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EXPLAINING

Employee survey

What is an employee survey?

An employee survey is a questionnaire and analytics tool that analyzes the answers and provides employee engagement and experience insights and improvement recommendations. Questions include how people experience their work, the work environment, and their perception of the organization as their employer and show how engaged and satisfied people are, problem areas in the organization, and what works well.

Today, an employee survey is much more than the traditional (bi-)yearly form for employees to provide feedback to their employer. Modern organizations apply a continuous listening approach by regularly surveying their employees and managers. They ask a few selected questions concerning the most important business areas they want to focus their workforce’s attention on.

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Focus on the analysis, insights, and actions

The focus of the modern employee survey has shifted from data collection to analysis, recommended improvement actions, and people risk predictions. By combining HR master data with newly collected data, advanced analytics, and AI tools, organizations gain rich insights. They have a clearer understanding of engagement, employee experience, and expected future patterns for sick leave and employee turnover.

Be transparent and include everyone

With clear dashboards at individual, team, and senior management levels, the entire organization has access to the survey results to reflect on their current status and take action. This is an effective way to involve employees in strategy implementation and help managers lead a regular and targeted dialogue for continuous improvement.

For modern organizations

CatalystOne Engage’s software for pulse and employee surveys enables you to measure, analyze, and gain insights and recommendations about your organization’s employee experience and engagement. With it, you can effectively act to improve well-being, engagement, and culture and succeed with the people side of transformation projects. Below, we explain how this new type of software has evolved the employee survey to support a modern way of working.

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Why employee surveys are important

Conducting regular and anonymous employee surveys is important for several reasons, including:

  1. Feedback on employee experience: Understanding employees’ and leaders’ opinions and experiences is essential, as experiences are subjective notions in the heads of those concerned. This means that everyone makes decisions based on what they believe is true. So, understanding how employees perceive their work and work environment is crucial. Employee feedback also provides insight into people’s well-being and current status while offering improvement ideas.
  2. Finding issues: Asking for feedback will help you identify issues and what prevents performance.
  3. Knowing what works well: You can also learn what works well by asking your people to share their thoughts. This can be used to create best practices and build on them.
  4. Tracking trends: By asking the same questions over time, you can track progress and change in the different areas you measure.
  5. Predicting people risks: Using AI models, you can simulate predictions based on historical data and learn which segments in your organization are most prone to sick leave or resignation.
  6. Guiding improvement actions: Since problems become clear in a modern employee survey with an analytics software, you can gain suggestions that are easy to act on to improve.
  7. Decision-making: In-depth knowledge of employee experience provides a clearer and more accurate basis for making decisions.
  8. Employee engagement and morale: When employees are part of shaping the future, they are more likely to be engaged and committed to living the new way.
  9. Continuous improvement: Modern employee surveys continuously direct your workforce’s attention to key focus areas. Providing transparent access to survey results stimulates team dialogues and fosters active engagement in continuous improvement initiatives.
  10. Inclusive leadership: Seeking input on employees’ experiences fosters a sense of being heard, promotes psychological safety, and nurtures loyalty and trust. Psychological safety, fundamental to inclusive leadership, cultivates numerous positive outcomes, such as higher-quality work, creativity, and innovation.
  11. User-friendly: A digital modern employee survey is easy and quick for employees to use. It automatically analyzes and gives you insights and recommendations, which makes it possible to know employee experience at a deep level across your entire organization.
  12. Develop and maintain your organizational culture: When you know what works well and what does not, it is easier to develop a culture that will have a higher chance of succeeding and being lived.

As more advanced technology becomes available, more application areas for the modern employee survey develop.

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Why employee surveys matter

"Where we see a higher engagement today, more people respond to the survey, and the measurement results increase. It is due to a collaboration that is not just the manager's responsibility but the result of an active workforce."

Anders Westerholm

HR Director at Ambea

What is an employee pulse survey?

At CatalystOne Engage, a pulse survey is very similar to a modern employee survey as it has the same functionalities. The main difference is the survey frequency, where pulse surveys are more often thought of as a very frequent measurement.

