Discover the importance of employee communication survey questions through our free guide on conducting and measuring employee surveys.
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It can be difficult to know what to include in an employee survey. That’s why we have created a template that you can use for FREE to ensure your employee surveys are engaging. Get the responses that will help you understand your audience.
Access NowAs an internal communicator, it is essential to know how to harness the power of an employee communication survey. By exploring key aspects such as survey content, how to conduct surveys, and analyzing employee survey questions, you can acquire comprehensive data to help with strategic decision-making.
In this blog post, we’re going to delve into the importance of employee surveys and the role they play in enhancing employee engagement. We will look specifically at the internal communications survey and help you to conduct and measure internal communications survey questions.
You will find that you can use surveys very successfully to assess the effectiveness of existing internal communications and identify areas for improvement. This can also reduce costly misunderstandings and miscommunications. By asking specific internal communications survey questions about each employee’s understanding and overall satisfaction, you can get a clear picture of how your internal communications are resonating within the organization.
In its 2022 Culture Report, The Tech-Enabled Employee Experience, Achievers Workforce Institute (AWI) highlights four key areas that will benefit from technological investment. These bring people together and improve employee engagement, particularly in a dispersed workforce.
“Feedback is key. The first step is to gather feedback in a range of ways to ensure employees are able to communicate their needs in a manner that is comfortable to them. Some will prefer a conversation with their manager, while others will want to provide anonymous feedback through a chatbot or survey.”
AWI 2022 Culture Report
To keep engagement high during periods of intense growth or unforeseen circumstances, leadership teams need to find ways to check in with their employees more often.
One of the employee survey questions AWI asked was “Which of the following tools does your company provide?” The results varied between employees from the different countries surveyed, namely the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and Singapore. While 46% of companies in the U.S. are using communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, fewer (33%) use employee listening tools like surveys and chatbots. In Canada, the numbers are similar, 45% vs 37%.
Despite this, in the U.S., only 18% of organizations regularly seek feedback on important issues, and only 18% take meaningful action on employee feedback.
There are many reasons why you might want to conduct an employee internal communication survey. Here are a few of the most common:
But as internal communicators, we need to understand the importance of different types of employee surveys. The procedure requires careful preparation, well-considered distribution, and proper survey data processing. Be aware that it is frequently lengthy and difficult. Nevertheless, there are steps you can take to simplify and improve procedures.
The importance of employee surveys lies in the actionable insights they provide. Going beyond just data collection and analysis, it is especially important to then look at recommendations and best practices based on successful engagement strategies. Identify areas for improvement on how to enhance your internal communications. Ultimately, this process drives higher levels of employee engagement and satisfaction.
Conducting an employee communications survey may seem straightforward, but there is a lot to it. And it takes lots of planning and proper execution. Additionally, there are certain kinds of questions that will be more helpful than others. For example, ask questions about observable behavior rather than thoughts or motives. This way, you won’t be inviting biased thoughts and opinions. You want to receive feedback about measurable behaviors, which is easier to measure, analyze and respond to.
The specific employee survey questions you ask will depend on your particular needs and objectives. However, Momentive research found that there are distinct shifts that affect employee communication survey questions. Specifically, there is a growth of gender inclusion, an increase in response using mobile devices, and accepted modern survey best practices.
“The questions people ask in surveys reflect the big topics they care about and they are likely struggling with. They want to know how other people feel about these topics so they can develop the appropriate response.”
Momentive state of surveys report
A decade ago, most survey questions had only two gender-related answer options — male or female. By 2020, about 54% were offering three or more options. This percentage, says Momentive, has increased to 62.3% and includes transgender answer options. This approach applies to any questions that you ask about gender. Additionally, Momentive suggests allowing people to answer questions in the gender they identify with most. They also suggest allowing employees to skip questions if they wish.
Please answer these questions in the gender you identify most closely with. If you feel uncomfortable you can skip questions:
Craft effective surveys to measure employee sentiment and boost engagement
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The use of mobile devices to answer survey questions is rising. However, at 43.7%, it is still less than those collected on non-mobile devices including desktop computers. The dilemma is how to accommodate all respondents. Momentive suggests optimizing surveys for mobile respondents by keeping questions short and simple, and using multiple-choice questions. For example:
One of the most important best practices is to keep surveys as short as possible. Preferably, they should fit on one page and not contain any more than 10 questions.
