How Often Should You Measure Employee Engagement?

Employee Pulse Survey: a short, quick survey sent to employees on a monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual basis. Essentially a check-in, providing a pulse check on topics such as employee satisfaction, job role, communication, relationships, and work environment.

Google “employee pulse survey” and you’ll get 15.4 million results. What makes pulse surveys so relevant, timely, and popular with organizations trying to stabilize their remote workforce still menaced by COVID?

Six clear benefits

The 6Q Blog confirms that pulse surveys:

• provide a near real-time measurement of employee engagement and satisfaction,
• improve employee engagement,
• increase positive company culture,
• allow for analysis of improvements over time,
• confirm that management values employee feedback and,
• encourage open communication.

 —and one distinctive strength

“Where an annual engagement survey is a once-a-year snapshot of your employees' engagement, "pulses" allow you to track items month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter so you can check-in (and react) more regularly, plot trends over time, and start to link improvements back to actions you've taken in the organization," notes Qualtrics.

BCWI’s quick, compact Pulse Survey, enables organizations to measure fluctuations in engagement so leadership can celebrate achievements and step in to improve the employee’s experience faster than ever. The survey pinpoints what’s happening right now in your organization and provides guidance on where to focus next.

Result: With more engaged employees, an organization can rapidly transform its culture and surpass current levels of impact. Yet, a one-time pulse survey won’t do it. Instead, the real starting point to objectively measure and improve a truly healthy, growing workplace culture is an annual employee engagement survey.

How often? Evidence that deserves a verdict

BCWI Regional Director Cary Humphries has seen workplace cultures rise and fall. “You want to survey often enough to:

• Encourage you that you're making the progress you have set out to make, and,
• Warn you soon enough that your off track and need a course correction.”

“Surveying annually seems to be about right. An annual physical exam is standard common sense to check and see what’s working well and to spot any silent, hidden health threats before they spread and do serious damage.

For some organizations, a six-month "pulse survey" is helpful to see if there is good movement on intentional changes.  The “pulse survey” allows leaders to know how well their culture initiatives are working and if not, redirect their efforts.

“I know an organization that was surveying every three years.  They declined from a flourishing level to barely healthy (above 4.0) to less than healthy over the course of six years. They now admit surveying every three years was a bad idea. A pulse survey would have given them an immediate reading to get back on the right track and avoid an unnecessary culture downturn.

“Surveying every two years doesn’t quite resonate with the wisdom of an annual physical exam.

The legendary Peter Drucker once said, “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes . . . but no plans.”

BCWI Pulse Survey

See how your action planning steps are progressing since you last completed the full Employee Engagement Survey!

• Quick This short survey includes the 16 questions most closely correlated to employee engagement. With no demographic questions, it takes just five minutes to complete.
• Simple A clear, single-page report comes with one base fee.  No per-person fees.  (Team Snapshot Reports available for purchase after the survey closes.)
• Debrief Included As part of every project, your BCWI consultant will debrief your executive leadership team to understand and interpret the results more fully, identifying the next steps.

Sign up, today!