Five tips to maximising employee survey response

When used effectively, a staff survey has the potential to offer great insight in to the state of employer/employee relations and provides a barometer for successful business practice    However, when not administered appropriately, it has the potential to go very pear shaped – leaving you with unhappy staff and skewed results!

Whether you are conducting an online or paper- based survey, there is an abundance of potential issues that could arise.  These issues can reduce response rates and essentially affect the quality of the results. From my experience, the following five tips should be considered to ensure these issues are kept to a minimum.

Create a trial survey.  Use a control group – who have not been involved in the survey’s creation – to take the survey.  Chances are if they have difficulties with the survey or find a question ambiguous, so will your staff.

Demographics. Consider your staff demographics carefully.  Many questions may seem self-explanatory, however cultural and language differences can affect how some respondents interpret certain questions. For example, the Gallup 12 Engagement Survey, developed in America, asks participant’s if they have a ‘best friend’ at work. In Australia, the more common equivalent to this question would be to ask if one has ‘a friend’ at work.

Technology. Consider the technological requirements of the survey.  Often in industries where a computer is not used on a daily basis, an online survey can be found to be quite difficult. If you are administering an online survey and are concerned about the technological requirements, it would be beneficial to provide staff training and assistance, or even choose an alternative medium more suited to your working environment (e.g. printing a paper-based version of the online survey).

Keep it short and sweet. To maximise response rates, keep your survey short. Respondents start to lose interest after 10-15 minutes.  Review your questions and try to avoid asking questions that won’t provide any additional value to your results.

Survey on a regular basis. Companies with the largest response rates are continually requesting staff to complete surveys.  These companies often administer engagement surveys on a six monthly basis, ensuring that the completion of staff surveys is part of usual employment activities.  Companies that keep on top of their HR procedures, including the regular administration of staff surveys, attain the highest response rates and often have the most engaged staff.

A company that takes time to understand employee feedback has the capacity to increase productivity, engagement and retention through the effective management of their people. Considering the benefits of receiving employee feedback, the administration of staff surveys should be a regular and ongoing item on the HR agenda.