The employee survey world has become varied and diverse. Where once the annual employee satisfaction survey was a fixture (for large companies, at least), there are now a host of different approaches and tools from which to choose. For the uninitiated, it can be tricky to know where to start.
Our team at ETS has created this guide on employee survey types to break down the different types of employee surveys, helping you decide which one may be right for your business.
15 Popular Types of Employee Surveys
Here, we run through some of the most prominent types of employee surveys and consider some of the companies using these. The main types of employee surveys include employee engagement, experience, and effectiveness surveys. We will explain and break these down below to help you understand how they can assist you in making the right decisions to improveyour business.
Employee Engagement Surveys:
1. Employee engagement surveys
An employee engagement survey measures a worker’s emotional commitment to the organisation, highlighting things like their willingness to put in discretionary effort, whether they’d recommend the organisation and their intention to remain working there in future. It aims to give a far more holistic overview of employee opinion and will likely include questions relating to:
- Organisational strategy
- Culture and values
- Senior leadership
- Thoughts – what they think about their work, colleagues, and management
- Feelings – emotive aspects, such as pride in the organisation
- Behaviour – intention to stay and advocacy
- Pay and benefits
Naturally, this will provide you with a wealth of data, enabling deeper and wider analysis. This can unearth genuinely invaluable insights, but analyses aren’t quick pieces of work, and any resulting actions taken will take time to implement.
2. Mood surveys
These are ultra-simple surveys intended to get a very quick overview of the mood of a workforce. Such surveys can come in the form of an online, tablet or smartphone app or on a dedicated device (such as a kiosk –see below).
They make participation quick and straightforward, typically using touch-based icons (i.e. smiley face), coloured buttons or a slider scale to indicate how they currently feel.
3. Pulse surveys
Employee pulse surveys, or snap surveys as they’re sometimes called, are typically smaller in scale, with fewer employees invited to take part and/or fewer questions in the survey. Naturally, this reduces the resulting admin.
The frequency of pulse check surveys is most commonly either monthly or quarterly. Such surveys may be used to check in on engagement or prominent themes from a full engagement survey or to gauge employees’ views on hot topics.
“Pulse surveys continue to become ever more popular, with the vast majority of our clients now favouring some level of interim 'pulse' surveys in between an annual 'full census' survey. However, before introducing pulses, it's important you ensure that there’s a firm commitment and available resources for analysing results, communicating back to the business and taking action.”
- Steven Arbuckle, Principal ConsultantPsychologist at ETS
Discover more about pulse survey questions and examples.
4. Pull surveys
Some organisations favour a local approach to engagement. They want to give local teams the autonomy and ability to ‘pull’ (or request) an employee survey rather than ‘push’ it. This obviously gives local managers ownership of the process and enables them to create and run surveys on an ad hoc basis to suit their needs.
“Several organisations we’ve recently begun working with have asked us for ‘self-service’ employee survey tools. Their intention is to give the power to local teams, regions or business units to create their own ‘pull surveys’ when needed.”
5. Staff satisfaction surveys
A staff satisfaction survey measures an employee’s happiness with their current job. Typically, the information sought relates to ‘HR issues’ covering aspects such as pay and benefits and working conditions. While elements of this approach remain, this narrow approach has largely been left behind.
6. Culture surveys
Organisational culture is now widely regarded as a top priority for businesses. Naturally, organisations undergoing cultural change are keen to measure progress on this.
To do this, they may use a culture survey to get employees’ views on the working culture and identify any obstacles to the desired new culture.
Employee Experience Surveys:
1. IVR (telephone) surveys
IVR or Interactive Voice Response surveys, to give them their full name, are telephone-based. Most commonly associated with gaining customer feedback, IVR surveys can also be a useful survey methodology for when you have groups of employees that are based remotely and perhaps don’t have ready access to the internet.
2. Kiosk surveys
Surveying employees in ‘real-time’ is a prominent trend, particularly in a number of global businesses. They’re looking for an ‘always on’ approach to capturing employees’ feelings and views. Of course, in many industries and companies, there are large employee populations without an email address or easy PC access.
