
Simplify your talent journey and make confident people-focused decisions with Xref. Find out why the organisations you trust, choose Xref.
Reduce attrition, improve retention, build corporate memory to improve organisational metrics with an Xref Exit Survey.
Get started with referencing in Xref today for free. No credit card required.
Understanding the thoughts and feelings of your employees is crucial to the well-being of every business.
But how do businesses go about gathering this feedback on a consistent basis?
Employee engagement has become one of the key focus points for business leaders. Most people are already familiar with engagement surveys, but pulse surveys are becoming an increasingly popular tool due to its myriad of benefits in relation to employee engagement and wellbeing.
So, let’s take a deep dive into everything you need to know about pulse surveys.
In short, a pulse survey is a short set of questions that is sent to employees on a regular basis. They are a fast and frequent survey system.
As the word ‘pulse’ suggests, the survey is to provide a pulse check on important subjects such as communication, job satisfaction, job-related roles, leadership, relationships, and the work environment.
Pulse surveys are generally only 5-15 questions, easy to answer and don’t take up too much valuable time.
Typically, they are used at strategic intervals such as monthly or quarterly, which helps businesses gain quicker, more relevant feedback.
An engagement survey is usually done annually at the conclusion of the year or financial year. Engagement Surveys provide businesses with a one-off, holistic snapshot.
Engagement surveys are usually longer in format with more detailed questions.
According to a recent article in Forbes, the average employee engagement survey only gets a 30-40% response rate, whereas pulse surveys average a supreme response rate of 85%.
But this isn’t a battle between employee pulse surveys and engagement surveys. Both options should work hand-in-hand.
An annual engagement survey should give you a starting point for all the pulse surveys that follow. Pulse surveys should be viewed as strategic methods to complement the overarching engagement survey. Pulse surveys allow businesses to track the progress of the feedback derived from the annual engagement survey.
Whilst there are definitely benefits to using engagement surveys, most companies, unfortunately, use them to simply ‘tick a box’, and there is sometimes no action taken from the results of the survey.
Furthermore, checking in on your staff only once a year is not good enough. With pulse surveys, you can regularly keep track of issues, employee morale and rectify any concerns before it’s too late.
The benefits include:
As each pulse survey is different, there is no set list of questions, but they should all be properly planned and structured.
Pulse surveys require an investment of time from a company’s employees, it’s essential to only focus on asking things that are relevant, and important to your organisation.