Nov 29, 2016 | Blog

Top 5 Things to Consider Before Conducting a Pulse Survey

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With the growth of self-service survey portals and the development of more powerful and efficient survey platforms, coupled with increasingly accurate employee databases from which to invite people to the survey, more companies are seeking to conduct shorter, sharper or more targeted surveys in between their enterprise employee census surveys.

However, just because you can survey often doesn’t mean that you ought to. Before surveying you need to make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons and in the right way. So before undertaking a Pulse survey, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What topics do we want to cover?

A comprehensive survey program will likely include one or more of the following types of pulse surveys that:

  • Track key metrics between census (enterprise or annual) surveys and gain feedback on emerging topics.
  • Measure the degree of improvement resulting from action responses to the census survey.
  • Diagnose the reasons for success or failure of action responses to the census survey.
  • Deploy “one-off” surveys to gain employee feedback on recent events or hot topics in the organization or to assess the results of change initiatives.
  • Measure ongoing opinions as part of a continuous listening campaign.

Clearly understanding why you are conducting the survey and what areas you want to cover helps increase the chance that the pulse survey is successful.

2. Who do we want to survey?

Choosing the target audience is a key element of any survey. The main approaches are:

  • All employees – this provides the most robust results but is often time consuming and can require the same effort to map the organization as the census survey does. In a frequent pulse program, the survey might be conducted quarterly or monthly with a quarter or a twelfth of employees invited, as appropriate, in each wave.
  • A targeted audience of everyone in key parts of the organization or in key roles – all the people in one division, or all managers or all HR. This allows targeted questions but doesn’t provide company-wide results.
  • A random sample of employees – requires careful planning to ensure that key populations are covered and that the sampling doesn’t favor one group over another and so skewing the overall results.

3. When will we run the survey?

There is always a temptation to run surveys on a frequent basis in order to provide up to date information on employee opinions. However, do bear in mind respondent fatigue. If employees are continually asked to respond to surveys, they will likely become bored with doing so and response rates and/or the quality of their responses will fall. These effects can be managed by not surveying any one employee population too many times. The management of the employee population to achieve this takes planning. Also consider embargoing pulse surveys too close to the census survey so as to minimize these concerns. Companies like CEB offer Pulse Surveys that allow random sampling while still avoiding survey fatigue.

4. How will we use the results?

Census surveys typically provide reports for all levels of the organization where it is possible to do so. Pulse surveys usually have a more restricted reporting plan because they are intended to provide only a top level overview of the whole organization or the survey has been targeted at a particular population.

Consider how you plan to use and communicate the results to set proper expectations in your organization. If you are not planning to let people have the same granularity of reporting as the census survey, let people understand this.

5. Can we replace census surveys with Pulse surveys?

Pulse surveys are often mistakenly seen as quick and easy alternatives to a census employee survey. In most cases, however, census surveys will still remain the foundation of your survey program because they enable firm-wide issue diagnosis, benchmarking and action planning. Pulse surveys can be a powerful tool, when used with a well thought-out and comprehensive survey strategy in combination with enterprise-wide census surveys.

 

When determining a Pulse survey strategy, it’s important to first know what it is that you are trying to measure, or what topics on which you desire feedback, and how will that fit into your overall survey program strategy.  To stay on top of HR trends, view additional resources from CEB.