How to conduct effective employee pulse surveys: Best practices

Employee pulse surveys (sometimes called a pulse check) are a simple and highly effective way of gauging workforce sentiment by regularly collecting employee feedback using short questionnaires. Employee and engagement pulse surveys offer a window into what employees think and feel at any given time. With this knowledge, organizations can immediately identify employee engagement and well-being issues and take actionable steps to resolve them. 

Building engagement is vital in today’s business climate. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, just 33% of American workers were engaged in the workplace. Worse, 16% of workers surveyed were actively disengaged. There’s an enormous cost associated with such high disengagement rates; Gallup estimates disengaged employees cost US businesses $1.9 trillion in lost productivity. 

This guide will explain how employee pulse surveys can boost engagement, improve productivity, and increase retention. 

What is a pulse survey?

An employee pulse survey is a powerful tool to help you build a happier, more productive workforce. Pulse surveys differ from other types of employee surveys your organization may conduct. While some of the content may be the same as in the other surveys, pulse surveys are all about the here and now. Traditional employee engagement surveys are long and can have high non-participation rates. When conducted annually or bi-annually, it takes a long time to see the results of any changes you make.

Employee pulse surveys are more frequent (monthly or even weekly), shorter (just 5 to 10 easy-to-answer questions), and have a much narrower focus (just a few specific areas) than traditional surveys. At the same time, their brevity and frequency give businesses insights into problems before they fester. They also give you the flexibility to track the same subjects and metrics over time, enabling you to measure results to help ensure positive outcomes. 

Benefits of employee pulse surveys

Employee pulse surveys may be limited to just a few questions, but don’t judge them on their size—they have many advantages over different kinds of in-house surveys, including: 

Boosting employee engagement

Pulse surveys let you zero in on topics and areas where you can improve employee engagement. For example, asking your workers if they have the right tools for the job, feel appreciated, or have growth opportunities is vital to understanding their engagement. If the survey reveals areas where employees don’t feel engaged with your company, you can take steps to remedy problem areas. By repeating similar questions regularly, you can track progress without waiting for the results of an annual engagement survey. 

Identifying issues early

Everyone wants a happier, more productive workforce. By identifying problems and dissatisfaction early, companies can change and implement workflows to stave off more significant issues like losing top talent, employee disengagement, and general workplace dissatisfaction. 

Fostering better communication

Communication is key to any successful business. Employee pulse surveys start a conversation with your employees. By asking for regular employee feedback and acting upon it, your workforce will see that you listen to their concerns and take steps to improve the employee experience. 

Continuously improving

By tracking employee sentiment bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or at whatever cadence you choose, you can identify trends and problems in real time, enabling you to make small employee feedback-based changes. You can monitor the results and pivot as necessary to continuously improve.

Common uses of employee pulse surveys 

Employee pulse surveys don’t replace annual or other employee surveys you might do within your organization. Instead, they’re additional tools you can use to gain greater insights into employee well-being, company culture, and overall organizational climate. Let’s look at some practical use cases for employee pulse surveys, their versatility, and their role in helping you maintain a healthy and engaged workforce. 

Onboarding feedback

One common use of pulse surveys is to gather insights into your onboarding process so that you can improve the new employee experience. To accomplish this, you simply create a series of short surveys that are automatically sent to new employees at critical stages during their onboarding. At the end of their first day, you might solicit their feedback on their first impressions. The end of the first week is a good time to ask about their impressions of the orientation experience. After their first month, create a short survey to get their thoughts on the overall onboarding process.

Based on the responses from your new hires, you can quickly identify any trends or issues that require adjustments to your processes. If you discover a new hire struggling, you can immediately provide additional support. 

Pulse surveys also enable you to compare results over time and track any changes you’ve made. By refining the onboarding process, companies can support new team members and improve employee satisfaction and morale right from the start. 

Quarterly employee engagement check-ins

How are your employees doing? If you don’t have reliable and timely employee feedback, you could be missing critical issues that impact your business. It’s like a car. It may sound like everything is running fine until the ‘check engine’ light comes on. Quarterly employee engagement check-ins are like a ‘check engine’ light. They flag issues early so you can take immediate steps to resolve them.

Quarterly check-ins help you keep tabs on employee sentiment and employee engagement throughout the year, without waiting for an annual employee survey. In the format of a short employee pulse survey, you might ask for feedback in areas like company culture, opportunities for career growth, work-life balance, and, of course, the big one: job satisfaction. Depending on your survey platform, you can filter results by different attributes like department, role, and compensation. And if you track the same metrics from quarter to quarter, you can see the results of any changes you make.

After major organizational changes

Employee pulse surveys can measure employee attitudes and sentiments following significant organizational changes—like a shift in strategic direction or company restructuring. You can survey the entire organization or send targeted surveys to specific departments or employees directly impacted by the changes. 

The survey results will quickly reveal existing problems, like areas of confusion or morale issues, allowing you to provide prompt intervention and communication. By running recurring pulse surveys, organizations can track changes to employee sentiment and pivot as needed. Some survey platforms can trigger automatic follow-ups or one-on-one meetings if an employee expresses a significant concern. 