A pulse survey collects employee feedback data on a few questions regularly, analyzes the measurement results, and provides recommendations. It can be conducted weekly, bi-weekly, or at customized time intervals. What also signifies a pulse survey is the way the measurement results and the HR master data combined with them come to life.

Pulse surveys sometimes have a negative connotation because employers have been eager to learn about the employee experience but have not had a system in place to act on the measurement results. Therefore, many organizations today run pulse surveys, or short modern employee surveys, less frequently than the traditional pulse surveys.

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Why employee pulse survey?

The pulse survey is an automatic digital tool that makes it easy to collect feedback and analyze the measurement results. A pulse survey software can work with a lot of data and keep track of trends over time. AI models can be built to quickly process free-text comments, uncovering insights that might not otherwise be found.

Originally, the pulse survey was a tool to address employee engagement issues, but it is today used to understand and leverage the entire employee experience. When done correctly, employees say that the pulse surveys are not surveys after all; they are new forms of communication.

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What is the difference between an employee survey and a pulse survey?

  • A traditional employee survey asks many more questions than a pulse survey and does not have the support of a digital analytics software to turn the measurement results into insights and recommended actions. Pulse surveys save a lot of administrative time and manpower and are conducted more frequently.

     

  • At CatalystOne Engage, we use the pulse survey technology for our modern employee survey but recommend that customers measure at most every three weeks or once a month. It is critical to have time to follow up on the measurement results. The best is often if the employee survey results dialogue is incorporated into existing team meetings.

     
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What is the purpose of an employee survey?

A modern employee survey asks a small set of questions to understand the experiences and opinions of everyone in an organization, with the purpose of improving areas that do not work well. To maximize insights, questions should target key areas crucial for organizational success that employees can impact. These typically include employee and leadership engagement, well-being, performance, organizational culture, and involvement in transformations.

 
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What is the purpose of an employee survey?

A modern employee survey asks a small set of questions to understand the experiences and opinions of everyone in an organization, with the purpose of improving areas that do not work well. To maximize insights, questions should target key areas crucial for organizational success that employees can impact. These typically include employee and leadership engagement, well-being, performance, organizational culture, and involvement in transformations.

 

When employee surveys do not work

  • You exclude employees from the measurement results
    Employee surveys that withhold results from employees are less effective than those in which employees are included in the process. When employees do not see the results of their responses, they are less likely to provide thoughtful and honest answers in the future.
  • You ask too many questions
    Traditional employee surveys ask a lot of questions—very often around 90-100 questions—once a year or every two years. The questions cover a lot of areas, which may feel draining to answer.
  • You ask for feedback that spans a long time period
    The human brain works best when it is asked for feedback in close proximity to when something occurred. Not only does the brain have a hard time remembering something that happened a year ago, but it may also not be relevant to what the organization is trying to achieve today.
  • You do not act on the feedback
    When feedback is only collected but not acted upon, survey respondents may lose motivation to answer the following time.


Before surveying employees, it is important to consider the effects of asking for their input. Once you ask for feedback, employees have expectations that you will listen to understand their point-of-view and act to improve a situation or an area with low feedback scores. It can be more damaging to ask for feedback and do nothing with it than not to ask at all. However, whether you ask for feedback or not, employees will have their perceptions of what works well and what does not. Not asking them to be open about it does not change the fact that they still have their perceptions and will act on what they believe is real to them, whether you know it or not.

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What is an employee survey report, and how do I use it?

A modern employee survey provides a comprehensive report after each measurement survey closes. It includes qualitative measurement results, quantitative analysis, rich insights, targeted recommendations, and AI-generated predictions.

