36% Of Organisations See Engagement As A Top Challenge And Pulse Surveys Could Be Just What You Need!
An organisation’s job doesn’t end when it recruits an employee. Conducting onboarding and training programs are second in order when a new professional joins.
The general perception regarding employee engagement is positive. From startups and mid-size businesses to large corporations—all of them engage their employees in some way or the other.
However, what’s surprising is 90% of the leadership team agree an engagement strategy has a great impact on business success but only 25% of them actually have a strategy.
Moreover, as of today, 36% of organisations see engagement as a top challenge!
So the next time you ask yourself how employee engagement can contribute to your organisation, remember these facts:
- Onboarding helps align expectations and boosts engagement with the new workforce. It improves employee performance by 11.5% [1].
- 73% of employees who say they work at a purpose-driven company feel more engaged at work [2].
- 40% of employees with poor training leave their jobs within the first year [3].
- 68% of employees claim training and development is the most important company policy.
In a nutshell: engaged employees are more productive and motivated.
When they are satisfied with their current job profiles, they take less time off and deliver results at work that matters. This attitude is helpful in improving the health of an organisation, which means higher profitability. It is a win-win for both parties.
A Potential Employee Engagement Strategy: Pulse Surveys
Many organisations conduct surveys to get feedback from their employees. But the frequency with which those surveys are conducted varies. While annual surveys are a norm, organisations can and must conduct pulse surveys, frequently.
What Are Pulse Surveys?
The first known employee surveys were done during World War II to gauge the efficiency of an organisation. They were implemented extensively to understand what motivates employees to perform better. With that feedback, organisations tried to create high-morale environments for better results.
Pulse surveys do not contain complex questions. They provide the best means to get a quick insight into the health of an organisation.
They usually contain 5-10 questions that focus on the area that needs improvement. You can upload the survey on the cloud or local CRM. Employees can access and complete the survey whenever they want to.
As far as the frequency at which these pulse surveys should be conducted is concerned, that varies from industry to industry. Retail, which is a highly dynamic sector, requires organisations to conduct pulse surveys every fortnight.
You can send those across every week, asking time-based questions such as “How happy were you this week at work?”. Based on your employees' answers, you can know exactly what’s troubling them.
Steps To Be Followed For Conducting Pulse Surveys
- Choose the questions that you want to ask but make sure they are not more than 12-15 in number.
- Announce the survey to everyone in the organisation through a proper line of communication such as an email or the company portal.
- Do multiple follow-ups to ensure it has been filled by every employee in the organisation.
- Set the frequency for the survey.
- Analyze and take note of the answers.
- Take immediate action before the purpose is lost!
- Share the survey results as much as you can as that will build confidence amongst employees.
4 Benefits Of Pulse Surveys
1. Real-Time Insights
Pulse surveys give real-time condition of employees and the organisation. If surveys are conducted half-yearly or annually, it might become too late to identify and solve a potential high-risk problem.
2. Employees Feel Important
By continuously engaging your employees, you make them feel important and responsible for the organisation. But the trick lies in acting upon the survey. If you take action on the survey after a long period of time, employees won’t take your surveys in the future.
When an organisation takes employee feedback into consideration, the latter feels important and will want to keep working where they are.
3. The Higher Survey Response Rate
Since pulse surveys are short and quick, there won’t be any survey fatigue that employees face while filling long, irrelevant and boring surveys. It is entirely up to you to make the surveys fun and interesting. SurveyMonkey has great templates to choose from. Give your employees something different every time.
4. Encourages Employee Satisfaction
Taking an action post a survey is the toughest part. But when an organisation implements what the employees have asked for, it goes a long way in making them feel happy, involved and engaged!
Endnotes
If you haven’t rolled out a series of pulse surveys yet, now is a good time to start. Sit with your HR and training departments to brainstorm ideas for pulse surveys. If they are strategically thought and well planned, you’ll get a better insight into your employees and that will help you remove discrepancies within the organisation faster.
References:
[1] Extreme Onboarding: How to WOW Your New Hires Rather Than Numb Them
