Why pulse surveys are important during the cost of living crisis

Over half (52%) of all UK employees admit that the cost-of-living crisis is impacting their career. This ranges from a drop in productivity to more serious issues, such as burnout or financial strain. As a result, it’s important to be able to discover the employees that need support and be able to address their concerns.

This is easier said than done. A recent large-scale survey shows that 81% of employees don’t like talking about finances, and 71% of employees don’t feel comfortable asking for financial support. This is especially alarming when paired with the fact that financially-stressed employees are three times more likely to want help from their employer than those with good financial wellbeing.

This puts employers in a tricky position, their employees may want help and support, but they don’t feel comfortable reaching out and talking about it.

In this blog, we discuss the importance of pulse surveys in supporting your employees during the cost of living crisis, including how to gain regular and honest insights from your people.

What are pulse surveys and how can they help?

Pulse surveys create a space where your employees can offer their thoughts, feedback and concerns with the safety of anonymity. By using pulse surveys and asking financial wellbeing questions, you can generate a clear picture of how your employees feel – so that you can provide support where needed, and make workplace changes to benefit everyone.

As well as supporting employee financial wellbeing, it’s vital that as an organisation you measure the impact of your resulting workplace change and initiatives. Pulse surveys are intended to be used frequently, so you can collect regular employee insights and track trends over time, allowing you to see any changes in your employees’ behaviour, feedback or general sentiment.

Employee surveys are great. But without a good response rate, your feedback won’t be representative of your full team. Pulse surveys, in their nature, are meant to be simple to digest and respond to. The less effort you need from employees to respond, the better your response rate. Employees using Stribe can answer surveys straight from their inboxes, making it much easier to get higher survey response rates. Stribe is also accessible via a dedicated iOS and Android app, giving employees the option to respond in whichever way they prefer.

A recent Barclays survey estimated a 4% loss in productivity due to poor financial wellbeing. This is easy to understand as financial worries can be an easy distraction in your employees’ daily lives. The good news is that even though pulse surveys can help you to support your employees, they also improve productivity too. When people feel heard, they are five times more productive in the workplace. When you survey your employees and ask how they are feeling, then make positive change with their feedback, your employees will feel listened to and valued as they see the workplace develop.

Stribe’s pulse surveys are proven to reduce absenteeism and employee turnover!  By using Stribe to lead their overall employee engagement and wellbeing strategy, Wigan & Leigh College has improved its score in the Times ‘Best Companies’ survey from Very Good to World Class! The college also saw a 13% reduction in stress-related absence and a 3.6% reduction in staff attrition rates – showing the positive impact of surveying your employees and acting on the data. You can read more about this in our case-study here! 

Super-charge your surveys

Pulse surveys are a fantastic way to truly understand which employees and parts of your organisation need support with financial wellbeing, especially during this challenging cost of living crisis.

However, without the right software to support you with surveying your employees, reaching everyone on a regular basis and accessing the data becomes a mammoth task (no one wants to be stuck in spreadsheets for hours!).

At Stribe, we do the heavy lifting for you by making your data easy to digest. Our platform has a built-in key phrase extraction tool, so there’s no need to manually sift through all of your text-based answers. Our handy dashboard and reporting tools arrange all your data for you, while also displaying the most common words and phrases in your employee feedback – making understanding your data a breeze.

If you’d like a platform that takes all the legwork out of surveying your employees, we’re here to help.

Get in touch with our people experts here to see how Stribe can benefit your organisation!