Here is a 10-question survey example you could use to assess employee fears and concerns about an upcoming merger:
Craft effective surveys to measure employee sentiment and boost engagement
Once you have developed your survey questions, you need to decide how you will administer the survey. You can conduct a pulse survey into your email blasts. This way, you can send important, relevant information along with gauging employee communication satisfaction. You can send through cross-channel comms - Teams, Slack, and Sharepoint.
A clear and straightforward call to action should be included if you are emailing the survey to respondents. Giving workers enough time to complete the survey and provide feedback will help them understand the value of employee surveys.
Survey Monkey analyzed a random sample of 500,000 individual respondents who received survey invitations. The question was: “How long should you really wait before starting to analyze your results?” The majority of responses to surveys using an email collector were gathered in the first few days to a week after email invitations were sent:
This goes to show, you might want to wait until day 7 to run a significant analysis. And, if you’re trying to generate more responses, you might consider sending out a reminder email after a week to see if that triggers a bump from your internal communications survey laggards.
Momentive Inc., a Survey Monkey company, discusses what’s trending in its The state of surveys 2023 report. It also looks at how companies are changing the way they create surveys and the principles they used to catch people’s attention.
They also wanted to find out when time surveys so to garner the best/maximum responses.
They found that most surveys (87.4%) are taken during the workweek, with most of these (55.9%) taken between Tuesdays and Thursdays. A mere 12.6% are taken over weekends. Additionally:
The bar chart below shows the breakdown visually.
Once you have collected the survey data, you need to analyze the results. This will help you identify areas where you can improve communication. You can then develop a plan to implement these improvements.
Understanding the effectiveness and importance of your employee surveys is essential for improving employee engagement. Comprehensive engagement metrics allow you to measure the impact of your messages. Tracking key metrics with these communications such as click rates, click-through rates, and so on, provide valuable insights. These metrics will help you identify trends, areas for improvement, and successful communication strategies, ultimately enhancing engagement and satisfaction within your organization.
Here are some tips for analyzing and acting on internal communication surveys:
Employee communication surveys are a valuable tool that can help you improve your internal communication efforts. By asking specific employee communication survey questions about their communication preferences, their understanding of company information, and their overall satisfaction with your communication efforts, you can get a clear picture of how your internal communications are resonating with your workforce.
With the right internal communication platform, an employee communication survey can be easy to integrate into your messages, improving the procedure even more. Cerkl Broadcast has the tools to integrate pulse surveys into your newsletters, making it easy to gauge success. This information can then be used to develop a plan to improve your communication and increase employee engagement.
By following these tips, you can conduct an employee communication survey that will provide you with valuable insights into how to improve your internal communication efforts.
We’ve looked at the importance of employee surveys and discussed why you should bother to conduct them. We talked about survey content and provided you with 30 possible survey questions and answer options. Also, we suggested ways to analyze the answers to questions. All in all, we’ve given you a lot of info to get started with your employee communication survey. But we know that many internal communicators will be looking for even more advice. That’s why we have designed a sample survey to get you started. You can download our employee engagement survey template here — and it’s free.
Craft effective surveys to measure employee sentiment and boost engagement
As you embark on this project, think about how you will share results and recommendations with leadership or business partners. We hope that this worksheet can help your team identify which channels your employees enjoy the most and which types of content they’re consuming.
What should I ask in a communications survey? Ask questions that are more quantitative or based on behaviors that can be measured. It is a lot easier to use information about how often they respond to a pulse survey in an email blast than to ask if they like it. Liking something is subjective, but if they respond 100% of the time regardless of their feelings, then you know it works.
What do communication surveys involve? While communication surveys can vary, they can range from short answer questions, scalar questions, and multiple choice questions. Typically, they revolve around how they are responding to the communications and what you can do to improve.
What are the most common employee surveys? Some of the most common kinds of employee surveys are pulse surveys, focus groups, or even suggestion boxes.
How do you evaluate employee communication? There are many ways to evaluate employee communication. But one of the most effective ways to do so is to measure the reach it has on your employees. With things like Acknowledgements and analytics—coupled with surveys—you can get a holistic evaluation.
Craft effective surveys to measure employee sentiment and boost engagement
