If you are interested in building a stronger company culture, you need to collect feedback from your employees. That means you need to administer surveys from time to time. Surveys come in many shapes and forms. For example, you might be interested in writing a pulse survey for your company.
Or, you might be interested in crafting a longer survey that you can hand out every quarter or every year. A survey is only useful if you structure the questions accordingly. What are some of the most important steps you need to follow if you are interested in crafting a strong survey for your employees?
1. Consider the Number of Questions You Will Ask
First, you need to think about the number of questions you will ask on the survey. There are some situations where you want to keep the survey relatively short. If the survey is too long, you might have a difficult time convincing your employees to fill out the entirety of the survey.
If the survey is too short, you may not get the necessary information. Think about how many questions you want to ask on your survey. Then, you need to think about how you will structure the responses.
2. Think About Whether You Want Multiple Choice or Free Response Questions
Next, you need to think about whether you want to include multiple choice questions or free response questions on your survey. Both of these options have benefits and drawbacks. If you use multiple choice questions, it will be easier for you to quantify the results because you can use an automated program to help you.
On the other hand, multiple-choice questions do not give your employees a lot of room to share what they truly think. They are limited by the options in front of them. If you use free response questions, you will give your employees a bit more freedom to say what they truly think. On the other hand, it will take you longer to review the survey because you will need to manually go through the question responses.
3. Consider the Length of the Questions
In addition, you need to think about the length of the questions. You do not want the questions to be too long because your employees might not read the entire thing. They might also have a difficult time understanding the information in the question.
You need to make sure the question is long enough for you to include all of the necessary information. On the other hand, if the questions are too long, you increase the chances of an employee getting confused by the question itself. Then, they may have a difficult time providing an accurate response.
4. Ask for Feedback on the Questions
Once you are confident that you have the necessary questions in place, you need to show them to a few other people. That way, you can get feedback on the quality of the questions. You need to ask other people to rewrite the question in their own words. Think about how they interpret the question.
If there are multiple ways a question can be interpreted, you need to make sure the question is being interpreted exactly as intended. If there are issues with the interpretation of the question, then you may want to rewrite the question to make sure it has the appropriate impact on the reader.
5. Consider the Scoring Criteria
Finally, you need to think about the scoring criteria of the survey as well. What software program do you want to use to review the survey results? There are plenty of computer programs available, and you need to make sure you select the right one for your survey.
Some programs might not be able to handle a lot of surveys at once, while other programs might not be able to handle surveys of a certain length. If your survey goes well, you will probably increase the number of people who take it, so you need to find a program that can scale up with your company as your needs change.
Write a Proper Survey for Your Employees
Ultimately, it is important for you to think carefully about how you write your survey. Even though this can be a powerful tool that you can use to create a better work environment for your employees, it is also true that your survey might not give you the necessary information if you do not structure it properly.
Remember to carefully review your surveys from time to time to make sure you are getting the right information from them. Finally, do not forget to reach out to a professional who can help you analyze the information from your survey, extract the most important details, and use the information to create a better workplace.