So, such companies have been able to reach employees by deploying survey kiosks in back offices, factory staff rooms or other communal staff areas. Employees are asked just one (or a few) simple questions like “Did you feel valued at work today?”.
3. Candidate feedback survey
Though candidates won’t necessarily become your employees, getting their feedback on their experience with your organisation during the interview is crucial. This feedback can reveal how candidates typically discover your job openings, why they decided to apply, and what they thought about your process of recruiting.
From this feedback, you can make adjustments to improve recruitment over time and attract top talent.
4. Joiners’ surveys
The opening weeks andmonths of a new job is a formative and hugely important time for employees. Put simply, first impressions count. Many organisations therefore survey new joiners after their first week or month (or both) to capture, among other things, their views on the hiring and onboarding process.
5. Leavers’ (or exit) surveys
Capturing the views of employees before they leave can be tremendously insightful. At a time when retaining talent has never been as crucial, a leavers’ survey can highlight themes and patterns in why people choose to leave, helping the business to address things where necessary.
6. 'Always on' employee listening
Another survey of increasing interest has been daily polls or real-time employee listening. Similar to 'kiosk' surveys, these tend to focus on one to five questions and are intended to give a constant snapshot view of employees’ mood, engagement, or opinions. Real-time feedback is likely more useful at a team or department level since the motivations and drivers tend to differ for different groups.
But, as is the case with pulse surveys, if considering this option, it is crucial you consider what the results will be used for, by whom, and what value it will add to either the employees or the business. You should also think about where ownership would sit for analysing and responding to the data being constantly gathered.
Employee Effectiveness Surveys:
1. 360-degree survey
360-degree employee surveys analyse employees from various viewpoints of peers, managers, supervisors, and even clients to get a well-rounded perspective of an employee’s performance, strengths, weaknesses, and more. Discover more aboutthe latest 360 feedback trends and best practices.
2. Professional development survey
Professional development surveys enable workers to receive honest feedback from others around them to identify training needs for professional growth.
Instead of being utilised for performance evaluation, the information obtained from these surveys can encourage employees to discover where their strengths and weaknesses lie so they know where they can improveand set better employee performance objectives.
3. Manager feedback survey
In manager feedback surveys, employees are questioned on their perceptions of their managers, which can offer valuable insights into manager effectiveness.
This can guide action planning concerning each individual manager.
How to Choose Suitable Employee Survey Types
A ‘full census' engagement survey, typically once a year, remains hugely valuable for most organisations. However, there’s no escaping the fact that, for many of today’s fast-moving businesses, asking employees for their views once every 12 months is just no longer viable.
An increased demand for regular insights that has led to a massive proliferation of employee survey providers and types. Different types of surveys are geared to address differing business needs, whether for super-fast feedback from staff to get a high-level view of employee engagement or to gain more qualitative, detailed employee insights on a particular topic.
It’s important that you go for the right employee survey frequency and type(s) to suit your business needs and those of your employees. If you’re unsure of which survey to opt for, here’s a few tips to help you along:
· Set some objectives
Once you clearly outline what you want to achieve, you may have a better idea about which survey can help you reach your goals.
· Keep timing in mind
Different employee survey types are conducted at different times. For example, onboarding surveys are usually administered after hiring, while exit surveys should be conducted when employees leave the company.
· Think about frequency
How often do you want to gather feedback from your employees and share results? Some surveys are conducted more frequently than others, so this is another consideration to keep in mind.
· Consider key topics and participants
Different employee survey types focus on different aspects of the employee experience, so consider what you want to assess and evaluate your workforce’s wants and needs.
· Experiment
You may consider experimenting with different employee survey types on a small scale to discover which generates the most relevant insights for your organisation. Some may be more useful than others, which you can then execute on a larger scale.
Hopefully, you’re now more clued up on different types of employee engagement surveys and which is right for your organisation. Choosing the right or wrong survey could make or break your company’s future strategies, so it’s worth considering the options carefully before making a selection.
If you’re struggling to choose an employee survey type to suit your business, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. Our team will be more than happy to guide you in planning, launching, and reporting an employee survey, explain what 360-degree feedback is, and guide you in making marginal gains on employee experience.
