Why employee surveys are important for employees & companies?

With the ongoing health crisis and challenging work scenarios, it’s more important than ever to develop employee engagement. Employee surveys allow you to make sure morale is high and workers feel connected to company life. So why employee surveys are important for employees and companies?

With Sociabble’s new Surveys module, it’s never been easier to take the pulse of your workforce.

Importance of employee survey… From the employee side.

These are complicated times for employees. Which means engagement surveys are more important than ever.

It’s no secret that this has been a challenging year for almost everyone, with companies having to execute quick strategy pivots to adapt to the crisis, and with employees struggling to adjust to remote work and frontline scenarios while balancing family life.

And it’s no surprise that many employees are beginning to feel less connected, less motivated, and less engaged. Communication is limited, and human interactions are often few and far between. 

There are ideas to increase employee engagement  but a tool is also needed to encourage employee content creation, and make sure their needs and concerns are being addressed, and not falling through the cracks.

Why employee surveys are important, today more than ever ?

Pulse surveys used to serve the purpose. But today, more is needed.

Traditionally, engagement surveys or “pulse” surveys have been used as a means of keeping tabs on employee engagement and morale. These surveys were generally conducted once or twice a year; they were not a regular occurrence.

However, in light of the current situation, it’s clear that this is no longer enough. The future of employee engagement is changing and employees need more frequent contact than ever, the old way simply is no longer sufficient. 

One survey conducted by an external survey provider found that while 95% of employees said they were equally or more likely to respond to surveys now, 85% said that the frequency of surveys had not increased at all.* But beyond frequency, there is also the subject of targeting.

You cannot ask the same sorts of questions to all your different employees. Your company is likely composed of a variety of roles: those who work from home, those who still work in the office, and frontline workers who are in the field. Each will have different needs and situations, they will be facing different challenges. 

It would be counterproductive to ask all of them the exact same set of questions, not to mention potentially tone-deaf. You have to ensure that all employees are being reached and listened to, even those without a professional email address. And you need to be sure that they know they’re being listened to.

Employee recognition is important, they want their voices and ideas to be heard, they want to be part of the transformation of their company. And this is another crucial component of an effective survey.

How to make your employee surveys effective?

Employee surveys need to be decentralized and flexible in order to be effective.

Another issue with traditional surveys is the fact that they are too centralized, too top-down. 

In order for modern surveys to be effective, they need to be conducted not only at the top level, by headquarters, but also by local managers in the field.

These local managers need the power to get feedback and ideas from the teams they actually manage. Essentially, the governance of surveys needs to be decentralized to be relevant. Sometimes such surveys should be anonymous to be effective, and sometimes they are more useful if authenticated. Decentralization and flexibility are key. And managers need the power to adjust surveys to fit their specific needs.

To address this new need, many companies have relied on external employee survey solutions. But problems still arise.

In order to try to reconnect with workers and understand their needs, many companies have begun using external solutions like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and Qualtrics to name a few. 

In fact, the outsourcing of survey capabilities is a booming business, with a market increase from 4 billion dollars in 2017, to almost 7 billion dollars estimated for 2022. And while these services do provide surveys that employees can take, there are obvious problems that crop up.

For example:

No integration.

These services are not integrated into the company’s own information system, and they require a lot of work afterward in order to function.

Hard to get people engaged.

For a survey to work well, it needs to be introduced and teased, clearly explained, with results that are properly communicated afterward. And it needs to be well-branded to make people feel comfortable.

Data privacy risks.

In some cases (not all), survey providers do not have full data security for results and responses. Essentially, many of the tools out there don’t integrate seamlessly with the employee experience, or the information system of the company. They seem external, even extraneous to company life.

Being able to easily create surveys that can be sent out on a regular basis by local managers is key. Sociabble’s new Surveys module does just that, with a targeted survey ready in just a few clicks.

So what’s the best solution? Sociabble’s new Surveys module can help. 

Employee engagement stats,

show that engaged employees outperform their peers that are not engaged. Here at Sociabble, we know that employee surveys are in fact a very important part of Employee Communication. And we’ve long had a polls and surveys module embedded in our Employee Communication platform. But while effective, we still felt that it could be even better.

Early in 2020, understanding that a powerful employee survey engine was going to be critical, we decided to completely redesign our surveys solution. We’ve done extensive research and benchmarking to build the best experience for end-users—but also for comms teams or managers who set up the surveys. 

And today, we’re proud to announce that our new Surveys module is being released to all our clients, at no additional cost. So what’s in it?

Administrators or authorized users can quickly set up a survey.

Can be an instant poll with one question or a more sophisticated survey, with multiple choice questions, open questions, etc. We provide an easy to use and visual survey designer that lets authorized users define every step of the survey.

Administrators and managers can completely and easily define the design of the survey,

but if they don’t have the time, they can also readily pick one of our predefined design templates from a regularly updated library.

Surveys can be set to be anonymous or authenticated, 

and you can also decide if the results will be shared with end-users.

Users benefit from all the multi-language capabilities of the platform,

so it’s possible to create multiple versions of the polls to fit your global workforce.

Admins and managers can target a specific audience

for every survey, also with submission opening and closing dates.

Survey creators benefit from all the engagement features available on the platform:

mobile and email alerts to trigger the attention of the targeted audience, gamification and rewards to increase the level of participation, content pinning on top of channels, and much more.

And needless to say, by using Sociabble Surveys, companies take advantage of a fully secured and data privacy-compliant environment.

With Sociabble’s new Surveys module, you can select your precise audience, and make sure they receive the relevant survey, even on a mobile device, which is especially important for frontline workers.

Want to learn more about Sociabble surveys?

At Sociabble, we’ve helped hundreds of companies around the world improve their Employee Communication, including industry leaders like Coca-Cola European Partners, Vinci, and L’Occitane. 

If you want to discover how we can help, schedule a free demo today.

*Source : https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/should-you-send-surveys-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/