When it comes to understanding your employees better, sometimes the most direct route is to simply ask them how they’re feeling. Using pulse surveys—short, quick, and easy surveys that can provide a ton of useful information—can be a great way to get employee feedback. In addition to being cost effective, pulse surveys are also a fantastic method of boosting employee engagement and spotlighting your company’s culture. By doing a pulse survey, you’ll be able to see how satisfied workers are with their jobs and find out if they feel like they’re being treated fairly. Understanding your staff can help you improve many different areas throughout the organization. So what kind of questions should you ask? It’s largely dependent on the organization and what you’re hoping to learn. Here are five suggestions to get you started.
Employee Experience Questions
If the goal of a survey is to understand how your employees are doing, your questions should reflect that. The goal of employee experience questions is to understand how well the employee experience is stacking up. So ask them how they feel about their roles in the organization. Find out if they’re happy. Do they know what constitutes good performance at your organization? Do they receive quality feedback about their performance? Are they getting an opportunity to learn and grow at the company? All of these are vital questions to ask in your pulse surveys, especially when you want to understand the employee experience. Seeking to understand employees will provide valuable information for enhancing their experience down the line.
Diversity and Inclusion Questions
The overall success of any organization hinges on how diverse, inclusive, and equitable the organization is in general terms. Companies that have a more diverse and inclusive environment are more likely to succeed in business. So, it behooves managers to strive for better D & I initiatives throughout their company. When asking questions about this topic, keep it directly to the point. In a post survey covering this area, you might ask questions about how well the organization is holding up to its diversity and inclusion initiatives. It might also be prudent to find out how well Human Resources handles such things and if employees generally feel engaged and that the company is doing what it can to create a more inclusive environment. There are plenty of unique and distinct types of questions to ask in this area, so design your questions carefully and encourage respondents to answer with as much detail as possible. That way, it’s easier to make decisions about expanding or improving these initiatives throughout the organization and well into the future.
Organization Initiatives Questions
When you’re designing your survey, you want to avoid leading questions and questions that aren’t going to provide high quality data. To that point, asking questions like “Are we following through on our commitments to you and each other?” “Do you know what our strategy is for achieving that vision?” or “calculating employee attrition?” Can be quite helpful gauging teneral employee sentiment about the organization. Organizational pulse survey questions can really help you get an understanding of how well your employees understand organizational initiatives, how they feel about them, where they fit within the organizational structure, and gaining any necessary feedback that can help you plan better for the future.
Benefits Questions
Another area to consider for your survey design is asking questions about benefits. Putting your finger in the pulse of the general mood regarding employee benefits can help you create better benefits, revamp existing ones, and make the experience better for everyone. Do employees feel like they have a good benefits package? Ask about sick days, PTO, health insurance, and if the benefits are worthwhile. Consider asking questions about work-life balance. The idea of finding ways to enjoy a life outside the office is at the forefront of many workers’ minds, especially recently. Work-life balance is also incredibly important for most people. Working at an organization should be free from the obligation of dedicating your entire existence to the company. Consider asking questions specifically about how well the company helps their employees achieve work-life balance and solicit direct feedback on how the company can do better in that area. By tailoring your questions to your employees’ needs and desires, you can gain much better insight into how best to run your operation now (and well into the future).
Leadership Questions
Terrible leadership can manifest itself in many different forms. That’s why asking leadership questions on your pulse survey is a very good practice. So, putting the leadership question to the test is a pretty big deal when it comes to assessing your employees. Ideally, you want to find out if they believe in the quality of your leadership and see management as leaders instead of bosses. The primary difference between the two concepts is that a leader will actually work with their team and encourage growth/development but a boss will simply micromanage and stand by the wayside. A prime example of a good leadership question might be “do we provide employees with the information, tools, rewards and recognition they need to succeed?” or “Do you feel you’re receiving regular, clear guidance from your management?” Other questions related to transparency and understanding of company values can also help gauge the temperature of the leadership / subordinate dynamic. Ultimately tailoring your questions to actually understanding your employees will yield the best overall results in your pulse surveys.
