Ultimate Guide to Objective and Key results – OKR Meaning and Examples
Do you dread setting goals for your organization as you don’t see useful results? […]
Do you check your account just once or twice a year? Of course not, that would be crazy, right? So why do you check on your employees just once or twice annually?
Employee engagement has been a prominent driving force for high-performing and successful organizations. Organizations belonging to all industries spend a huge chunk of money from time to time to transform their workplace into the one that allures top talent, achieves sky-soaring productivity, and keeps their top performers for a lifetime. They invest in employee engagement surveys through which they check up on their employees only once or twice a year, but do you believe this is enough? Taking feedback just here and there throughout a year fails to give your organization enough opportunities to address the critical concerns and issues. You might still get a comprehensive picture but in this fast-paced culture, things can change a lot within a blink of an eye, let alone in a year. Enter the employee pulse survey!
There has been a large interest from organizations in adopting the approach of pulse surveys. They steer and improve the course of your organization. How? Read on to find what exactly are pulse surveys, their benefits, and how you can conduct the pulse surveys for your organization!
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What are pulse surveys?
A pulse survey is an easy-to-implement quick survey system that is strategically designed to get the feedback of your employees regularly – weekly, monthly, or quarterly. It significantly serves as a check-in for the employees for getting a quick insight into the job roles, employee satisfaction, work environment, and other such topics. They simply give you a quick insight into the health of your organization, and hence the name ‘pulse’ surveys.
Pulse surveys differ from engagement surveys on the following grounds:
a) Conducted more frequently (monthly, quarterly, etc). This enables your organization to gain more relevant feedback quickly.
b) Much shorter as they typically comprise 5 to 15 questions. Hence, they aren’t time-consuming.
c) Handy to focus on a targeted set of questions relating to the specific objective.
d) Significant for assessing reactions to change that has been executed in the organization.
Why should my organization adopt pulse surveys?
1. Collect real-time feedback
Pulse survey enables your organization to gather the opinion of your employees when it matters the most – in real-time. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to know about the opinions of your employees on a certain topic, you can grasp their feelings and thoughts as and when they happen. This sets you up to respond in a relevant and timely manner. By taking the feedback of your employees on a regular basis, you illustrate through your organization’s actions that you value your employee and their opinions.
2. Boost employee engagement
Employee engagement is an extremely big fuss nowadays as all the studies and research show that it brings a bag full of benefits for the organization. As employees get more engaged with your organization, the level of their job satisfaction rises and as a result, they get more invested in taking your organization towards success. Engaged employees are generally found to be the top performers of the organization. Moreover, organizations with more engaged employees are more feasible to have higher rates of profitability.
3. Encourages open communication
For your employees, it is comforting to work in an organization where they express their concerns, motivations, and thoughts on a regular basis. By showing them that you care to listen to them, you foster an openly communicating work culture where they will always give honest feedback. Such an organizational culture will make your employees happier, more engaged which in turn will establish a positive culture in the organization.
4. Higher response rate than annual surveys
Owing to the simplicity of completing pulse surveys, organizations usually find that they have a higher response rate with most, if not all their employees. As they are designed in such a way that they are quick to complete, your employees will be more inclined to contribute to this survey than the other alternatives. In the end, you will want a large pool of your employees to contribute to your surveys, right? If you answered yes, then no alternative can be better than the pulse survey.
How to successfully implement a pulse survey in my organization?
1. Select the questions to ask
Make sure to at least select 5 to 15 questions that you want your employees to answer. These questions should be the ones that will add insight and value to your organization. You can cover a variety of topics such as feelings about management, workload, recognition, and job role through these questions.
2. Announce the survey to your organization
Before sending out the pulse survey, ensure to let your employees know everything about the survey. Make them aware of why this survey is being conducted, what will happen to their feedback, and whether it will be anonymous. Don’t forget to reinforce the fact that each employee’s feedback is valuable for your organization.
3. Initiate the survey
Do not commit the blunder of sending out the survey at a random time. Determine the time that will be the most convenient for your employees as you would not want them to ignore the survey. Moreover, give a thought to the number of times you would want to send it out and in what format.
4. Analyze the responses
Upon the completion of the pulse survey, comes the most important bit of the surveys – reviewing the obtained responses. Do reflect on the areas that received the positive retort but primarily look for areas that cry out for improvement the most. Consider analyzing your trend data as well as it will show how results in each area are changing after each survey.
5. Take action
As cliche as it may sound, make your action speak louder than your words. Your employees take out their time to provide you with their valuable feedback. Don’t disappoint them. Listening to their feedback is one thing but taking action as per the feedback is a different thing altogether. Develop an action plan consisting of key dates and the person responsible for delivering each part.
6. Review & repeat
The key purpose for your organization to adopt the approach of pulse survey is that you are going to repeat it from time to time. Making the changes would be of little to no use if you don’t repeat the survey in the immediate future as you would have no clue if any progress and improvement was made by your organization after implementing the changes. Review and repeat regularly!
Despite pulse survey being new to the workplace, they are taking the industry by storm. As the landscape of workplaces continues to change, these convenient and quick surveys are the best tool to gather constructive feedback, boost employee engagement and take your organization towards the success it desires. Contact us today for more proficient assistance for your organization and its performance management needs!
