Three things to consider before you buy an employee survey tool

One of the ways many companies think about communications in their company is by using an employee survey package.  There are many and they vary from weekly to monthly questions. These are sent out to your team and then the answers are summarised back to you for action.  The summary should then score you against different aspects of the business and give you a basis to make changes.  In addition, your team can make comments that people can make at the end of the standard questions. But what do you need to think about before you buy in to one of these packages?

Let’s look at what Forbes says about why we should have an employee survey tool

1. It Identifies Where Improvements Are Needed
2. It’s User-Friendly And Anonymous
3. It Drives Employee Engagement
4. It Reports Data Across Population Segments
5. It Aligns With Company Values And Best Practices
6. It Enables Managers To Take Action   

I’d like to comment specifically on number 2: ‘user-friendly and anonymous’. These are key issues as many employees are not as tech-friendly as we would like and are busy, busy, busy!  Adding a survey to their workload is not what they need.  So ensuring it is quick and easy to complete is key.  If they have to faff around following links they won’t do it!  If they can click on the email, and immediately answer the question then they are far more likely to do this.  Some packages use gamification instead of responses having to be written which I have seen to be far more effective as it is often simply a slider to move or an image to click on (happy to sad faces maybe). Not a guarantee but more likely to ensure they fill it in.

And then there is the anonymous part – this is a hard one to crack – you can tell people till you’re blue in the face that you will not see who has written a comment or put a specific score but the only way to prove this to many people is by getting on with it.  I used to work with someone who would not fill in a survey because he believed everything written in it would be held against him, despite the senior leadership team telling him they wanted to hear his thoughts, be they negative or positive.  Eventually, after evidence from his peers that they had written about issues and had whole conversations online without the management team knowing who they were talking to, he started putting his honest thoughts down!  Only took a year!!

The biggest risk

The biggest risk to using this sort of software is having managers in the organisation who do not know how to react to comments. If you get a negative comment and answer by denying it happened or with any negative reaction then the person who wrote the comment will not do it again!  But this isn’t what you want, you are running the survey to hear the good and the bad.

How do you counter this?  In my experience, you do this by training your managers.  Don’t assume they will know what to write and how to handle negative and even targeted comments towards them or the business.  Start by setting out your expectations to your managers and ensure they understand the true value of the feedback they will see. Having unfiltered comments from your staff is invaluable – it is the equivalent of having a management consultant or similar interview each of your staff.  BUT only if you handle it properly. 

My three tips:

1. All the senior team has brought into the software – each manager needs to be handling the feedback from their department – and if you are the MD or owner – you need to see it all!
2. Be prepared that it is not an instant fix – it takes time to win over the team to really be honest and trust that it is anonymous and also that you will not jump down their throats if they give you negative feedback
3. You keep checking on the answers from your managers, and intervene if needs be!

As long as you consider these three tips then I have seen that the employee survey is well worth embarking on. And if you need any help, especially with training your managers, let us know 😊

Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be.  Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.

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