Your employees are the life blood of your organisation. Whether they are customer facing, office based or at the heart of your production line, each employee can hold the key to your business growth. Capturing the insights employees hold can drive exponential growth and performance through better engagement, process improvements and higher staff retention.
If you’re not listening to your employees regularly you risk losing touch with their perspective and potentially losing the employee. Pulse surveys aim to reduce this risk, by asking a small number of questions, that are quick to respond to, more frequently. This allows organisations to monitor engagement, happiness and a range of other measures and track them over time. Peaks and troughs are highlighted and can be responded to in real time.
Employee Pulse survey
A quick survey designed to be completed at regular intervals to track trends in real time.
Foundations of effective pulse surveys for employee engagement
1) Employee driven: Allow employees to leave the response in their own time, as often as they want to.
Some employees might share daily, others monthly. By allowing your employees to do it in their own time you can be sure that the insight left matters to them. Encourage users to keep leaving feedback by sharing and acting on the results.
2) Let them know why it is important and how their views will be used.
This is fundamental for getting your employees to understand the importance of sparing their time to complete your survey.
3) Keep it relevant & concise.
Know what it is you want to ask and stick to the point -do not try to cover all bases in one survey. The beauty of Pulse surveys is that you can change your survey over time to understand different areas of interest.
4) Share the results – good and bad… And be seen to be using it to make improvements where necessary.
Yes we’ve said it before, however, we find that this step is one that is so often over looked – but it is so critical for ongoing success – we really cannot emphasise this enough! Your employees need to know that their views are being heard and listened to. That is all the motivation they need to keep sharing.
Monitoring the pulse
When collecting feedback more regularly you need to ensure you have access to tools that allow you to make use of the extra data you are gaining. The principals of real time feedback demand that you deliver the insights to the right people at the right time. The focus therefore has turned to not how often to capture data, but how to get to insights quickly. Automatic upload of responses, from touchscreen kiosks or email surveys for example, to online dashboards takes away the manual process of keying in responses. These online dashboards provide HR managers with the tools needed to analyse and report on trends in an instant. Alerts can be set up to highlight issues should responses fall out of set parameters. Auto reports and raw data exports feed in to management reporting and facilitate the speedy communication and understanding of the issues that matter to employees.
Example short touchscreen ‘pulse survey’ focusing on employee happiness.
Click to preview the survey here. Note routing on unhappy – red face – response to understand why the employee has answered as they have.
Take your pulse today
The new year is a great time to kick off your employee survey, as employees return from their break with a renewed focus and desire to take control of their work experience. Your role is to provide them with the vehicle they need to drive the future!
ViewPoint’s Pulse survey devices help HR teams collect employee engagement insight through accessible touchscreen feedback podiums and online feedback dashboard putting all your data at your finger tips.
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