Get in touch
Monday, 23rd January

The Pulse Survey Handbook

Well, hello there.

If you haven’t already figured it out, here at Stribe, staff surveys are kind of our whole thing.

In fact, we like to think we’re the best in the business. We’re not just good; we’re so good, even our surveys have surveys. So buckle up because you’ve just stumbled upon the Holy Grail of employee survey resources.

 

Free download: 45 of the best employee pulse survey questions to ask

More free resources to help you step up your survey game

Ultimate Guide to Pulse Surveys The A-Z of Pulse Surveys Webinar: Employee Surveys 101

What are pulse surveys?

Employee pulse surveys are short surveys that are sent to employees regularly and are quick to complete. Because of their length, they can be sent more regularly than annual surveys.

Depending on the size and structure of the organisation this might be weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly. Pulse surveys are great for organisations that want to take an employee-led approach to their mental health, wellbeing, or employee engagement strategies.

They can be used to explore topics such as pay and rewards, burn out, mental health, financial wellbeing, and training and development. The insights from the surveys can then be used to understand how well your organisation is doing to support employees in these areas and how you can improve.

 

What are the benefits of pulse surveys?

  • Increased profitability
    Employees who are more engaged have higher levels of creativity and productivity and are more likely to achieve their targets – this all contributes towards higher profitability.
  • Reduced absence and sicknesses
    Work-related stress accounts for an estimated 13.7 million lost workdays every year. Happier and more engaged employees are less likely to take sick leave. Using employee pulse surveys will help you understand and address issues that are affecting your employees, ultimately improving your employee engagement.
  • A stronger employee brand
    When employees are happy at work it creates an enhanced experience for everyone. In the long run, this creates an improvement in your employee brand and the way potential employees view your workplace.
  • Reduced turnover and improved retention
    The higher your employee engagement, the lower your staff turnover will be. This is because employees are enjoying their work, feel happy within their team, and are bought into your organisation’s mission. This has a direct impact on your organisation’s productivity and profitability because you are spending less time onboarding teammates and getting them up to speed!

quotation mark Stribe is definitely impactful on an individual basis and an organisational one... we've reduced staff attrition rates by 3.7% and also achieved a 7.5% reduction in stress-related absence rates. quotation mark

Head of HR, Wigan and Leigh College

How to create the best pulse survey schedule for your organisation

Every organisation is different and benefits from a different pulse survey schedule – there is no ‘one size fits all’ rule for pulse surveys. However, with all those possibilities it can create more questions than answers. How can you make sure you get it right for your team?

Use our tried and tested framework below to help you decide on the best schedule for your employees.

  • What topics are you exploring with your pulse survey?
    The topics of your questions (and any you wish to repeat) provide a good guide for how often you should send them. For example, if you include questions on employees’ mental health, you may find it helpful to ask these monthly to get regular updates on how your employees are thinking and feeling.
  • Do your employees experience busier periods of work at certain times of the year?
    Make sure you consider your employees’ projects and workloads when planning your pulse survey schedule. Doing this will help you ensure your response rates remain high, and you’re not adding an extra task to their list during a busy time!
  • How quickly can you communicate the results once the survey has closed?
    The best way to maintain high engagement in your employee surveys is to communicate with employees about your last survey before launching a new one. Showing your employees that you are committed to acting based on their feedback will help you build trust and maintain good response rates.
  • Do you need to make organisational changes based on employees’ feedback? And will they need to be approved by senior management?
    If you need to make changes based on pulse survey feedback e.g exploring a new benefits package to better support the changing needs of your employees, it is best practice to make sure you have a plan of action with details of the changes and timelines – and communicate them with employees – before your next pulse survey.
  • Do you have more employees on annual leave at certain times of the year?
    It is always worth checking the holiday calendars when you’re creating your pulse survey schedules! If large parts of your team are away, they won’t be able to contribute to your survey, and may even miss the reminders in their busy inbox when they return to work! It’s always worth keeping this in mind when creating your survey schedule to ensure you can make the most of every survey send!
  • How many questions does your pulse survey have?
    The more questions you include in your pulse surveys, the longer they will take employees to complete. To balance this time commitment, you should aim to send them less frequently to maintain a good response rate. For example, for surveys of around five questions we recommend a monthly cadence.
  • How often do you report on your organisation’s KPIs?
    Aligning your pulse surveys with the reporting of your organisation’s KPIs means you can include the results within management reports, aligning your people metrics to your business ones! This is an effective way to communicate the results to colleagues, and shows them how seriously you’re taking the results.

 

Book a chat with the friendly Stribe team

How to introduce employee pulse surveys to your team

Planning is the key to success with pulse surveys – and we don’t just mean the questions! Whether you’ve run none or 100 pulse surveys, it’s always good to take a step back and look at how you’re launching them to your employees.