 
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Focus cards

Your CatalystOne Engage employee survey has focus cards that present the results both high-level and in-depth. The most common are:

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    Overview: The overview quickly summarizes the results of the last measurement and compares them to the one before and the overall organization results.
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    Trends: Follow the development over time and compare it with the team and the overall organization. Click to gain more in-depth information. Learn the reasons for and how to improve downward-moving trends.
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    Written text analysis: With AI comment analytics, all free-text comments are analyzed automatically immediately after a measurement closes. They are organized into drivers and themes to make it easy to learn what is top of mind for people and be able to dive deeper into segments to learn input and insights from specific groups.
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    Sick leave prediction and prevention: Estimate your organization’s future sick leave risks based on the patterns of how your employees answer your CatalystOne Engage employee survey. You also learn the measurement area that matter the most to preventing sick leave.
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    Employee turnover prediction and prevention: Learn what segments of your organization where employees are at most risk of resigning. Also know the focus area with the biggest impact for preventing employees from resigning.
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    Context: Learn how your team’s latest measurement results compare with past, and in comparison with other teams in the organization.
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    Spread: Learn the details of the measurement results, including the result spread and written feedback. Understand whether the employee experience is skewed in any part of the organization or similar across the board.
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    Results matrix: Gain a clear overview of many measurement results in one view. You quickly identify strengths and improvement areas.
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    Download the measurement results: The measurement results can quickly be downloaded in a ready-to-go PowerPoint, designed in your organization’s brand design. Perfect for the team meeting. Should you want to do your own analysis, simply download the measurement results in an Excel format.
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Dashboards

In the survey report there are dashboards for different access levels, enabling the entire organization to use the measurement results

 

Private dashboard: Each individual can access their own confidential results in a private dashboard to compare their responses to their team’s. The private dashboard enables employees to reflect and work on their self-leadership.

Team dashboard: The team-level dashboard shows the team’s measurement results compared to their trend and the rest of the organization. The manager uses the dashboard in team dialogues about which areas to focus on improvements and what lessons they can draw.

Senior management dashboard: Managers of managers have a dashboard that includes their team’s measurement results and can compare them with peer team results.

Super user dashboard: The super user has full access and can view the entire organization’s results (except for the individual’s private dashboard, which is only visible to the individuals themselves).

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Dashboards

In the survey report there are dashboards for different access levels, enabling the entire organization to use the measurement results

 

Private dashboard: Each individual can access their own confidential results in a private dashboard to compare their responses to their team’s. The private dashboard enables employees to reflect and work on their self-leadership.

Team dashboard: The team-level dashboard shows the team’s measurement results compared to their trend and the rest of the organization. The manager uses the dashboard in team dialogues about which areas to focus on improvements and what lessons they can draw.

Senior management dashboard: Managers of managers have a dashboard that includes their team’s measurement results and can compare them with peer team results.

Super user dashboard: The super user has full access and can view the entire organization’s results (except for the individual’s private dashboard, which is only visible to the individuals themselves).

  • INCLUDE
    Employee survey results must be available for everyone
    A continuous improvement process only works when everyone perceives it as valuable. Therefore, it is essential to give everyone access to the measurement results. Each individual must be able to know the results and reflect on them to buy into and live the necessary change.
  • EXPLAIN
    How to present employee survey results in meetings
    Managers often use an automatically generated PowerPoint presentation in team dialogues about the results. This provides a high-level summary of the current team measurement results for each question measured and serves as a basis for the discussion. Managers of managers can use a similar PowerPoint presentation for discussions about the results in their teams.

    Another way to present the results is to use an AI-generated summary with recommended actions. The summary is shaped based on the format for its use. Formats include text fit for an annual report, leadership meeting, and internal newsletter or podcast.
  • ACT
    What to do with employee survey results
    The point of measuring employee experience and engagement should be to address problems, maintain what works well, and learn from them. With this as the goal, acting on the measurement results is key.

    The insights and recommended actions generated from modern employee surveys serve as the guide and basis for the improvement dialogue, action plan, next steps, and follow-up. Managers must engage the team members in the actions. An inclusive leadership style is key to getting people on board with improvement actions and ensuring they live the new way.
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How to perform an employee survey?

Using a digital tool is optimal for conducting surveys. While a spreadsheet is a simple data-gathering approach, it prolongs analysis and next steps. Modern employee surveys are cost-effective, facilitating easy data collection, automatic analysis to find relevant insights, and recommended improvement actions.

 

What are good employee survey questions?

 

Regular survey questions should focus on understanding the employee’s authentic feedback, set expectations that employees must be part of creating the new way forward, and address topics the employee can directly impact. Important topics that by nature are longer-term are preferably added-on questions less frequently.

