Why Your Business Should Run Employee Pulse Surveys
A top priority for HR professionals in many businesses is employee engagement. Engaged employees result in a stronger company brand, lower staff turnover, and increased productivity.
But how can you measure employee engagement? In today’s data-driven environment, HR needs to gather more quantitative data in order to make informed decisions. Previously, data was gathered using annual employee surveys, but now regular pulse surveys are becoming increasingly common. Research from Gartner also shows that the annual survey is on the decline, with HR teams preferring to use other methods to analyze employee engagement.
Thus, employee pulse surveys are becoming a preferred method for gauging employee sentiment using real-time data. It is a quick and effective way to understand how employees are feeling about various aspects of their working environment, generating data which HR can act upon rapidly.
What Is the Employee Pulse Survey?
Pulse surveys are short, frequent surveys that are regularly sent out to staff. Unlike the traditional annual or biannual employee survey, pulse surveys are much more frequent – businesses may run them quarterly or even monthly. Generally, a pulse survey is used to:
- Keep track of engagement levels and motivators.
- Recognize whether your action plans are effective so that you can immediately make changes.
- Show that the organization values employee feedback.
In addition, pulse surveys are also short, taking no more than five minutes to complete. They can be used to measure trends over time, or the impact of an organizational change among employees.
Conversely, pulse surveys are not lifecycle surveys relating to onboarding, exiting, or candidate reactions. Those surveys are only sent to a subset of people, whereas pulse surveys should be distributed to the entire workforce in order to get a representative picture.
Advantages of Employee Pulse Surveys
The key advantage of the employee pulse survey is its conciseness. Not only does it reduce the amount of time needed to gather feedback, it also can track trends over time.
For example, your organization can track the impact of a newly implemented leave policy month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter. This allows the policy to be fine-tuned, and improvements linked to such actions.
Moreover, pulse surveys are more agile than the conventional annual survey technique. It is extremely challenging to monitor the status of action plans and to match feedback measurements with business outcomes when you only solicit input once a year. Crucially, their brevity and agility also allow employees to quickly share their thoughts without getting ‘survey fatigue’.
Why Use Employee Pulse Surveys
When employees’ voices are heard, they feel valued. And when employers listen, employee engagement rises.
One of the most effective ways that management can collect employee opinions and act on them is via pulse surveys. Due to their short, periodic nature, pulse surveys can:
- Act as an early warning system for HR metrics, e.g. staff satisfaction, employee loyalty via NPS scoring.
- Measure the effectiveness of action plans or new policies.
- Help the business understand the relationship between employee feedback and other business outcomes, such as customer feedback and sales performance.
Using Pulse Surveys Effectively
When regular pulse surveys are used, employees can see this as a sign of an employer that listens. By showing employees that you care about their thoughts and the general wellbeing of the workplace, employees are more likely to stick with a company longer and perform better at work if they feel heard and respected. Thus, they can also become great ambassadors for your company.
Employees who feel heard and valued will stay longer, perform better, as well as advocate on behalf of the business to its stakeholders. In short, they are engaged employees. That is the end goal of many HR departments.
This is provided that management is committed to taking pulse surveys and their outcomes seriously. Nothing turns off employees like continuous surveys without any visible action being taken. Hence, meaningful change needs to be done if survey participation and response rates start to falter.
Compliance and Legal Requirements
Employee performance management solutions help companies stay compliant with legal requirements and regulations. For example, they can help ensure that companies are providing a safe and harassment-free work environment, while complying with local laws and regulations.
Implement Pulse Surveys with BrioHR
To deploy pulse surveys, HR can use software that sends pulse surveys out via email to all or selected employees. HR will have the draft the questions, but a good pulse survey software can collect responses and present them in a visual, easy-to-understand manner.
Choosing such software can be daunting, but with BrioHR, you can do all this and more with BrioHR’s pulse survey module. Not only can you take the pulse of your company quickly and easily, you can also analyze the data in a user-friendly, visually attractive environment.
