Running a business is full of challenges. Making profits, preventing loss, managing warehouses, recruiting, and other aspects of running a business all take a significant investment of time and effort to pull off successfully. As a manager, Your role is to facilitate accomplishing companies goals while keeping things running smoothly and ultimately satisfying customers. Your team—and the employees who work within it—is the most critical part of your organization! Whether employees are direct reports or part of a larger group, it is important to understand how they feel about working for the company. To better understand this, consider using something called a pulse survey to get the most valuable data you can about this crucial concern. In this article, we’ll guide you through a definition of a pulse survey and give you some suggestions for designing an easy-to-use one for your team. Keep reading to learn more.
What Is A Pulse Survey?
A pulse survey is a short, simple, to the point survey that’s often used to help employers understand their employees. Some companies use multiple surveys throughout the year to gauge employee sentiment and make an attempt to understand engagement. They’re also used for feedback and informing crucial decisions at a company. Post surveys have a much higher response rate than other types of surveys, making them an ideal choice for data gathering at your organization.
Why Administer Pulse Surveys?
The primary reason to use pulse surveys is to understand your team’s feelings, job satisfaction, organizational outlook, and overall engagement levels. Pulse surveys let you compare the results of the current ones to the previous batch. That’s a great way to gather data and see trends. They’re also ideal for gathering other types of feedback at your organization. Using them for benchmarking is critical to making future decisions. Benchmarks (a point of reference) based on other companies within the same industry are useful for measuring pulse survey responses. Why? Because you can get an understanding of the general feeling/sentiment within the industry and ideas about how to improve engagement among your own team. With digital pulse surveys, a benchmarking feature can let you compare all kinds of data points including the number of employees who responded by a certain date, how many responses you received per question, and average ratings. Using them is an effective means of two-way communication between management and their teams.
Define Its Purpose
Once you’ve decided to use pulse surveys, it’s important to design it appropriate. Start by defining the survey’s purpose, because it’s the most crucial aspect of pulse survey design. It’s best to start off by defining the major goal of the survey. Determine what benchmark or metrics you wish to receive feedback from your team about. That way, you’re prepared to analyze responses and make decisions or take direct actions. After you’ve defined the purpose, you need to announce it to your team so that they’re prepared to respond. By having a set goal and benchmark/framework in mind, you can better tailor your surveys to gather usable, worthwhile data every time.
Make It An Appropriate Length
If you ask anybody who takes surveys regularly, they’ll probably tell you that there’s nothing worse than a survey that’s overly long and asks too many invasive, loaded, or leading questions. These questions can often create bias, invalidate/spoil your data, and lead to frustration for survey respondents. So tailoring your questions to specific items is critical. Questions should also only run between five and fifteen for the maximum effect. A shorter questionaire tends to provide better answers and higher quality data. It’s also easier to narrow in on a specific focus area. Remember that pulse surveys can be fast, so sending multiple surveys frequently can help you gather superb data over a specific time frame. If a survey is easy to fill out and read, it’s going to give you more valuable data then trying to rely on multiple engagement surveys throughout the year.
Apply Data Analytics
A significant benefit of running surveys in a connected, technology driven world is the ability to use analytics to glean invaluable insight. Automating surveys is helpful for analytics as well. Setting up some form of automation for your pulse surveys will make them easier to administer and assess. Simply collecting and analyzing survey data from these surveys isn’t enough to draw reasonable conclusions. Since businesses need to take appropriate action based on survey results, they need more powerful software tools to get the job done. This is where advanced analytics come into play. By using techniques such as machine learning, baked in data science applications, and even a degree of artificial intelligence, it’s faster and easier to analyze pulse survey data in real time. After that, making decisions should be a breeze. Powerful analytical tools can also identify possible issues, measure benchmarks, and ultimately act as a preventative measure for any possible workplace issues in the future.