Last updated October 2026
Surveys are a powerful tool that, with the right questions and analysis, will give you the insights you need to improve employee engagement within your organisation.
Whether you currently use them, or you’re just getting started on your journey, this complete guide will be your go-to for how to create surveys that bring about real change in your organisation.
Inside the guide we uncover all the tricks and tips – plus the rules we apply when working with customers here at Stribe, to ensure that their surveys have impact every time, and don’t just get filed away and forgotten about!
The whole guide is also a free PDF, in the form on the right.
When well executed, surveys create lasting positive change within organisations. For this to happen, there needs to be clear and effective objectives from the very beginning. To make sure you are creating clear objectives, there are few points that are useful to keep in mind:
Board members and decision-makers alone have the weight and authority to set objectives, provide necessary resources, and hold teams accountable – all needed to drive change.
Educate board members to get their buy-in, and help them understand how survey data will help:
When planning your survey, make sure you’re using specific and relevant questions that will help you pinpoint areas of concern.
If you don’t spend time thinking about the way your questions are structured, you risk creating more questions than answers when you try to analyse your results. Here are our top tips for creating effective survey questions, and if you want a hand with the writing, our free survey builder does the heavy lifting:
Fewer than you think. For a pulse survey, five to ten questions is plenty. You’re checking a few things regularly, not auditing the whole employee experience in one go. For a bigger annual or lifecycle survey, 30 to 40 questions is the realistic ceiling before people start skimming.
The test for every question is: what will we do with the answer? If nobody can say, cut it.
A pulse survey should take under five minutes, ideally two or three. A full engagement survey should stay under 15. Completion drops off sharply once people pass the ten minute mark, and the answers at the end get noticeably lazier than the ones at the start.
Tell people how long it takes before they open it. “Five questions, two minutes” gets more honest responses than a survey that turns out to be 40 questions long.
Once you have your first few surveys underway, you should use data segmentation and targeted surveys to follow-up with more specific questions to key groups.
With the right data and segmentation capabilities you’ll be able to take focused action and resolve challenges employees are experiencing.
That’s why having software that allows you to target and segment is key – it will help you focus your time and resources on areas where it will make a real difference.
Demographics you may wish to consider are:
Employees are more dispersed and diverse than ever before, and surveys are only effective if all of your employees are able to participate.
They should be able to voice their thoughts, ideas, and feedback no matter who they are, or where they are, and in real-time without friction.
Ways you can ensure everyone can access and answer your surveys:
Using regular surveys to continuously gather data helps you understand if the changes you’re making are having the impact you hope for.
It is impossible to determine whether your interventions are working, or whether progress is sustained unless you have continuous and reliable data to work with.
Use feedback from your survey’s open and closed questions alongside KPIs such as absenteeism and employee turnover to get a well-rounded picture.
Ideally, you should be monitoring continuously across several of these metrics to build a clear picture of the situation and how it’s changing.
You also need to consider the right cadence for your surveys otherwise it can lead to survey fatigue, especially if you aren’t closing the loop with your communications.
Every organisation is different and benefits from a different survey schedule – there is no ‘one size fits all’ rule for surveys.
Our best tip is to think about your internal comms cycles and how the surveys fit into those. Coupling the two together is a great way to guarantee you can close the loop on your employee surveys.
Being proactive and putting in place early interventions can stop problems from developing in the first place, or reduce the likelihood they’ll get worse.
If you notice changes in your data, you have an opportunity to invest in that area of staff engagement before it becomes a bigger concern.
Surveys are a useful tool for this, allowing you to be proactive without a large investment of time.
They will help you gather feedback in a continuous, well-rounded way so you can identify the smallest changes in scores.
A proactive approach to surveys gives you the added benefit of creating a culture of openness, which makes employees more willing to share their ideas, feedback, and hopes in the future.
At Stribe, we make teams happier. It’s that simple.
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