The modern workplace is being revolutionized at a rapid pace with the inclusion of comprehensive and innovative employee engagement practices. It is a well-known fact that engaged and happy employees are motivated towards better performance at work and drive overall productivity in an organization.
In order to leverage the employee engagement for actual changes and analyze the employee happiness index, it is important to measure it. Measuring employee engagement allows you a direct peek into your organizational culture.
A recent feature in the Harvard Business Review discussed how employee surveys continue to be one of the best ways to measure employee engagement in an organization.
Here, we discuss them at length, explore their benefits and find out how using AMP emails can make your pulse surveys more effective and immune to survey fatigue.
Table of contents
- What is a pulse survey?
- Advantages of pulse surveys
- What a good pulse survey does
- Creating an effective pulse survey for your organization
- Frequently asked questions about pulse surveys
- Pulse survey: Best practices
- Conclusion
What is a pulse survey?
Pulse surveys are small and quick surveys that are strategically designed to measure employee engagement and collect employee feedback anonymously.
They allow the management to collect and figure out the employee opinion in a time-efficient manner. It comprises of five to seven, that might be a follow-up questionnaire after an annual engagement survey or an independent quick feedback on workplace initiatives.
As the pulse surveys are short, they don't frustrate the employees and the odds of your employees responding honestly are high.
Why is it called a pulse survey?
The pulse surveys are called so because they help you check the 'pulse' of your employees. They help you understand the reactions and feedback of your staff regarding any change, a new company policy, or new software you started using, etc.
Why use them?
There are various reasons for the popularity of pulse surveys and organizations across the globe using them for gathering employee engagement data. Pulse surveys are not lengthy and tedious. Leaders can use them to survey employees of a particular department where a strategic action has been taken. As the number of questions is limited, the processing of results is easy and swift.
Further, pulse surveys are generally immune to survey fatigue. This is because the employees know that they will be done with the surveys in a jiffy.
All in all, they perform better than the annual surveys when it comes to frequent feedback collection.
Let us explore some advantages of pulse surveys in the following section.
Advantages of pulse surveys
1. They are simple and short
Pulse surveys are simple as they have very few questions. They are easy to build and launch as their framework is simple. They are short, hence, easy to complete, yet they are highly focused and effective to collect complex data.
2. They are flexible
As pulse surveys can vary by length, frequency, audience, topic, and more, they are highly flexible. This flexibility is one of the major reasons behind the popularity of pulse surveys over the years. This is in stark contrast with the annual employee engagement surveys that are more focused on understanding the engagement drivers of your organization.
3. They are efficient
Engagement surveys focus on a broad range of topics and have questions that target the entire organization. Processing and sifting through the data collected from such surveys is a time and effort-consuming process whereas pulse surveys are much more efficient. Further, the leaders can get real-time insights into the employee feedback or engagement and take quick actions on the basis of survey results.
4. Pulse surveys are not the sole responsibility of the HR
While the annual employee surveys are usually designed, conducted, and processed by HR, the pulse surveys can be designed and shared by any other leader in the organization. The department managers taking strategic initiatives can simply send them to the employees and assess the impact of these initiatives.
5. Pulse surveys can offer specific insights
The annual surveys are long and cover a wide range of topics. Hence, they offer a basic overview of employees' engagement levels and fail to offer insights into specific strategic initiatives. On the other hand, pulse surveys can be more specific and measure employee engagement more accurately. Pulse surveys can also be targeted to collect feedback from a small and specific group of employees. As a result, you can easily take strategic action at the required level.
The real-time feedback collection through pulse surveys enables smarter decisions and brings more transparency to the organization as well.
What a good pulse survey does
1. Improve employee experience
A good pulse survey gives voice to your employees and makes them feel more valued. Hence, they are an excellent vehicle for bringing change to your organization and spur employee motivation.
Pulse surveys enjoy many benefits like we covered in the section above- they are short, flexible, targeted, and are less vulnerable to survey fatigue. Hence, they improve the employee experience and transform your organizational culture in a gradual yet effective manner.
2. Enhance larger engagement surveys
Pulse surveys increase transparency in the organization and enhance communication as well. They prove beneficial in building trust among the employees as they can feel whether their feedback has led to any changes or not.
When organizational changes are brought into action on the basis of employees' feedback, they are more motivated and deliver enhanced productivity that has a direct impact on the workplace culture.