With a secure, scalable, user-friendly platform, BrioHR also covers the entire employee journey from recruitment to onboarding, payroll and claims, to performance and analytics, and more.
This enables business owners and HR teams to truly focus on what matters most – people.
Visit briohr.com and get a free demo now.
A top priority for HR professionals in many businesses is employee engagement. Engaged employees result in a stronger company brand, lower staff turnover, and increased productivity.
But how can you measure employee engagement? In today’s data-driven environment, HR needs to gather more quantitative data in order to make informed decisions. Previously, data was gathered using annual employee surveys, but now regular pulse surveys are becoming increasingly common. Research from Gartner also shows that the annual survey is on the decline, with HR teams preferring to use other methods to analyze employee engagement.
Thus, employee pulse surveys are becoming a preferred method for gauging employee sentiment using real-time data. It is a quick and effective way to understand how employees are feeling about various aspects of their working environment, generating data which HR can act upon rapidly.
What Is the Employee Pulse Survey?
Pulse surveys are short, frequent surveys that are regularly sent out to staff. Unlike the traditional annual or biannual employee survey, pulse surveys are much more frequent – businesses may run them quarterly or even monthly. Generally, a pulse survey is used to:
- Keep track of engagement levels and motivators.
- Recognize whether your action plans are effective so that you can immediately make changes.
- Show that the organization values employee feedback.
In addition, pulse surveys are also short, taking no more than five minutes to complete. They can be used to measure trends over time, or the impact of an organizational change among employees.
Conversely, pulse surveys are not lifecycle surveys relating to onboarding, exiting, or candidate reactions. Those surveys are only sent to a subset of people, whereas pulse surveys should be distributed to the entire workforce in order to get a representative picture.
Advantages of Employee Pulse Surveys
The key advantage of the employee pulse survey is its conciseness. Not only does it reduce the amount of time needed to gather feedback, it also can track trends over time.
For example, your organization can track the impact of a newly implemented leave policy month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter. This allows the policy to be fine-tuned, and improvements linked to such actions.
Moreover, pulse surveys are more agile than the conventional annual survey technique. It is extremely challenging to monitor the status of action plans and to match feedback measurements with business outcomes when you only solicit input once a year. Crucially, their brevity and agility also allow employees to quickly share their thoughts without getting ‘survey fatigue’.
Why Use Employee Pulse Surveys
When employees’ voices are heard, they feel valued. And when employers listen, employee engagement rises.
One of the most effective ways that management can collect employee opinions and act on them is via pulse surveys. Due to their short, periodic nature, pulse surveys can:
- Act as an early warning system for HR metrics, e.g. staff satisfaction, employee loyalty via NPS scoring.
- Measure the effectiveness of action plans or new policies.
- Help the business understand the relationship between employee feedback and other business outcomes, such as customer feedback and sales performance.
Using Pulse Surveys Effectively
When regular pulse surveys are used, employees can see this as a sign of an employer that listens. By showing employees that you care about their thoughts and the general wellbeing of the workplace, employees are more likely to stick with a company longer and perform better at work if they feel heard and respected. Thus, they can also become great ambassadors for your company.
Employees who feel heard and valued will stay longer, perform better, as well as advocate on behalf of the business to its stakeholders. In short, they are engaged employees. That is the end goal of many HR departments.
This is provided that management is committed to taking pulse surveys and their outcomes seriously. Nothing turns off employees like continuous surveys without any visible action being taken. Hence, meaningful change needs to be done if survey participation and response rates start to falter.
Implement Pulse Surveys with BrioHR
To deploy pulse surveys, HR can use software that sends pulse surveys out via email to all or selected employees. HR will have the draft the questions, but a good pulse survey software can collect responses and present them in a visual, easy-to-understand manner.
Choosing such software can be daunting, but with BrioHR, you can do all this and more with BrioHR’s pulse survey module. Not only can you take the pulse of your company quickly and easily, you can also analyze the data in a user-friendly, visually attractive environment.
