a theme that a previous survey uncovered etc. The survey questions should be specific, unambiguous, but also actionable. For each question ask yourself "what will we actually do in practice with the responses to this question?". Use demographic (drop-down) questions to be able to slice and dice the data. Use rating scale questions to evaluate strength of feeling in a consistent format. Limit the number of open comments questions as they are difficult to analyse.

Generally, between 40-60% of a workforce will respond to survey requests. Of those who respond, around 10% will provide fake answers or patterns, like A, B, C, D. Accordingly, analysis mechanisms should take into account final sample size and detection of unserious responses.

A key point, to ensure effective and actionable analysis outputs, is related to the structure of the questions. Keeping them simple and easily understandable to all the survey targets - avoiding misleading words and/or concepts that could assume different meanings for different targets - is crucial. Furthermore, questions could be univocally related to a single (and actionable) concept. For example, a question as “I’m satisfied for career and learning opportunities” doesn’t work since it combines to concepts, so it doesn’t allow you to understand if low scores are related to poor career opportunities and/or poor learning opportunities.

In my view, tracking Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) stands out as a crucial metric for any company. It's both simple and highly valuable. With just a single question posed to employees, it opens the door to deeper analysis and subsequent surveys, ultimately guiding the company in taking proactive steps to enhance engagement and improve the overall employee experience.

Online survey platforms allow for easy distribution and completion of surveys, making it convenient for employees to participate. Furthermore, technology facilitates the analysis of survey data, providing valuable insights that can inform decision-making and drive improvements in employee engagement initiatives. Overall, technology enhances the accessibility, efficiency, and accuracy of employee engagement surveys.

Online survey platforms are generally not very expensive compared to other software solutions, and they offer many advantages, such as instant visualisation of results, analysis of free text comments, identifying key drivers of engagement and priority actions, and providing external benchmark scores. They allow you to act on feedback as quickly and in the most targeted way as possible. If that keeps even a tiny handful of your best people at your organisation longer, then it's worth the investment.

The tool needs to seamlessly integrate with existing communication channels like Slack, MS team, etc. ensuring every team member had easy access. This integration wasn't just about convenience; it was about making the process a natural extension of their daily interactions.

Don't try to build your own tool when there are platforms dedicated to achieving the engaging and meaningful asking experience you ought to offer your employees. Look for nimble SaaS platforms (ours at People Not Tech is an example but others exist) that delight the user and show measurable behavioural change to enable constant and regular dialogue. Getting the right measure of care and curiousity when you survey is crucial to power the resulting Human Work needed at either an individual or team level to have the happy and productive employees any enterprise needs. Ask right and your employees will love you for it. Ask wrong -or not ask at all- and they'll leave.

Also adding pulse surveys to your regularly programmed survey cycle can prove resourceful and effective. Pulse survey of geographical or of topical nature can give you enough indications. HR Leaders, executives and operational managers should be living and feeling the atmosphere of the organization if they are truly engaged with their workforce. Accordingly they will be sensing the need for those pulse surveys, so they can listen and respond by applying adjustments or introduce new course of action and programs to respond to the needs arising out of those surveys.

Embracing technology has revolutionized my surveying career. Leveraging online platforms and AI, I've streamlined data collection and analysis, making my work more efficient. Engaging surveys with gamification and personalization yields better insights and enhances participant experiences. Integrating technology is crucial for a successful surveying process in today's digital age.

Technology should also help in monitoring the survey follow-up, by providing a support to managers accountable for actions, where they can set objectives and track the progresses. Furthermore, by integrating survey technologies with the other HRISs to “trigger” survey related to specific events: for example, you can track the end-to-end candidate experience in recruiting process by integrating survey platform with your ATS

The technology helps to listen to employees through pulse surveys and other forums throughout the year. Those are much more action-oriented than once year employee engagement surveys.

