What is the Best Employee Engagement Survey Frequency?

Do You Know the Best Employee Engagement Survey Frequency?
Based upon organizational culture assessment data, smart talent management leaders understand how to determine the best employee engagement survey frequency to attract, develop, engage, and retain top talent in a way that fits with the business strategy and unique corporate culture.

Annual vs. Less Frequent Employee Engagement Surveys
Most talent management strategy experts believe that consistent employee engagement surveys run every twelve months are better than less frequent surveys run every 18 to 24 months. The thinking, similar to assessing organizational culture, is that annual employee engagement surveys enable leaders to increase engagement faster and higher than surveys on a less frequent timeline.

What the Research Says about Engagement Survey Timing
To test the theory about the best employee engagement survey frequency, we analyzed our Best Places to Work Employee Engagement Survey data.  We found annually was the best employee engagement survey frequency compared to less frequently run surveys.  In fact, over a four year period, companies that ran employee engagement surveys annually reported employee engagement increases 2.5 times greater than organizations that followed a less frequent timeline.

Our Take
After speaking with our clients, we believe the annual survey process is outperforming their peers not just because of the timing, but because leaders that consistently conduct employee engagement surveys on an annual basis make it part of their strategic planning and performance management processes and are more focused on engaging and retaining top talent as part of their talent recipe for success.

What About Engagement Pulse Surveys?
What about pulse surveys in terms of the best employee engagement survey frequency?  As survey technology improves, engagement pulse surveys are becoming a more popular approach to measure and improve employee engagement.  Combined with annual employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys can provide wonderful and timely insights into employee engagement trends.

To Get Pulse Surveys Right, Follow These 9 Field-tested Best Practices

1. Business Priorities
   Start with clear and agreed upon desired results that link to both your business and talent management strategies.
2. Target Audience
   Based upon your desired outcomes, identify your target audience.  You do not need to include all employees in pulse surveys.
3. Frequency
   Select a pulse frequency (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly) that matches your objectives.
4. Less is More
   Only ask 5-6 questions with 10 being the maximum.  Why?  Because it is hard to act upon any more responses in shorter periods of time.
5. The Question to Ask
   A great question to ask in a pulse check that has the highest correlation to key employee engagement anchors is: “I would recommend my organization as a great place to work.” This employee engagement question acts as an engagement Net Promoter question that can be correlated to all of the other pulse ratings.
6. Accountability
   Depending upon how effectively you are following up from your previous surveys, consider adding some form of the following employee engagement accountability questions:

   — “I noticed positive change as a result of the last survey.”
   — “My manager shared the results of the last survey with our team.”
   — “Our team developed action plans to address issues raised by the last survey’s results.”
   — “Senior leadership is committed to responding to the results of this survey.”

7. Integration
   Use one platform to do the annual and pulse surveys so you can track and report on trends and benchmarks while slicing and dicing data at detailed levels without having to use multiple log-ins, user names, reporting, demographics, exports to excel, etc.
8. Ability to Follow Through
   If you are going to pulse survey more than quarterly, there should be a strategic driver and the resources required to properly communicate employee survey results and act upon employee engagement survey results.

Annual Engagement Surveys Get Better Results
Organizations that measure employee engagement annually see stronger improvements to engagement than those that survey less frequently. Among 105 organizations in our study:

• 64 percent that surveyed every year witnessed improvement to engagement scores
• Compared to 56 percent of organizations that surveyed every other year.

The Bottom Line
Gathering employee feedback on an annual basis is the first step in nurturing the overall engagement of your organization to drive higher performance. There is an optimal frequency for administering engagement surveys, and our study suggests that once per year provides the surest path to improvement in engagement scores.

To learn more about how to how to engage and retain top performers, download the Top 6 Forces Driving Employee Engagement and Top Strategies that Matter Most