  • 1) Identify a pulse survey ‘owner’
    Having an owner will guarantee that your pulse survey moves from an idea to completion. The owner needs to have an interest in employee surveys, knowledgeable with internal communications, be able to manage key stakeholders, and have the power to make changes based on the pulse survey feedback.
  • 2) Audit your systems
    Ensure your employee communication systems are up to scratch so that you can close the feedback loop with your employees when the pulse survey ends.
  • 3) Make a plan
    Creating a pulse survey plan that defines who, what, when, where and how will help guide your efforts. At Stribe we work with our customers to create launch plans that guarantee their pulse survey campaigns are launched without a hitch.
  • 4) Decide on your questions
    Start small, and plan for every answer so that you know you can create change based on the feedback from your employees. If employees don’t see change based on their answers survey engagement rates will suffer.
  • 5) Agree a pre-pulse communication plan
    How you introduce your pulse survey will have a strong impact on the response rate. Shape your messaging to align with your employees’ needs. Think about the internal communication channels you need to use e.g. company-wide email, stand-ups, Slack, and line-management networks. Focus on communicating how employee responses will shape company goals and bring managers on-board to boost response rates from their teams.
  • 6) Click Send!
    As soon as you have an owner, you know how you’ll close the feedback loop, and you have a communication plan agreed you’re ready to send your pulse campaign!
  • 7) Review your results and decide on your action
    Once your survey has finished, bring key stakeholders together to discuss the results and the actions your organisation needs to take as a result. Create a plan of action based on the discussion.
  • 8) Communicate the outcome with your employees
    Employees will want to know what changes you’re making based on their feedback. Sharing the full pulse results and what action you’re taking will help them feel heard. Encourage employees to give feedback on your communications so that you can learn how to make the process more effective for them in the future.

quotation mark We were looking for something that would level us up and help us achieve great survey engagement - and that was Stribe. quotation mark

Jason Casanove - Great Places Housing Group

How to ensure your pulse surveys are accessible for everyone

An important part of helping every voice be heard is accessibility and ensuring that the pulse survey software you use with your employees is easy to access regardless of location, access to technology, or disability.

  • Use a dedicated phone app
    A lot of employee pulse surveys are only accessible via a web link or email log in, which can cause some compatibility issues and make it more difficult for your employees to respond (particularly those who aren’t desk-based full-time). If you have a workforce that has frontline or dispersed employees, it is worth looking for pulse survey software that has a dedicated iOS and Android app for employees on the go.
  • The ability to answer surveys with one click!
    Look for software that allows employees to answer their pulse surveys straight from their inbox too, this makes it much easier to get higher survey response rates. In our busy day-to-day lives, the easier it is for employees to submit feedback, the better!
  • Offer an avenue for your offline employees
    Not everyone has a company email address or laptop, making it difficult for managers to check in on these harder-to-reach employees. If you are unable to include this group in your employee engagement surveys, you won’t have a full picture of how your entire workforce is feeling over time. Consider using software – such as Stribe – that has a built-in QR code surveying tool for non-desk-based staff. Once a QR code is generated in Stribe and linked to a survey, it can be printed out and scanned by offline employees around the office to give their anonymous responses.

 

Download: Ultimate Guide to Pulse Surveys

How to structure your pulse survey questions

There’s a science to the way you need to structure and send your questions to make sure you get the most out of them. 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 survey results.

  • Avoid leading questions
    We all tend to respond positively to questions if the tone makes it sound like we should.
  • Consider if employees should answer reflectively
    Think about whether you would like respondent’s answers to be reflective or in the moment. The structure of the question will give you different insights.
  • Does the question apply to all employees?
    Use questions broad enough to apply to everyone that the survey was sent to.
  • Will you get enough context?
    Make sure you use a mixture of open and closed questions to gather detailed insights that help you build an action plan.
  • Can you easily measure the answers?
    Focus on questions that create easily measured answers so that you can gain clarity from your survey results.

 

What to do after your pulse surveys

One of the biggest frustrations for employees who take the time to give thoughtful feedback is feeling like their comments are ignored. Asking the right questions and gaining good response rates in your pulse survey are only the first steps in the journey!

The most important part of your pulse surveys is developing an action plan and communicating the results so that employees can see that you are listening and acting on their feedback. Here are the steps we recommend:

  • Immediately after survey closure, thank employees for their participation and explain the timeline for next steps
  • Evaluate the launch communications channels for their effectiveness to shape your ‘You said, we did’ campaign
  • Analyse results and discuss findings with senior leaders and team managers
  • Create an action plan based on your results (depending on your organisation it can work well to make this collaborative and bring managers into this conversation too!)
  • Communicate the survey results, comments from senior leaders, and action plan to employees as soon as possible. It’s also a good idea to let them know the next survey date.

 

Book a chat with the friendly Stribe team

Related Articles

View All
View All

Stay in touch

Mobile Apps

Stribe on the Apple App Store
Stribe on the Google Play Store