An employee survey template can help give your organization helpful insights into employee satisfaction. Download this pulse survey template to:
HR Managers and leaders alike use employee surveys, or pulse surveys, to discover just how satisfied employees are in the organization. This allows them to get a good read of the organization, and where things might be improved, but you need to approach it in a well-thought-out and systematic fashion for it to work.
All you have to do is download it, and you can edit and transfer it to your survey tool of choice. There are free providers, e.g. typeform and SurveyMonkey. When running the survey, please make sure that you satisfy the current data privacy requirements, particularly with regard to the recently enforced General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
An employee survey, and a proper employee survey template, is effectively a tool for listening. It’s an opportunity to gather insights while making your employees feel heard. Especially if there has been a recent dip in performance, a pulse survey can truly check the pulse of what’s going on within your business.
It can seek to answer questions such as:
When you give employees the chance to contribute, it can also have a positive effect on your attrition or staff turnover rates. Employees can share, changes can be made, and satisfaction goes up, so there is less reason to ever leave.
Why should you ask for this information? The reason is simple: Because the general mood and workplace satisfaction directly affect performance, staff turnover, etc., and thus have business-relevant consequences that will interest your manager(s), too.
So, look at the results while relating them to fluctuation, sick leave numbers, and/or promotions. This allows you to identify correlations and to take action if necessary. What if many employees of one department leave the company and the remaining employees report that their workload is very high? Then discuss with the manager in charge how this can be addressed. Check in the survey that follows whether your actions are showing positive effects.
Before initiating a survey, ask yourself what you want to find out – e.g. about employee commitment. Determine the cycle for the survey and think in advance about how you will communicate the results, and when. Importantly, inform the managers within the organization that there will likely be some work for them to do after the survey that they will definitely benefit from. Because only if you know the reasons why employees are (un)motivated can you shape the content and their surroundings accordingly. Ultimately, if less people leave or are thinking of leaving, and performance is high, it helps the department and the entire organization.
Discuss the results not only bilaterally, but in a wider circle. This way, you are signaling that you live a culture of feedback and transparency and that, when faced with mistakes or weak spots, you look for solutions and not “culprits.” If it is obvious that the behavior of a manager is causing the problem, then you need to address this in a personal conversation directly with the manager before discussing anything publicly. Your interactions should be solution-oriented and collaborative. If the employees of a particular department show a high level of satisfaction and willingness to perform, find out the reasons. The results from this kind of analysis can be very helpful to other department managers.
Tip: Schedule team workshops after the survey. During these, you can discuss any negative results with the respective departments and find solutions together. Example: The score from your marketing team for communication within the company was 3.4. Use the workshop to dig deeper and find out what exactly is perceived as “bad,” or what is missing. Then ask the team for their suggestions to improve the situation.
