Employee Benefits Survey Tips
An employee benefits survey can be a great tool to check the temperature of your company’s culture. When done right, the survey can help you understand the health needs of your employees, which in turn benefits productivity, job satisfaction, and supports employee retention.
Before you start, however, ensure that your team is ready to act on the feedback you’ll get. Then decide what it is you need to know by compiling a list of essential questions.
Next, determine how you will create, disseminate, tabulate, and communicate the survey process and results. If you’re creating your own survey, consider gathering employees from different areas of the company to formulate the survey questions and include them in the employee communications process to encourage participation. This team can also be instrumental in reviewing the survey results and providing feedback about how those results should be communicated and acted upon.
Another option is to use one of the many online survey tools available to you. While the questions may not be as personalized to your company issues, you can get the surveys, along with the tabulated results, done quickly.
If you do create the survey in-house, consider these best practice tips:
Determine whether the survey identifies the respondents. Confidential surveys typically yield higher response rates and include more candid feedback. The decision to include identifying information is generally tied to the level of openness and trust in an organization’s culture.
Ask relevant questions. Ask questions that employees can — and want to — answer about their benefits.
Make it simple and easy to complete. Keep the survey short. Employees may not take the time to complete a lengthy survey with in-depth questions. Save those types of questions for the follow-up action planning.
Provide an open comment area. Give employees an opportunity to comment at the end of the survey and add any additional information not covered by the questions.
Make the results actionable. Follow up on survey results so employees know they are heard and appreciated.
Encourage participation by using incentives or contests. With more feedback, you’ll have a better picture of your employees’ engagement level. Most importantly, don’t ask for employee feedback unless you are willing to do something with the results. Your employees will expect you to implement changes and take action. Let them know how much you value and respect them by listening and acting on their opinions and ideas.