Pulse Surveys: The Right And Wrong Reasons To Do Them

The Benefits and Pitfalls of Pulse Surveys All trends take flight because they offer users a benefit over existing offerings.  Pulse surveys are no different, and they can be very useful tools in understanding employee engagement and the employee mindset.  However, the benefits giving rise to their increasing popularity may not be the reasons one should […]

Where Survey Data and Open-Ended Employee Feedback Meet

feedback

How do you make sense of employee feedback from open-ended survey questions? And does this kind of feedback really help pinpoint key engagement drivers? After all, it’s not uncommon for an employee engagement survey to rack up hundreds of pages of comments. And having someone from your organization toil through massive numbers of text responses across nine or […]

15 Tips for Employee Survey Customization

made to measure

Themes around employee engagement are well documented. All survey vendors have some version of standard survey questions that fall under those 12 or 15 umbrella categories (compensation, professional growth, leadership…you know the shtick).  Yet strategic objectives and corporate cultures vary. Internal corporate-speak and external industry jargon differ. Geography, language and literacy rates compound differences. Sometimes employee survey customization is required or […]

How To Ask The Right Employee Survey Questions

All survey vendors have some version of standard employee survey questions. Often though customization is desired or required especially when an organization wants to measure the impact of specific concepts or initiatives. However, asking the right questions is a complex science. Researchers and statisticians spend years, decades, lifetimes honing their scholarly know-how. After all, defective data is […]

9 Ways to Increase Your Employee Survey Response Rates

High employee engagement survey response rates are vital to a successful survey program. TalentMap’s average employee survey response rate is over 81%. Below are some ways to help you hit and even beat the benchmark average. SURVEY LAUNCH: Invite employees for coffee and donuts the day the survey launches to introduce, promote and build excitement around […]

Employee Surveys and the Stories They Tell

Think about a recent customer service experience you’ve had on the phone with an airline or cable company, in the food court, at a Starbucks’ counter or wherever.  In that brief interaction, you can tell instinctively, whether that person is an engaged employee. Easily. An engaged employee goes above and beyond to make sure your […]

The Value of Open-Ended Survey Questions

If you’ve ever spent time with a two or three or four-year-old you know how exhausting it can be. Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to wear socks? Why does it rain? Why? How come? Why?! Those never-ending questions are a young mind’s foray into the wonder filled world of learning. Open-ended […]

Employee Survey Methodologies: The Case for Likert’s Five-Point Scale

engagement and satisfaction survey

Named after its inventor, psychologist Rensis Likert, the Likert five-point scale is the most widely used method in employee survey research. It measures attitudes and opinions by posing a series of questions or items that ask respondents to select a rating on a scale that ranges from one extreme to another, such as “completely agree” […]

Employee Engagement Best Practice Series Verbatim Comments – Walking the Tightrope

One of the most common questions we at TalentMap receive almost on a weekly basis is how to handle and distribute verbatim comments. On the one hand, comments submitted by individual employees provide essential insight into the issues and root causes underlying the different scale responses. They need to be read. However, unlike marketing or public opinion […]

DIY or Outsourced Employee Engagement Surveys?

What does workplace breach of confidentiality mean? Well, what if you were to say something disparaging about Big Boss, to someone you “trust”, yet somehow Big Boss learns about those criticisms? For a good many employees, worry about confidentiality is an oppressive fear factor when an Employee Engagement survey arrives in their inbox. “Just how secure are my comments?” […]