5 best practices to survey remote employees
What’s the best way to ensure a better remote work experience and maintain a positive company culture? Survey remote employees.
Early. Often. Consistently.
Then respond to what they say, feel and request.
“Getting the voice of the employee is not just a check in on them,” says Jeff Cates, CEO of Achievers. “It needs to be about recognizing the environment they have to be in, figuring out if anything’s wrong and working to fix it.”
When HR leaders and front-line managers survey remote employees, they send important messages, including you:
- are available and want to listen
- care about their struggles and successes
- trust their opinions and observations as springboards for improvement, and
- want and need their insight to navigate forward.
Set the stage
You don’t want to send employees surveys without giving them context. They need to understand why you want their feedback and what you’ll do with it. That’ll make employees more interested in responding.
Important factors when rolling out an employee survey:
- Relevance. Let employees know what you plan on doing with the feedback. Specifically, how you’ll gather, analyze, respond and react to the results, and how it affects them.
- Relatable. Surveys probably won’t be like those you’ve always sent. Instead, they need to take into consideration what employees experience now. For instance, do they work from home mostly? Are you surveying people who kept jobs after furloughs? Or perhaps they’re overwhelmed because your industry surged in the pandemic.
- Reasonable. Don’t bog employees down with long, meandering surveys. Let them know you’ll send a few questions in a convenient channel. Ask them to rate subjects and add written feedback, if they choose.
- Respectful. If you plan to ask sensitive questions – such as about their home/life balance – explain why you need that feedback (which is probably because you want to help them navigate it).
Nail the format
Regardless of the reason for your survey, you’ll want to effectively design it and ask questions that get the best feedback. Here’s how:
- Include qualitative questions. Ask employees to rate on a numeric scale (for instance, 1 for least likely to 10 for most likely, or 1 for poor to 5 for excellent). That way, you can see improvements and declines over time on important employee experiences you need to consistently gauge.
- Include one to three open-ended questions. Give employees time and space to share an experience and dig deeper into their feelings. But don’t overwhelm them with too many free-writing questions.
- Aim for a full picture. Survey employees about business-as-usual issues regularly and pressing issues as necessary. You want to check on their work circumstances, how they handle it, how you can help and what they think of management. And you want to gauge their reaction to things such as your crisis reaction, potential changes and new directions.
- Ask based on actions. Ask questions on subjects and issues you can address, regardless of the feedback you receive. Skip surveying employees on issues you can’t change or situations they can’t influence.
Execute the surveys
You’ll likely want to execute different types of surveys.
For one, do an annual, larger survey to gauge employee experiences and sentiment with overall operations.
To bolster that, try pulse surveys – brief surveys to get fast and frequent feedback on a narrow subject with 10 or fewer questions.
“Ask the same questions over and over to get a constant feel of how people feel about work, the events and situations around them – and what you can do to help,” says Cates.
Pulse surveys are especially helpful with a remote workforce because you can send and receive them easily from a distance. Plus, you get real-time feedback when circumstances change day-to-day and managers can’t see exactly what’s going on with employees.
Here are a few keys to pulse surveys:
- Establish a cadence. If you do them regularly – say monthly or weekly – employees will expect, and likely respond, to them.
- Spread the love. If you do pulse surveys relatively frequently, try to vary the set of employees you ask to respond to avoid survey fatigue.
- Make it tap-friendly. Use email, your widely used communication app or company Intranet so employees can tap to rate and type to add brief comments.
For instance, at Facebook, management regularly uses its Workplace From Facebook app to gauge employee sentiment on current topics with just three questions, explains Sameer Chowdhri, Global Head, Workplace for HR at Facebook.
Follow up on the surveys
After you close surveys and get results, give employees the results. Let them know what you heard and how you interpret it.
Most importantly, explain what you’ll do with the feedback, when that will be executed and how you expect the changes or improvements will impact employees.
You might want to reiterate details on what you planned to gauge, and how the survey panned out against original expectations.
Sample survey questions
Every organization will need to survey employees for different reasons at different times. But some subjects and issues will always be important. Most recently, you’ll want to hear how employees new to remote work are doing.
Here are important subjects and sample questions to gauge sentiment.
Remote employee experience
On a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), how do you feel:
- My boss responds in a timely manner to keep me updated and productive.
- My colleagues respond in a timely manner, clearly and appropriately.
- I understand my top priorities and what I need to work on to achieve them.
- The company gives me access to the resources and tools I need to get my work done.
- I feel motivated.
- My boss and the company support me.
- I feel leadership communicates enough with me.
- What is the biggest challenge you face with remote work? (Space to respond)
- What can your manager or company leadership do to make you more efficient? (Space to respond here)
On-site employee experience
On a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), how do you feel:
- I feel safe and appreciated at work.
- My boss updates me regularly on operations, health and safety issues.
- The company stays up-to-date on relevant health issues and relays those to employees.
- I have access to colleagues, resources and tools when I need them to get my job done.
- Our leadership regularly updates us on priorities and changes.
- I get the support I need from my boss and leadership when I’m on-site.
- How can the company support you better in our current working conditions? (Space to respond here)
- What is one change you’d like to see in our current working conditions? (Space to respond here)
Overall employee experience
On a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), how do you feel:
- My boss involves me in decisions that affect my work environment.
- Company leaders keep us informed about important issues and changes.
- I feel safe speaking up, and when I do speak up, I feel heard.
- My boss shows interest in me, my goals and my concerns.
- Company leaders show concern for all employees’ well-being.
- I have access to the tools, people and resources I need on a daily basis to get my work done well.
- What is one way the company can support you better? (Space to respond here)
- What communication would help you do your job more effectively? (Space to respond here)
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