As an internal communicator, harnessing the power of an employee communication survey is essential. By exploring key aspects such as survey content, conducting the survey, and analyzing employee communication survey questions, you can obtain comprehensive data to inform strategic decision-making. In this blog post, we will delve into the importance of employee surveys and the role they play in enhancing employee engagement.
It can assess the effectiveness of your internal communications and identify areas for improvement. This reduces costly misunderstandings and miscommunications. By asking specific employee communication survey questions about each employee’s understanding and overall satisfaction, you can get a clear picture of how your communications are resonating.
Importance of Employee Surveys
Although there is a clear connection between the frequency of surveys and engagement, only 21% of companies conduct employee communication surveys three or more times a year. The workplace is constantly changing. 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.
There are many reasons why you might want to conduct an employee communication survey. Here are a few of the most common:
- To assess the effectiveness of your current communication channels and strategies.
- To identify areas where you can improve your communication.
- To gauge employee engagement and satisfaction with your communication efforts.
But as internal communicators, we need to understand the importance of different types of employee surveys. The procedure needs careful preparation, distribution, and survey data processing, and is frequently lengthy and difficult. However, there are steps you may take to simplify and improve the procedure.
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. This process ultimately drives higher levels of employee engagement and satisfaction.
Employee Communication Survey Content
Conducting employee communication surveys may seem straightforward, but there is a lot to it—with lots of planning and proper execution. 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 are not getting biased thoughts and opinions. You are receiving feedback about measurable behaviors, which is easier to measure, analyze and respond to, according to Harvard Business Review.
The specific questions you ask in your employee communication survey will also depend on your specific needs and objectives. However, there are some general employee communication survey questions that you should consider including. These include:
- How happy are you with the communication practices at your workplace?
- How frequently do you feel that you are given the latest news and information about the company?
- Do you think you comprehend the company’s goals and objectives clearly?
- Which methods of communication do you employ most frequently?
- Do you think your firm listens to you when you speak?
- Are you satisfied with the way that company decisions are communicated?
- What are your suggestions for improving internal communication at your company?
How to Conduct an Employee Communication Survey
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 did an analysis on 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 after email invitations were sent:
- 41% of responses were collected within 1 day
- 66% of responses were collected within 3 days
- 80% of responses were collected within 7 days
This goes to show, you might want to wait until day 7 to run any 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 laggards.
Analyzing Employee Communication Survey Questions
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 more, provide valuable insights. These metrics help you identify trends, areas for improvement, and successful communication strategies, ultimately enhancing engagement and satisfaction within your organization.
Here are some tips for actually analyzing and acting on your surveys:
- Review the survey objectives: Start by revisiting the objectives and goals of the employee communication survey questions. What specific aspects of employee communication were you trying to assess? This will help you maintain focus during the analysis and ensure you extract relevant insights.
- Use descriptive statistics: Start by summarizing the data using descriptive statistics. Calculate frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations for each question or response category. This will give you an overview of the distribution of responses and help identify any trends or patterns.
- Conduct thematic analysis: Identify key themes or patterns within the employee communication survey responses. Group similar comments or responses together to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying issues or concerns. This qualitative analysis will provide additional insights beyond the numerical data.
- Cross-tabulate data: Cross-tabulation allows you to examine relationships between different variables. For example, you can cross-tabulate survey responses based on employee demographics (e.g., department, tenure, location) to identify any variations or trends among different employee groups.
- Communicate findings and recommendations: Create a thorough report that includes a summary of the survey’s findings, major conclusions, and suggestions for improvement. Share the report with the appropriate parties and utilize it as the foundation for debate and decision-making, such as senior management or the internal communications team.
- Track progress: Finally, track the implementation of any recommended changes and monitor the impact on subsequent surveys or communication metrics. Regularly evaluate and adjust your communication strategies based on ongoing feedback and analysis.
Integrating Employee Communication Survey
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 communications are resonating with your workforce.
However, with the right internal communication platform, an employee communication survey can be easy to integrate into your messages. 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.
What’s Next?
It’s time to assess the importance of employee surveys and build a solid internal communications multi-channel strategy. With our internal communications audit template, you will:
- Receive suggested employee communication survey questions
- Review the types of content your team creates and distributes across your channels
- Outline all of your department’s channels and mediums
- Measure the frequency of each platform
- Access a personalized, downloadable audit to share within your organization.
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.
FAQ
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.
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.
Some of the most common kinds of employee surveys are pulse surveys, focus groups, or even suggestion boxes.
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.
