HR quick start guide: employee surveys from hire to retire
What you’ll get from this guide
In this HR guide to employee feedback, learn how to use actionable feedback across the entire employee lifecycle, from attracting and onboarding new hires to developing and retaining talent. We’ll also give a thorough overview of how to analyse data and action the feedback to drive real change. Read on to learn more.
CHAPTER 1
Employee feedback surveys – best practices
Everything you need to know about employee feedback at each stage of survey development.
CHAPTER 2
The dos and don’ts
The most common mistakes and general best practices for gathering employee feedback and taking action.
CHAPTER 3
Employee lifecycle surveys
Survey examples for every stage of the employee experience (EX), from hiring to exit interviews.
CHAPTER 1
Employee feedback surveys – best practices
Before you start gathering feedback, see our recommendations for getting the most value out of SurveyMonkey’s HR solutions throughout the insights-gathering process.
Determine your research goals and objectives
• Align your survey goal with your business objectives. Your survey objective should be more specific, measurable and actionable (for example, identifying key drivers of employee satisfaction or measuring the quality of benefits packages).
• Get more context about trends in your data. Ensure that you include options for open-ended feedback. This will help you dive into the “why” behind the numbers.
• Include questions to help filter your data later. Include the department, job level, tenure and office location, etc. We’ll explain more about that later.
• Uplevel stakeholder engagement. Create a SurveyMonkey Workgroup for your HR team to organise and analyse survey projects.
Need employee feedback, like, yesterday?
• Jump-start your research. Use our survey templates or let Build with AI create a survey for you based on your unique goals and criteria.
• Create more advanced surveys. Consider survey logic such as advanced branching to show employees different questions and improve the respondent experience. Learn more about how to apply advanced branching in this webinar.
• Gain honest, candid feedback. To keep responses anonymous, ensure that you don’t include any questions that could make respondents inherently identifiable. Learn more here.
• Build trust with employees. By customising your surveys with your own company branding, you’ll leave an authentic first impression and receive authentic feedback.
Emailing a survey is the go-to, but there are more ways to share
• Use custom data by using email. You can store extra information in your Contacts using custom data. Manage and track responses more effectively, and personalise survey invitations or follow-up communications, by using this feature.
• Use a web link or QR code. Capture more in-the-moment feedback anywhere. Added bonus: a web link allows you to add custom variables or data to track information about your respondents.
• Use SMS/text-based surveys. For employees who work out in the field, these surveys may work better; if you need real-time feedback at a specific physical location, kiosk mode surveys are your best bet.
• Don’t forget anonymity. Remember that if you’re planning to send your survey anonymously, you should ensure that you turn on the Anonymous Responses setting beforehand.
Visually engaging, easily accessible insights are everything
• Create a report that’s easy to read. A report with great charts and graphs that are presentation ready can be created by exporting the data in a summary report using a PDF, PPT, XLS or CSV format.
• Get quick insights into key topics. Set up open-ended questions, or rule-based tagging based on keywords such as “benefits” or “pay”. These will then be applied to all feedback, including incoming responses.
• Take insights a step further with integrations. By connecting SurveyMonkey with analytics tools such as Tableau or Power BI, you can build up a 360-degree view of the employee experience. See more integrations here.
• Build engagement by sharing results instantly. Send instant results to survey respondents once they’ve completed the survey. Compare their feedback to that of their department or across the organisation.
• Use a dynamic web link. This allows you to share survey results while controlling how private (or public) you’d like to keep the information. The link that you send also updates every five to 10 minutes, so you can be confident that your data is up to date.
Connect insights to action through targeted sharing
• Make data accessible yet secure. Use a dashboard to view results at all levels: from key stakeholders to all employees. Viewers can interact with the findings as they pertain to their function.
• Ensure timely action regarding new responses. For ongoing surveys, such as exit interviews, you can set up smart notifications and route them to specific teams. This is also a great way to develop visibility and accountability.
• Segment your action plan. Not all implementation plans will look the same, so break down the insights into multiple organisational levels, such as corporate, functional and individual.
• Build areas of strength and address opportunities. Your implementation plan should also balance the needs of the business with individual team needs. More tips can be found in this webinar with Chief People Officer, Becky Cantieri.
CHAPTER 2
The dos and don’ts
When gathering feedback from employees, HR teams often experience some hiccups; however, don’t worry; these mistakes are common. Follow our best practices for using the voice of employees to adjust and improve:
Share employee pain points across your organisation
Bring visibility to the challenges that the staff are facing by sharing the feedback, especially with leadership.
Set up listening posts across the employee experience
Collect feedback all the way from recruitment to exit interviews. Understanding the entire employee journey will give you the best insights for your company.
Use feedback to inform new initiatives
See whether there is any interest in new perks, employee resource groups, guest speakers, mentorship programmes and other things that employees find valuable.
Ask for feedback too often
You rely on feedback to perform your job, but your response rate and quality will suffer if you ask for it too often.
Fail to consider goals
Asking a question without considering what you’re looking for will result in answers that aren’t actionable.
Not follow up on the feedback
If you ask your employees to participate in surveys and don’t act on their feedback, this can send the wrong message. Ensure that you’re sharing what you learned and taking strides to improve.
CHAPTER 3
Employee lifecycle surveys
Whether you’re currently looking to increase employee engagement; gain feedback about training sessions, meetings or events; or attract and retain new team members, we have some solutions and survey templates to help you get what you need, plus some examples, below.
Candidates
HR challenges
Building recruiting processes that attract top talent and leave a positive impression on job seekers, in turn having a positive impact on the overall brand.
SurveyMonkey solutions
Candidate feedback centralised on one platform to enable collaboration across teams and provide insights into the candidate experience so the hiring process can be changed more quickly.
Onboarding
HR challenges
Keeping employees engaged in learning development; understanding programme value and efficacy.
SurveyMonkey solutions
Quizzes and polls that can both encourage and measure engagement in real time.
Benefits
HR challenges
Uncovering what employees value most while balancing expectations against market and budget limitations.
SurveyMonkey solutions
Ranking and MaxDiff questions can be applied in order to aggregate top choices more effectively when it comes to measuring value.
Engagement
HR challenges
Gaining honest, candid feedback to keep employees satisfied and boost retention, before it’s too late. Include questions to gain a deeper understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) matters and create a workplace where everyone can thrive.
SurveyMonkey solutions
Advanced anonymity features to segment responses by custom data, e.g. gender or department, while excluding personal information such as employee name.
Performance
HR challenges
Understanding overall performance so you can take action to improve manager effectiveness, address learning gaps and empower your workforce.
SurveyMonkey solutions
Custom reports and dashboards, plus integrations, to easily monitor and track performance, thus uncovering trends faster.
Exits
HR challenges
Obtaining candid feedback to pinpoint why employees leave and understand what actions you can take to retain your top talent.
SurveyMonkey solutions
Smart notifications can be added to exit surveys so that certain categories of feedback are flagged and routed to department leaders for quicker insights and action.
Conclusion
You might not be able to transform the employee experience overnight, but you can put feedback tools and systems into place to drive change, starting now.
After all, time is of the essence in a highly competitive, high-turnover environment. That’s why our powerful, intuitive platform is the ideal solution for HR leaders who need to quickly capture employee sentiment and turn insights into action.
Looking for more tips and trends regarding employee engagement?
Read our latest report: HR trends and opportunities for building a world-class workforce.