A buyer's guide to employee surveys

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This guide will help you to navigate the survey marketplace and find your ideal partner. It’ll enable you to create a checklist of what you’re looking for…

As engagement experts ourselves, we know the considerations and questions that HR professionals most frequently ask about. This guide will help you establish the things that you need from a survey provider and, equally importantly, those that you don’t. As well as ensuring you get a quality survey, it could save you money as you won’t pay for services you don’t need.

Service provided Reader notes

Reputable client list

Specialist engagement expertise

Dedicated project management support

Post-sales support (technical/IT or consultative support)

1. Supplier profile

Having a clear idea of the type of survey partner you want for your survey will help you narrow your search. Typical considerations are things like client experience, technical and theoretical skills and know-how.

A buyer’s guide to:An employee survey

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Buyer’s guide: An employee survey Call us today +44 (0)1932 222700 or visit www.etsplc.com

2. Level of support

Are you looking for a simple employee survey or a wider engagement programme? Consider whether you need an expert provider with consultants to design the survey.


A simple piece of technology for you to run your own survey

Advice on what’s driving engagement for your employees

Guidance on how to measure engagement

Advice on how to encourage participation (improve response rates)

Support for managers to identify actions after the survey

Advice on communication with key stakeholder groups

Help to present survey results to executives


Create a new questionnaire from scratch

Help to devise a single score of the level of engagement(an engagement index)

Review and amend an existing questionnaire

Ensure questionnaire links with business strategy

Help to translate survey into different languages

Design a survey brand/identity for all communications

3. Creating survey materials

This involves devising the questionnaire, choosing rating scales and question types. You may also want to create a survey brand and pre and post survey communications. Think about what content and materials you’ll need support from an engagement expert on.

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An employee engagement index is a single score that summarises how engaged a company’s employees, or a group of employees, are.


4. Reporting & analysis

You need to know how your organisation will use the survey data in order to inform your requirements. Think about who’ll be accessing the data and what formats they’ll need it in. Reporting outputs vary between providers so be clear on your reporting needs as an organisation including any different localised needs.


Online report of results

Paper reports

An analysis of which questions to focus on to increase engagement

Custom report design (i.e. designed for managers, admin users, executives)

Internal benchmarking within reports (using historical survey data)

External benchmarking within reports (using other organisations’ scores)

Data showing how engagement increases sales and customer satisfaction (linkage analysis)

5. Action planning

How ‘bought in’ to the employee survey are your managers and leaders? And how comfortable are they with data and devising action plans? Answering these questions will inform what the survey provider needs to offer.


Guidance for managers/leaders on interpreting survey results

Help identifying key action areas at individual, manager and group levels

Manager workshops covering data analysis and selecting the best actions

Linkage analysis offers powerful business insights, highlighting the impact increased engagement has on other business metrics. It can also provide you with a tangible (monetary) value of increased employee engagement.

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6. Technical requirements

You needn’t be a technical whizz but you should know the basics to ask from would-be providers. Involve your IT team early on and list any technical or security-related restrictions or preferences. This could include where the survey data is stored and how the system is accessed.


Self-service questionnaires

Host the survey (and all data) externally

Host the survey (and all data) internally

Survey completion via password entry and secure link

Integration with other HR software or a company intranet

Thorough security (penetration) testing

7. Budget

You’ll find a large variance in employee survey prices and we’d need a better idea of your requirements in order to advise accurately on budget. The best advice is to ensure you’re only paying for what you need. Below we offer some guidance on functionality to expect for smaller and bigger budgets.

Under £10,000Fixed survey approach and questionnaire content. Standard, pre-defined post-survey reports. Low or no involvement from consultants or project managers

Action planning is all about how you get the business (local managers or group level) to act most effectively on survey results. Aim to agree an appropriate action planning approach before launching an employee survey. This will better enable your organisation to take relevant action on survey results.

Action toolkits for managers with action plan templates

Focus groups

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What should you do next?

Æ Use our checklist and refer back to what you must have, would like to have and don’t needÆ Create your brief using this information Æ Speak with people in your network and get their recommendationsÆ Do some research and shortlist 3-5 companies that meet your criteria to invite to talk.

Can we help? If you’d like to speak with us about your requirements, please contact us...

Call us on +44 (0)1932 222700

Or e-mail us at [email protected]


£25,000 – £50,000Flexible survey content and tools. Reporting tools allowing for detailed analysis across the organisation. Consultancy support in both design and post-survey interpretation. Project-managed implementation

£100,000 & over

Integrated survey programme incorporating self-service questionnaires, pulse surveys. Powerful reporting tools for data analysis including custom reports. Consultancy partnership with support throughout and in all post-survey interpretation, activities and communications. Dedicated project management during implementation.

Business

A buyer's guide to employee surveys