Understanding the experiences of employees and leaders is crucial for the organization. These experiences reflect their truths, guiding their decisions and actions based on their perceptions of reality.

At CatalystOne Engage, we recommend measuring nine areas that neuroscience tells us are most important for individual well-being and performance on a regular basis.

How to perform an employee survey?

Using a digital tool is optimal for conducting surveys. While a spreadsheet is a simple data-gathering approach, it prolongs analysis and next steps. Modern employee surveys are cost-effective, facilitating easy data collection, automatic analysis to find relevant insights, and recommended improvement actions.

 

What are good employee survey questions?

 

Regular survey questions should focus on understanding the employee’s authentic feedback, set expectations that employees must be part of creating the new way forward, and address topics the employee can directly impact. Important topics that by nature are longer-term are preferably added-on questions less frequently.

Understanding the experiences of employees and leaders is crucial for the organization. These experiences reflect their truths, guiding their decisions and actions based on their perceptions of reality.

At CatalystOne Engage, we recommend measuring nine areas that neuroscience tells us are most important for individual well-being and performance on a regular basis.

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  • Clarity
    In our team, the work plan is clear
  • Development
    I have the responsibilities and challenges I need in order to grow
  • Enthusiasm
    Right now, I am happy with my job
  • Recognition
    I feel recognized and appreciated for the work I do well
  • Value
    We are spending our time on the right things
  • Balance
    There is enough time to do the tasks that are expected of me
  • Inclusion
    I feel a sense of belonging at work
  • Efficiency
    I have the tools and support I need to do my job well
  • Autonomy
    I have enough independence to do my job effectively
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How many questions should an employee survey have?

A modern employee survey measures a few questions regularly, as it makes it easy for employees to respond. With robust analytics tools, nine questions are enough to gain the needed insights.

When there is a need to understand an area in depth to, for example, address an issue or gather information to build a stronger employer brand, these are easily added on occasion to the regular survey.

How many questions should an employee survey have?

A modern employee survey measures a few questions regularly, as it makes it easy for employees to respond. With robust analytics tools, nine questions are enough to gain the needed insights.

When there is a need to understand an area in depth to, for example, address an issue or gather information to build a stronger employer brand, these are easily added on occasion to the regular survey.

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How often should employee surveys be conducted?

Only measure as often as you can follow up and take action on the measurement results. Most of our customers measure every month as it gives a current understanding of the employee experience while there is enough time to address issues and learn from what works well.

Why employee surveys should be anonymous

Learning the true employee experience requires people to feel safe in that they can share their authentic feedback, not a made-up version to satisfy the data collection. The most effective way to do this is to ensure the employee survey is confidential. At CatalystOne Engage, we never compromise on the individual’s confidentiality.

What is a good participation rate for an employee survey?

Every voice matters to learn the true picture. An employee survey should include the entire organization, not just a sample size or individual contributors. Expecting 100% participation is not viable as some people might be on short- or long-term leave or, for other reasons, unavailable at the time of the survey.

CatalystOne Engage recommends that large organizations strive for at least a 70% participation rate. This gives an accurate enough representation of the current employee experience.

How to increase employee survey participation?

There are several ways to increase participation rates. Here are the most effective:

  • Act on the result
    One of the best ways to increase employee survey response rates is to act on the measurement results after each survey has closed.
  • Develop a continuous improvement mindset
    Incorporating the measurement results into ongoing team discussions where continuous improvements are of focus sets the expectations that employees are part of creating a better future for themselves and the organization.
  • Communicate the survey’s importance and its anonymity
    If the CEO finds the employee survey important, so will the rest of the team. Make sure your leader shares this in a video or written format with the internal team. If necessary, you may also want to host Q&A sessions where people can raise their questions and concerns.
  • Ensure accessibility
    Send the survey during office hours and give enough time for everyone to respond, but do not let the survey stay open longer than necessary. Let employees answer through the means available to them, whether that is using SMS, email, QR codes, an intranet link, or a kiosk solution.
  • Remove the language barrier
    Use a digital survey tool that lets everyone answer in the language they are most comfortable expressing their thoughts.

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