Monitoring remote or hybrid work satisfaction

It’s one thing to keep on top of workplace issues when your employees are in the same building; remote and hybrid worker morale and engagement are just as important. Employee pulse surveys can help ensure that your off-site employees are not only engaged but satisfied with their work arrangements. 

A survey customized specifically for remote employees can gauge their level of satisfaction in areas like communication with head office, work-life balance, workspace issues, and overall job fulfillment. By sending pulse surveys frequently, you can gain important feedback from your remote workforce, enabling you to head off potential problems, address concerns, and provide additional support. This will help maintain high levels of employee satisfaction, regardless of their location. 

Assessing leadership effectiveness

It’s not just employees that need evaluation. Your leadership team is instrumental in your success. Pulse surveys are an excellent tool for gathering employee feedback about managers and senior executives from your workforce. 

In this case, you would use the survey to hone in on areas like decision-making, communication, and employee support. A few short questions about a manager’s abilities and how they support the team can uncover trends and problem areas in leadership. 

By acting on these insights, the company can take action to resolve them quickly. Repeating the pulse survey on a regular cadence can track the results of any changes you make, from adjusting internal communications and approaches to leadership training for managers. Honest feedback from your workforce can help boost leadership performance and foster a positive workplace. 

4 Tips for designing effective pulse surveys

The design of your employee pulse survey is just as important as how and when you use it. To create an effective survey that will help gather actionable feedback, follow these best practices:

1. Keep your pulse surveys short and focused

Your employee pulse survey should be short, consisting of 5 to 10 questions with a tight focus. You can add a few more questions if your employee survey is quarterly or yearly. Most survey questions should be multiple choice, with one or two open-ended questions for more in-depth employee feedback. The answers to the multiple-choice survey questions should be on a scale, either a numerical range (1 to 10) or based on the Likert scale, which covers a range between two extremes. This example of a 5-point Likert scale encourages the respondent to select one of the following answers: 

1. Strongly disagree

2. Disagree

3. Neither disagree nor agree (or neutral)

4. Agree

5. Strongly agree 

Your employee pulse survey questions should result in tightly focused answers and leave no room for ambiguity. 

2. Use simple and concise language in your questions

Writing your employment pulse questions using clear and concise language ensures the feedback you get back is relevant and unambiguous. Take your time crafting your survey questions so that they result in actionable insights instead of generalizations. Avoid using technical language or specialized terms and jargon unless necessary. Read on for more on key questions to include in your employee pulse survey and how to ask them. 

3. Ensure anonymity for honest responses

Anonymity in employee pulse surveys is crucial for soliciting honest answers and feedback. Ensuring your employees’ answers are anonymous removes the fear of consequences and repercussions, making it far more likely that they’ll be candid in their responses, leading to more accurate feedback. This not only improves engagement, it results in higher-quality data that enables employers to resolve challenges in the workplace. 

4. Align questions with your survey objectives

By tailoring your employee pulse survey questions to focus on specific areas of interest, you ensure that the feedback you collect can translate into concrete actions and workplace improvements, helping increase employee engagement and satisfaction.

How long should employee pulse surveys be?

The length of your employee pulse survey depends on how often you conduct them. As a rule of thumb, monthly pulse surveys should be as short as possible, in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 questions. For quarterly surveys, 15 to 20 questions is a good number. More than that, there’s a good chance the respondent will lose interest. If you’re conducting employee pulse surveys less frequently, say twice a year, you can add a few more questions, but keep it between 25 to 30. Otherwise, your response rates will drop, and you may not get the quality data you need. 

The time it takes to complete a survey depends on the number of questions you ask and how many of those questions are open-ended.

Surveys that are poorly designed, too long, or too frequent can result in survey fatigue. The employee simply loses interest and feels the need to move on to other tasks, impacting the quality of the feedback. 

How often should you conduct employee pulse surveys?

The frequency of your employee pulse surveys depends on several factors, including your organization’s needs and industry norms. You’re trying to strike the right balance between conducting them often enough to gather actionable feedback, but not so often that employees begin to suffer from survey fatigue. The following considerations will help you determine a cadence of pulse surveys that works best for your business and its workforce. 

Fluctuations in what you’re measuring

How often do the metrics you’re measuring change? If they change quickly, you’ll want to conduct your pulse surveys more often. Let’s say you’ve implemented a new technology or process. You may be more interested in the data from only the implementation phase. 

Ability to absorb and act on results

It’s important to leave enough time between surveys to act upon the feedback that you’ve gathered. You need to analyze the data, glean meaningful insights from it, and then take the appropriate steps to make changes. 

Time needed to implement action plans

Conducting pulse surveys too frequently without implementing changes can make employees apathetic. Consider the typical timeframe your business needs to apply changes from your employee pulse survey results. Your survey cadence should give your organization sufficient time for the changes to take effect before measuring their impact. 

Aligning with the cadence of other organizational metrics

Aligning the cadence of your pulse surveys with key organizational metrics and reporting cycles will give you a more in-depth perspective of your organization’s performance and employee opinion. For example, syncing employee pulse surveys with performance review cycles can provide deeper insights into employee sentiment during appraisal periods.