We tend to focus and chase the high engagement score. But is a high engangement score always equal to highly engaged employees? Or could a high score just be a sign of survey fatigue, fear of disclosure or quiet quitting? You can not solely base your engagement level and initiatives on surveys. You need to foster a culture where continuous feedback in other forms than surveys adds to your insight of the engagement level in your organisation.

Employee engagement surveys can be a very valuable tool for businesses, but in my experience, they are not worth doing, and often more damaging, if there is no action taken following the survey. The full survey process, including communication before, during and after the survey should be planned from the start. This should include a clear ‘You said and we did’ communication sent out early on showing the quick wins instigated. Make it clear to your team what the survey is for and how it will be used and show how important their feedback is by giving them time to complete it.

When you shouldn't survey employees for engagement is as important as when you should. You should survey employees for engagement when: - You have the willingness to listen to the feedback, both good and bad. - You have the drive and resource to do something about the negative feedback you hear. You shouldn't survey employment engagement: - The same month as releasing a new benefit or company wide payrise above inflation. Nobody is fooled by the timing, it's rarely a coincidence and just inflates the scores at that moment in time. You should be willing to do the work to truly see how people feel rather than take advantage of a positive moment. - If you're going to make excuses for poor responses and not take accountability, or listen.

The frequency of surveys isn't the main topic here. Survey fatigue doesn't exist. Lack of action fatigue does. In today's society, where we are always on, action and change are fast paced, and employees have a lot of insight and value to share, I believe leaders should adopt 'always on' listening. This will ensure speedy action, higher employee engagement and satisfaction, improved business performance and efficiency.

Advantages, disadvantages and timings for engagement surveys: Advantages of Engagement Surveys: 1.Informed Decisions: Surveys provide data for informed management decisions. 2. Employee Morale: Feedback makes employees feel valued 3. Issue Identification: Surveys help pinpoint problems for timely resolution. Disadvantages of Engagement Surveys: 1. Response Bias: Emotional responses can skew survey accuracy. 2. Anonymity Doubts: Employees may doubt response anonymity. 3. Survey Fatigue: Frequent surveys can lead to disengagement. Timing for Engagement Surveys: 1. After Changes: Assess impact post major organizational shifts. 2. Quarterly/Biannually: More frequent checks for quicker action.

One best practice that can have a profound impact on an organizations improvements and performance is to ensure one of your broader "cat-scan" type surveys is complete a few weeks before annual planning and budgeting. Having a solid enterprise-wide read on all drivers and KPIs for employee experience (e.g. engagement, expectations, intent to stay, well being, DEIB, customer focus, recognition, etc.) and incorporating those insights into the planning process can help ensure decisions and investments are made that will be most beneficial to the workforce and workplace. Remember: no data = no insights.

While using interactive online platform for survey on the other hand choosing optimal set of people for attending the survey is the most important part. Employees staying with the organisation more than 5 yrs can opted for "Stay Interview" survey where we could get the positive perspective of the organisation, employee leaving the organisation can be opted for "Exit Survey" where the culture which impacted then on a negative perspective can be worked on, a "Day 0 survey " can be opted with new joinees (below 45 days) can be done gather information on onboarding experience, a survey can be rolled out every half yearly once to gather information employee Experience and Leadership support.

Engagement surveys should be conducted continuously, rather than annually. Continuous surveys: Collecting feedback on a continuous basis allows organisations to get a better understanding of what is important to their employees and how they can improve the workplace. Line manager accountability: By making employee engagement a key performance objective for line managers, organizations can ensure that they are taking steps to keep their employees engaged. Peer learning: When the results of engagement surveys are shared transparently, without revealing identities, line managers can learn from each other's experiences and best practices.

An important consideration to get honest results is to ensure anonymity. If employees think their answers can be tracked, they won't be honest for fear of retribution. That also means that surveys need to find the right balance of asking about departments and managers in order to fix issues but not specific enough that a manager could tell which employee replied a certain way.