They say that to increase employee engagement, the first step you take is to measure your baseline. But you did that. You’ve completed your employee engagement survey, analyzed the results, communicated with your staff about those results, and then taken action to improve the organization. Now what?
While how you use your Pulse Survey is up to you completely, the two most common uses for a Pulse Survey are:
- Do a deeper dive into an issue uncovered by your full survey
- Measure your progress against your goals
What Makes it a Pulse Survey?
Pulse Surveys are short (fewer than 5 questions) and completely customizable; you’ll choose the question set that best suits your goal.
Our Pulse Survey projects follow the same easy, 5-week process used by our full survey projects. We’ll provide you with everything you need to set up the perfect survey project and end the work with an analysis call to review your feedback data reports.
Because Pulse Surveys are brief, the reports they generate are straightforward. You’ll be able to compare your previous results to the new data, broken down by workplace demographics like department, location and business unit. This sample report includes two tabs, one for the rated statements and the second for open-ended comments.
Dive More Deeply Into an Issue Uncovered by Your Survey
Let’s say, for example, that your survey indicated that feeling valued by the organization is the #1 key driver of engagement among your employees. That’s useful information! But what if this is an area that needs improvement? You see that it’s going very well in certain departments, but not others. What next?
Some of our most successful customer will turn around and run a Pulse Survey, asking employees to tell them more about just that topic. They might ask open-ended questions, to better understand what needs to stop, continue and start.
What you ask is entirely up to you, so you have the control you need to be effective.
Measure Progress Against Goals
Simply put, you’ll want to measure what you’re trying to change. At the end of your employee survey, it became clear what two or three things you should work on to increase employee engagement and satisfaction. Your Team Insights Report revealed exactly what drives engagement at your organization as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Whatever you choose to focus your resources on for the sake of improvement, those are the attributes you should re-measure 4-6 months after your initial data collection.
For example: Peter’s Perfect Pickled Peppers (a fictional employer of 500 people with 8 locations across the U.S.) identified that the sales team felt that they couldn’t trust what their supervisor told them, they didn’t feel valued, and they didn’t feel part of a team working toward a shared goal. While these attitudes were pervasive across the organization, they were particularly troubling among the sales team. So the executive leadership team worked with the human resources department to invest some resources into discovery conversations with members of the sales team, trust building exercises across the company, and even made some changes at the supervisory level.
The mid-year Pulse Survey used by Peter’s Perfect Pickled Peppers would ask only those questions about feeling trusting, valued and part of a team. Perhaps it would also include an open-ended question, for respondents to elaborate on their feedback.
Experience the Survey
