How it can help you
A weekly pulse survey allows you to easily understand employees' general morale. Understanding how employee morale is trending is key to being able to take proactive action to address any issues before they result in employees leaving the company or becoming disengaged. Just the act of sending out a survey and demonstrating that you are interested in the results can improve employee engagement.
A more regular pulse survey has advantages over traditional annual or quarterly employee surveys. By surveying more regularly, it becomes easier to:
Review results and interpret findings, as there is less data to process
Take action quickly before employees leave an organization
Discovering more relevant issues as they are still fresh in employees' minds
Additionally, if you are in a hybrid or remote working environment, it can be hard to gauge employee morale without the informal interactions with employees that take place in an office. Using these surveys can replace the insights gained from those interactions.
How to interpret the results
Look for trends by department or by job role to identify teams that may need further investigation to uncover underlying issues that are resulting in low pulse scores.
Look for big variances from previous period scores to understand if a major issue might have occurred that needs investigation.
When a major change has occurred in the organization, use the survey scores to gain insight into how it is impacting employees.
Best practices
Keep the survey short:
Since it is being sent out on a regular basis, adding too many questions will results in low survey completion. It will also make it harder to analyze and action.
Find the right survey frequency for your company
Only survey as frequently as you will be able to interpret and action the results to avoid survey fatigue. If you can't or won't use weekly insights, reduce the frequency and change the wording of the questions accordingly. At the same time, ensure that surveys are frequent enough that they can still provide recent, relevant and actionable insights.
Show that you are listening and taking actions based on the responses:
The primary cause of survey fatigue (employees not wanting to complete surveys) - is the feeling that responses are being ignored. By sharing results and more importantly taking action related to survey results, you can maintain high engagement and achieve the purpose of the survey.
Share the purpose of the survey clearly:
Explain why you want this information and how it will be used to improve the employees work experience as part of the purpose text for the survey.
Consider the need for anonymity
Some employees only feel comfortable giving truthful feedback if they are allowed to be anonymous, especially if they are unhappy.