Survey Best Practices From 21 Companies – Suggestions For Conducting Expert Surveys

Key Survey Findings

1. Types of employee surveys - The type of employee survey that the organizations conduct most is employee satisfaction/engagement surveys. The organizations also conduct employee turnover surveys, employee exit interview surveys, employee benefits opinion surveys, training effectiveness feedback surveys, organizational effectiveness surveys, IT customer satisfaction surveys and business risk assessment surveys, etc. The most common frequency for conducting surveys is annually, followed by semi-annually and every two years. To learn about a wide range of survey types, see http://www.quantisoft.com/Industries/SurveyTypes.htm

2. Satisfaction with survey companies - Organizations are significantly more satisfied with using survey companies than they are with using self-service online survey services. Organizations primarily using survey companies to conduct surveys rated their overall satisfaction with survey companies at 4.4 on a 1 - 5 rating scale where 5 is the highest rating.   

3. Satisfaction with self-use online survey services - Organizations primarily using self-use online survey services to conduct surveys rated their overall satisfaction with self-use survey services at 3.9.

4. Effectiveness of survey practices - Organizations primarily using survey companies rated the average effectiveness of 15 survey practices at 4.7, significantly more effective than the 4.0 survey practices average effectiveness rating at organizations that primarily use self-service online survey services.

5. Importance of survey practices - Organizations that primarily use survey companies rated the average importance of 14 survey practices at 4.2, slightly more important than the 3.9 survey practices importance rating at organizations that primarily use self-use online survey services. The most important survey practices include keeping responses anonymous, conducting follow-up surveys, time taken to complete surveys and performing analysis/statistical analysis of survey data. The least important survey practices include providing incentives for participation, multi-language survey capability and enabling multiple sessions for completing surveys.

6. Survey Response Period - 70.5% of respondents answering this question typically use a 2-week survey response period, 23.5% use a 3-week response period and 5.9% use a 4-week or longer response period.

7. Survey Response Rates - 60% of respondents answering this question typically have a survey response rate of 60% or greater.

8. Primary Survey Approach - 70% of respondents answering this question use Web/Internet surveys as their primary approach, 20% use paper surveys as their primary approach and 10% use Web/Internet surveys complemented with paper surveys as their primary approach.

9. Reasons for conducting employee surveys - The top reasons for conducting employee surveys include part of ongoing measurement process, identifying performance opportunities, assessing satisfaction/engagement levels and trends, and identifying causes of employee turnover.

10. Surveys Achieving Objectives - Survey respondents rated "surveys achieve their objectives" 4.2, indicating that surveys are typically effective in achieving expected results. Their average rating for "surveys achieve a strong benefit from making identified changes" is lower at 3.8.

11. Using Normative Benchmarking Data - Survey respondents rated their comfort with using normative benchmarking data for comparing their survey results with at 3.9. Their comments indicated the need to make sure "apples-to-apples" comparisons are being made.

12. Survey Best Practices - The survey asked respondents to provide their organization's "best practices" for eight specific survey practices. Following is a sample of the "best practices" identified by the 21 survey respondents:

 "Our survey is all about driving business results, alignment of goals, employee engagement and creating/maintaining a high performance organization."

"Designing surveys to get lots of comments and suggestions. This feedback identifies hidden problems and opportunities and helps to understand what changes are needed."

 "Online surveys are the way to go, hosted by our survey company. No more paper surveys.... "

 "Taking action on the survey from year 1 will increase the response rate in year 2"

"Having a survey company conduct the survey so that employees feel confident HR and senior management won't be able to identify who said what in the survey responses."

"Speed is the key. The survey company gets us hundreds of graphs, charts and comments reports very fast...."

 "Make sure everyone in the company sees the results. Meetings to communicate the results work best. Senior people need to see all of the results. Summary results are OK for most other people. Of course, managers that need to take action need to have access to all of the survey results that pertain to them."

"I am not sure we can quantify all of these needed changes, but I am confident we will get a very strong payback, in the millions of dollars. The survey cost us about $20,000, less than the recruiting cost for hiring one middle manager. The results of the survey and the changes we are making as a result of the survey will impact our entire organization, not just one position."

"Senior leaders should not only discuss results but should also talk about what they personally plan to do to drive change.  Keep it away from being an HR initiative."

 "Get managers involved and make sure they include the issues that pertain to their areas. The survey company got us on the right road. The recommendations in their analysis and summary report were very useful."

 "Make sure to tell employees that their responses will be carefully considered and acted upon where appropriate and possible, and then make sure to follow through and take action."

"It is important that our senior management team sees unfiltered survey feedback from employees and customers. Without it they are not getting the real story. They are too removed from day to day things they need to hear and see."

 "Asking questions that might provide feedback we are afraid to hear but that we need to hear."

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