20 essential pulse survey questions to include

What you get out of your employee pulse survey depends on what you put into it. Before you start writing your questions, define the goal of your survey. Do you want feedback on a new workflow? Are you trying to find out how engaged your employees are? Perhaps you’re looking for insights into your management team.

Then, consider your audience. To help ensure the feedback is relevant, your survey should be aimed at the end user. This could be the whole company, a single department, or a narrow segment of your workforce.

Your questions should be tightly focused and cover a central topic. While a survey covering multiple topics can provide some general feedback, it doesn’t drill down to truly actionable insights. Once you have the focus of your survey, you can begin writing the questions. Here are some examples to get you started: 

Employee engagement

Employee engagement refers to the degree of enthusiasm and commitment an employee has toward their job and employer. These questions get to the heart of employee engagement.

How often do you feel a sense of accomplishment in your role?

How satisfied are you with the company’s efforts to support and engage employees?

How connected do you feel to your team and the company’s goals?

How likely are you to recommend [your company] as a great employer? 

Work-life balance

Work-life balance is the equilibrium between an employee’s professional responsibilities and personal life. These questions reveal whether the employee can fulfill both without compromising in other areas of their life. 

Are you able to manage your workload within regular working hours?

How well do you feel the company supports your ability to balance work and personal life?

Do you feel you have flexibility in managing your working hours?

Do you feel you can easily disconnect from work during your personal time? 

Career development

Career development is the continuous process of an employee’s growth to meet their career goals. These questions explore whether your workforce feels supported in their long-term professional goals.

Do you feel that you have opportunities for growth and advancement?

How confident are you that the company invests in your professional growth?

Are there clear paths for advancement within your department?

How well does your current position align with your career goals? 

Work environment

An employee’s work environment includes the location, conditions, and atmosphere in which they work. These questions dig into how the employee feels about their worksite.

Do you have access to the tools and resources you need to do your job?

How well do your coworkers and team members work together? 

Are you comfortable expressing your opinions at work?

Is employee health and well-being a serious concern for the company?

Leadership

Overall job satisfaction and performance depend on the relationship between employees and their managers. For insights into the effectiveness of your company’s leadership, consider asking these questions:

Do you receive regular, constructive feedback from your manager?

Does your manager empower you to make decisions?

My manager has my best interests in mind. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your leadership team's ability to achieve company goals?

Make pulse engagement surveys effortlessly with Rippling

Build a happier, more productive, and more engaged workforce with high-quality employee pulse surveys. With Rippling Pulse you can quickly create any type of survey with intuitive, customizable survey templates—or design your own survey from the ground up.

Pick your sample size with ease; whether it’s your entire organization or a specific group selected to participate based on their department, role, or any other attributes you choose. 

You can also automatically send surveys. Schedule them on a particular cadence, like bi-weekly or monthly, or set event-based triggers that send surveys out automatically when an employee’s role changes or at key milestones in your onboarding process (e.g., after the first week, 30 days, 60 days, and so on). 

When your survey is complete, and you’re sifting through the results, Rippling helps you make sense of the data. You can combine survey and employee data to create insightful reports and filter them by attributes like demographics, department, location, and more. 

That’s the power of using employee pulse survey tools built on top of a single source of truth for all your employee data. Rippling is the only HCM that unifies HR, payroll, IT, and Spend apps in one platform—so you can analyze, automate, and orchestrate anything.

Pulse survey FAQs 

How can you avoid survey fatigue?

Survey fatigue occurs when surveys have too many questions, are conducted too often, or lack focus and relevance. Respondents become bored, disengaged, or overwhelmed, resulting in lower participation rates and less thoughtful responses. Conducting pulse surveys can reduce survey fatigue because they’re short and more focused. Limiting survey frequency is another way to avoid fatigue and increase engagement and data quality. 

Are employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys the same?

Employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys share some similarities, but there are key differences: 

Employee engagement surveys are typically more comprehensive, longer, conducted less frequently (i.e., annually or semi-annually), and aim to gain insights about employee satisfaction and engagement. Organizations use the insights gained from engagement surveys to plan long-term initiatives and changes. 

Employee pulse surveys differ from standard employee engagement surveys in several ways. While they can cover similar topics, they are typically shorter, tightly focused, and ask a small number of questions. They’re conducted more frequently (i.e., monthly, bi-weekly) to get a quick snapshot of employee attitudes. They provide insights and feedback that can be acted upon immediately and used to track the results of changes and initiatives over time. 

How do I design an employee pulse survey?

There are several steps in designing an effective employee pulse survey. First, define your objectives and write 5 to 10 questions that can be completed in 5 to 10 minutes. Most of the questions should be multiple choice or rate opinions on a scale, but you should include an open-ended question or two. Ensure the survey questions are relevant to the employees and assure them that their answers are confidential. Schedule the survey at regular intervals, but no more than once per week. Select the necessary tools to help analyze the feedback. You can also use a solution like Rippling to automate these steps and simplify the process.

This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of September 18, 2024.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.