Pulse surveys – short-form, regular surveys – are easy to analyse and can be conducted regularly so organisations can take action on employee-engagement issues as they arise.
Employees are the lifeblood the organisation, so it should come as no surprise that employee engagement directly affects the bottom line and determines overall company performance and growth.
Annual employee engagement surveys are uniquely valuable instruments to diagnose pockets of low engagement in an organisation, and identify drivers of engagement from a range of organisational practices.
However, these surveys are a diagnostic designed for analysis, and have limitations when it comes to taking action. In order to gain the most traction from their survey program, organisations must also collect data more regularly and in a more actionable way.
Organisations that only collect employee feedback annually are missing out on valuable opportunities to get ongoing feedback from their staff and dig deeper into issues or departments. Pulse surveys – short-form, regular surveys – are easy to analyse and can be conducted regularly so organisations can take action on employee-engagement issues as they arise and see if improvements are taking place.
In order for pulse surveys to be successful, we recommend organisations consider four key elements:
1) Confidentiality is a must
If employees do not trust that surveys are confidential you will struggle to get honest feedback.
2) Share and take action
Organisations must put feedback into the hands of decision-makers and empower them to take ownership of their employee feedback with real-time, role-based reporting dashboards with closed-loop action plans.
3) Lifecycle feedback
Lifecycle feedback lets organisations identify trends in employee engagement throughout their time with the business, rather than once a year.
4) Make it easy
Just as it should be easy for employees to provide feedback, so should it be easy for managers to implement pulse and annual engagement surveys. Organisations should be empowered with an employee engagement and pulse platform that is easy-to-use, yet sophisticated. This enables them to implement their programs faster, and be able to see the feedback in real-time. Role-based reporting dashboards are essential, to ensure managers have the information required to make necessary organisational changes.
Bank of Queensland – BOQ – is an example of an organisation benefiting from the paradigm shift in their employee engagement programs. They are now able to capture, and react in real-time to, employee feedback and follow up their annual employee engagement survey with pulse surveys.
Jodie Roach, Organisational Development Consultant, BOQ, said that before implementing Qualtrics, BOQ performed an annual employee engagement survey. It took months to create and distribute the survey, then analyse the results. She said that the bank really needed an online platform that would give them control over the process and deliver real-time results.
Jodie added that they can now see survey results in real-time using manager-appropriate dashboards. This means managers can see feedback from their teams and can act on that information instantly.
Bill McMurray, APAC Managing Director, Qualtrics
