Pulse surveys offer a dynamic and agile approach to gathering feedback from employees in real time. This article explores what pulse surveys are, how they differ from regular surveys, their benefits and downsides, how to design them effectively, and key advice on implementation.
In this post:
What Are Employee Pulse Surveys?
An employee pulse survey is a short, frequent survey designed to quickly gauge employee sentiment, engagement, and overall satisfaction.
How do pulse survey differ from regular employee surveys?
Pulse surveys are usually used in addition to a more comprehensive employee engagement survey. The engagement survey will probably measure more aspects of the employee experience and highlight areas for improvement across the whole organisation.
Pulse surveys differ from traditional employee engagement surveys in several ways.
Length and Depth
Regular employee surveys are often longer, with dozens of questions, and delve deeply into various aspects of the employee experience. Pulse surveys, on the other hand, are brief and more focused on specific issues.
Frequency
Traditional surveys are typically conducted annually or biannually, offering a snapshot of employee engagement at a specific point in time. Pulse surveys are conducted more frequently, giving real-time feedback and enabling organisations to track trends over time.
Actionability
Pulse surveys focus on a few targeted questions to capture real-time insights. The idea is to get a ‘pulse’ of the organisation’s current atmosphere, which helps leaders and HR teams respond swiftly to emerging issues or concerns.Because pulse surveys provide immediate data, they encourage quick actions. Regular surveys often require more time to analyse and implement changes, as they cover a wider range of topics and may involve complex findings.
Are pulse surveys cheaper?
In short, yes. But…..
Intuitively it feels like a shorter survey should be cheaper to run. However, in reality thought still needs to be put into the design, the survey still needs to be administered and the results still have to be analysed and reported so you shouldn’t underestimate the work involved in running a pulse survey.
How to design an effective pulse survey
The approach to designing an effective pulse survey uses the same principles of designing any effective employee survey. The key phases are:
Be clear on the objective for your pulse surveys
Before creating the survey, determine the specific objectives you wish to achieve. Are you looking to monitor engagement, assess well-being, or track the impact of a recent change? Having clear objectives will guide the structure and content of the survey.
Pulse surveys tend to be used in one of three ways:
Pulse surveys can be used to confirm the findings from a previous survey. For example, imagine that your employee engagement survey indicated an issue with wellbeing. You could run a pulse survey after, say, six months, asking the same questions around wellbeing as you had in your engagement survey. By only focussing on the wellbeing questions, you will quickly be able to confirm whether or not wellbeing is still an issue.
Once you have confirmed that there is an issue you could use a pulse survey to explore the issue in more detail. For example, one of our clients recently identified that communications was an area that could be improved across the organisation so they asked us to help them design a pulse survey to explore the impact of their internal comms in more depth.
Pulse surveys can be used to evaluate the impact of actions implemented as a result of your engagement or pulse surveys. Using our wellbeing example, you may have implemented various wellbeing initiatives as a result of your previous surveys. Repeating the pulse survey will allow you to see if those initiatives have had an impact on the survey scores for wellbeing. A slightly different variation of this is to run another pulse survey that asks more direct questions around how well those initiatives are being received by your employees.
Formulate your survey questions
In our employee surveys we recommend three types of questions that work best in practice.
Demographic questions
Demographic questions enable you to collecting information about things such as age, gender, job role, which part of the business people work in etc. Demographic questions are where people are asked to select one answer from a pre-defined list of answers. This can include yes/no questions.
Qualitative questions
Qualitative questions are open-ended questions where people are asked to provide their opinions in their own words. They are usually in the form of a free-text question and are useful for allowing people to provide feedback on anything they want.
Quantitative questions
Whereas qualitative questions are open-ended, quantitative questions are measurable so you can easily measure the strength of feeling employees have about an issue. There are different types of rating scale, but basically people are asked to rate how strongly they feel about something different aspects of their employee experience.
The key to a successful pulse survey is brevity. Aim for a small number of questions that are direct and relevant to your objective. Avoid overwhelming employees with too many questions, as this can reduce completion rates and lead to survey fatigue.
The specific questions you include in your survey will depend on your survey objective.
Ensure anonymity
To encourage honest feedback, ensure that responses are anonymous. Employees will be more likely to provide genuine insights if they feel their responses cannot be traced back to them.
Choose the Right Frequency
The frequency of your pulse surveys should align with your goals. For example, a monthly survey might be ideal for monitoring well-being, while a quarterly survey could be used to track engagement trends over time. However, avoid over-surveying, which could lead to fatigue.
How to implement pulse surveys
Once your pulse survey is designed, implementing it effectively is key to its success. Follow these best practices for a smooth roll-out:
Communicate the Purpose
Ensure employees understand the purpose of the pulse survey and how their feedback will be used. Transparency encourages participation.
Use Survey Tools
Invest in the right survey tools or software that enable easy distribution, real-time analysis, and data visualisation. Something like SurveyMonkey might be ‘free’, but you will spend tons of time analysing the results. Of course we think our employee survey platform is ideal!
Track Trends Over Time
How you analyse your survey results will have a big impact on how effective they are. Analyse results across multiple surveys to identify trends and areas of improvement. This allows you to see whether actions taken have made a difference.
Act on Feedback
Perhaps the most important step in designing pulse surveys is acting on the feedback. Share the results with employees and outline the steps the organisation will take to address any concerns or suggestions raised. This demonstrates that the company values employee input and is committed to improvement.
In conclusion
Pulse surveys are a powerful tool for maintaining a direct line of communication with employees, enabling organisations to stay in tune with the workforce’s needs and concerns. When designed and implemented thoughtfully, they offer timely, actionable insights that can improve engagement, well-being, and organisational performance. By focusing on clarity, brevity, and purpose, businesses can harness the full potential of pulse surveys to foster a healthier, more connected work environment.