Last time, I explored some of the reasons why employee surveys can fail.
Today, I’d like to share with you some ideas on creating successful employee surveys:
- Don’t be too broad – focus on one area of the business at a time. Don’t try to measure employee opinion on the whole company or every aspect of being an employee at once.
- Action focused – if you’re doing this for the first time, I recommend choosing an area of the business where you can make change as a result of feedback. For example, if tackling staff salaries is not an option, don’t ask about it. However, if you are evaluating the staff room/catering facilities – you will be able to quickly demonstrate you value your team’s opinion.
- Keep it short – much research has been carried out around the optimum number of questions. It seems to be around 10. Test the survey before circulating it to colleagues. If it takes longer than 7-8 minutes you need to reduce it.
- Vary the questions – the more repetitive they are, the less engaged your team will be. Offer some multiple choice options where employees are asked to rate their opinion from 1-5, alongside more open questions giving the opportunity for comment.
- Decide what you want to measure – questions where you give limited answer options are easy to measure. Open questions are harder to measure, although you will be able to pick up themes.
- Make it anonymous – to make it both honest and effective, staff need to feel they can say what they really feel, without fear of repercussion.
Creating the survey is only part of making the process successful. Next time, we’ll explore implementing surveys for the best result.