Maintaining a strong connection with employees is crucial for a company's success.

One effective strategy to achieve this is through employee pulse surveys.

This guide explores the essentials of employee pulse surveys and why they are increasingly important for modern organizations.

These surveys are concise and conducted regularly, aimed at quickly gauging employee mood and engagement levels. Unlike traditional surveys that are often annual, pulse surveys provide continuous insights, allowing companies to promptly identify and address workplace issues.

This not only helps in keeping the team engaged but also enhances productivity and motivation across the board.

An employee pulse survey is a brief and frequent survey designed to quickly assess employee satisfaction, communication, and workplace environment. Typically consisting of 5-15 questions, these surveys are easy to complete and provide crucial insights into areas needing improvement.

By regularly measuring various aspects of employee experience—from job satisfaction to career growth opportunities—organizations can swiftly identify and address issues. Pulse surveys can be conducted at different intervals, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on organizational needs.

They leverage simple formats like multiple-choice or open-ended questions and are efficiently administered using online tools, making them both manageable for employees and effective for gathering timely feedback.

Pulse surveys are popular not just because they are shorter and reduce the time taken to collect employee feedback, but also because they add a new dimension to performance analysis: time tracking. While the annual engagement survey is a once-a-year review of employee engagement, pulse surveys allow you to track items monthly or quarterly so you can: 

•  Check-in (and respond) regularly 
•  Plot trends over time 
•  Begin to link improvements to activities 

Pulse surveys are also brighter than traditional, rarely used research methods. Asking for feedback once a year means that it is incredibly difficult to monitor the progress of action plans, and it is tricky to measure the input and align it with business results. With pulse surveys, employees can provide feedback more often and organizations can respond to feedback faster. Recent research shows that employees want more regular feedback: 

 77% of employees want to give feedback more than once a year 

 Most employees would like to give feedback four times a year

Here are the benefits of employee pulse surveys in a few brief points: 

• Pulse surveys provide real-time insights into employee engagement so you can quickly and accurately understand your organization and company culture 
• Often less than 10 questions are required, which makes them easier and faster  to complete 
• They are relatively free from bias because of immediate and better contextualization that connects the current situations of employees to the wider environment. 
• They encourage co-commenting and dialogue and tap into the wisdom of the crowd to inform company goals and policies
• They help deliver actionable insights quickly and efficiently with real, meaningful answers

Every employee survey should have a clear purpose, and this goes for a  pulse survey as well. Pulse surveys are usually shorter (5-15 questions) than regular employee surveys. In general, the purpose of employee pulse surveys is to:  

• Track engagement levels and the causes behind high or low engagement 
• Understand if action plans are working so you can make changes quickly 
• Demonstrate the importance of  employee feedback to the organization 

By including key engagement questions in your pulse surveys, you can track engagement levels and understand what drives engagement. 

Use action-oriented questions to understand if employees are able to see results based on their previous survey participation. For example, you can collect levels of agreement for the prompt "I saw positive changes  based on our previous research results." 

Creating an effective employee pulse survey involves a few straightforward steps that ensure the process is both efficient and meaningful. Here are five simple steps to follow:

1. Define Clear Objectives: Before crafting your survey, clearly define what you aim to achieve. Are you looking to gauge general employee satisfaction, understand specific issues like communication or management effectiveness, or track changes since the last survey? Having clear objectives will guide the questions you include and ensure the survey results are actionable.
2. Keep It Short and Focused: Pulse surveys should be brief to encourage high response rates. Limit the survey to 5-15 questions that directly relate to your objectives. This focus helps maintain clarity and reduces survey fatigue among employees.
3. Choose the Right Questions: Mix quantitative and qualitative questions to get a comprehensive view of employee sentiments. Use scales for measuring agreement or satisfaction, and include open-ended questions for detailed feedback on specific issues. Ensure questions are unbiased and straightforward.
4. Use an Appropriate Tool: Select a survey tool that is user-friendly and capable of collecting and analyzing data efficiently. Tools like Google Forms, SurveySparrow, or employee success platforms like ThriveSparrow can facilitate this process with features designed for quick distribution and easy analysis.
5. Communicate and Follow Up: Inform your employees about the purpose of the pulse survey and how the data will be used. Encourage participation by making the process easy and by assuring anonymity if applicable. After the survey, share key findings and actionable insights with the team, and outline the steps you plan to take in response to the feedback. This closes the loop and enhances trust in the process.

Building a pulse survey in this way provides a reliable and repeatable measure of engagement to compile overall trends and comprehend the effectiveness of action plans. There are some tools that makes this more effective and streamlined.