This leads to better and more honest response recording in the annual employee surveys as the staff feels that recording responses genuinely can actually bring positive changes. As a result, your annual surveys are more successful and more conducive to driving organization-wide improvements.
Now, ready to create an effective pulse survey?
Creating an effective pulse survey for your organization
1. Planning your pulse survey
A good pulse survey needs proper planning to know what you expect and create.
What is the purpose of your survey?
What are the survey objectives?
Who is the right audience for this survey?
What should be the right frequency for the surveys and what should be the follow-up action plan after the responses are recorded?
When you have the bigger picture ready, we can move to the finer details.
2. Choose the right pulse survey questions
In the pulse surveys, the number of questions is too less and the window to collect employee feedback is too small to be filled with poorly compiled questionnaires. So, it is important to compile the surveys with the right questions.
Some tips to choose the right survey questions:
Focus on the survey objective while choosing the questions.
Don’t include too many questions. On average, the pulse surveys have 5 to 15 questions.
Always keep in mind that you have to collect meaningful data, and your questions should aim at that.
Last, but not the least, your answer options should be well-planned, conclusive and offer 'options' instead of vague suppositions.
3. Use a Pulse Survey tool
Invest in a smart and intuitive survey maker tool that comes with advanced functionalities, such as analytics, reporting, survey question libraries, templates, and dashboard-like UI for better and easier use.
The pulse survey makers come with thousands of questions as examples and also offer advanced sharing functionalities that make your surveys less of an effort. It takes out the guesswork from the entire process and allows you to compile smart and engaging surveys within a few minutes.
4. Getting the most out of your pulse survey with AMP
Engagement is one of the primary goals of a pulse survey. You can make your pulse survey even more engaging with interactive AMP emails.
AMP emails are a highly effective and smart upgrade over the traditional HTML emails, as they offer website-like functionalities right inside the inbox and come with interactive elements. Sharing pulse surveys via AMP emails allows you to collect responses right from the inboxes, making the surveys more interactive and less vulnerable to survey fatigue.
As the employees don’t have to switch the instances and can view the surveys interactively inside their inboxes, they don’t find them time-consuming either.
5. Design your pulse survey, simply with Mailmodo
If you want to go the AMP way, Mailmodo is your best bet.
Mailmodo comes with an easy to use drag-and-drop email builder with a zero learning curve. You can simply register and start building engaging, beautiful, and compelling surveys with the help of the in-built templates.
The AMP emails offer interactive elements that can be delivered right inside the inboxes and all your responses can be recorded right there. More response rates, better survey results, and highly engaging surveys every time, Mailmodo is a game-changer when it comes to surveys!
Frequently asked questions about pulse surveys
1. What questions should you ask on the employee engagement surveys?
There is no specific constraint in this regard. The questions can focus on any topic, or a strategic initiative taken by the organization or department, and vary subjectively. They should be focused on a particular topic and try to figure out the reactions of the employees regarding that topic.
Some examples are:
Do you know how you as an employee can help the company meet its goals?
Do you feel proud to be associated with your current team?
Do you feel inspired by your teammates and leaders?
Do you feel that the company's information resources are actually helpful in making correct decisions about your work?
2. What should I ask in a pulse survey?
You must choose the questions smartly to keep the survey short, simple, focused, and engaging. The job is well taken care of if you are using pulse survey maker software, as there is a big library of questions. On the other hand, if you are compiling the survey manually, you have to ensure that your focus doesn't waver.
Some examples are:
Rate your happiness with the latest work from home policy
Do you feel that you are appropriately recognized at your workplace?
Do you have access to the right information at the right time, irrespective of remote working?
Pulse survey: Best practices
While pulse surveys are highly effective, their overall success depends on the way you leverage them. The best way to ensure successful response recording every time, and to unlock the bevy of benefits they offer, it is important to keep a few things in mind:
Opt for a frequency that is enough for you to follow the results of the survey and bring changes according to them, and your employees to see or feel those changes.
Create a well planned follow through that intends to take action. After all, honesty is a two-way train that is fueled by both the ends - leaders, and employees.
Next, focus on topics that can fluctuate and spur conflicted responses from the employees.
Keep the surveys short, engaging and meaningful.
Finally, choose the sharing medium carefully, as your result quality is highly dependent on it.
Conclusion
Don't let traditional email’s lack of action and survey fatigue impede your surveys and feedback collection. Schedule a demo with Mailmodo now, and take the first step towards excellent yet, effortless surveys.