Employee success tools like ThriveSparrow is designed to redefine the way you conduct employee pulse surveys. With ThriveSparrow's cutting-edge tools and features, you can effortlessly gather valuable feedback by creating pulse surveys in minutes, measure employee engagement levels, and identify areas for improvement.

Consider trying out our employee pulse survey template on work satisfaction.

Elevate your organization's pulse survey experience and gain the actionable insights you need to nurture a happier, more engaged workforce.

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1. Fluctuations

How much will your measurements vary? An employee's mood can change frequently, so you can measure daily, or perhaps more than once a day. However, if you measure employee engagement and the reasons behind it fairly regularly, the levels are unlikely to change too frequently, and daily or weekly measurements are meaningless.

2. Absorption and transmission of results

An employee survey sets the expectation that managers will use the results to take action. Failure to do so creates disengagement among employees and is a sure way to reduce response rates for surveys in the future,

How often can your organization respond to survey results? You should be prepared to review each set of results and try to understand them. When considering the appropriate cadence for each survey, think about how you can process and use the results. 

3. Time to implement action plans

Actions may not follow each pulse check, as a pulse check of the effectiveness of previous action plans may indicate that no further actions are necessary., Yet, it is important to plan possible actions after each pulse check. At a minimum, the company must consider time to evaluate, communicate and decide on actions.

4. Cadence of other organizational metrics

Some organizations work quarterly, some monthly, and others revolve around an annual meeting. When planning a pulse, ask why the company needs this information. 

If you are simply presenting information to the board at the annual meeting, a pulse may not be the right mechanism and you may opt for an annual engagement survey.

However, if you report monthly, you may want to adjust the cadence to provide fresh data each time and refresh the board with improvements. We found that quarter to be a popular interval because most organizations already report quarterly Quarterly surveys are preferred because:

• They leave sufficient time to review the information collected and take action
• They allow the surveys to be slightly longer, allowing more topics to be included

Let's now use the "Employee Experience and Engagement" survey as example of pulse survey questions. This form asks respondents to indicate on a scale of 1-5 how much they agree with the following statements, where 1 is almost/always disagree and 5 is almost/always agree:

I feel like I belong at work.

I feel a deep connection to my work. 

Most days I leave work with a sense of accomplishment. 

I feel good about my work experience. 

I feel energetic at work. 

I have strong bonds with my colleagues. 

People are doing a lot of good work here. 

I think about the mission of the company in everything I do. 

I am free to manage most of my work life. 

I can express my creativity in my creations. 

I appreciate working with the people I do. 

I would recommend this company to a colleague or friend. 

I plan to work for this company for the next 12 months.

I am constantly doing extra work at work.

Wrapping up

Creating a positive workplace where employees feel valued is essential for fostering engagement and productivity. Employee pulse surveys are an effective tool in this regard, as they help uncover organizational issues promptly and provide insights into employee sentiments throughout the year.

While frequent surveys can lead to survey fatigue, striking the right balance in frequency can keep engagement high without overwhelming employees. The agility and efficiency of pulse surveys make them a preferred choice over traditional methods, especially when quick, actionable feedback is needed.

By integrating pulse surveys into your feedback strategy, you can enhance various aspects of your company culture and drive meaningful improvements across departments. Next time you're looking to gauge employee engagement, consider leveraging the power of pulse surveys for timely and relevant insights.

FAQs

1. Why is an employee pulse survey important?

Unlike traditional employee surveys, which are typically conducted once or twice a year, employee pulse surveys are sent out on a more regular basis, usually every week or month. 

The main purpose of the employee pulse survey is to provide employers with a quick and easy way to collect employee feedback, identify potential problems or concerns, and take steps to resolve them. By regularly reaching out to your employees and gathering their feedback, you can stay ahead of potential issues and ensure your team stays engaged, motivated, and productive. 

“64% of organizations only measure employee engagement annually while nearly one in five employees report that their companies don’t formally measure engagement at all.”

2. What is the Difference Between Pulse Survey and Employee Engagement Survey?

The main difference between a pulse survey and an employee engagement survey lies in their frequency, length, and focus.

Pulse surveys are brief and conducted frequently—often weekly, monthly, or quarterly—to quickly gauge the current state of employee sentiments and immediate reactions to recent changes. They typically consist of a small number of questions, allowing for rapid analysis and response.

In contrast, employee engagement surveys are more comprehensive and are generally conducted less frequently, usually annually or biannually. These surveys delve deeper into various aspects of employee satisfaction and engagement, covering a wide range of topics from job satisfaction and work-life balance to leadership effectiveness and company culture. This makes employee engagement surveys more detailed but also means they require more time to complete and analyze.