How to increase employee engagement survey participation

Some HR teams struggle to motivate employees to take part in surveys, which leads to low participation rates. Luckily, there are ways to improve the response rates and increase engagement.
This article will look closer at 5 things that can help you increase participation in employee surveys.
5 steps to improve employee survey participation
Use pulse intelligent pulse surveys
Send regular pulse surveys rather than one yearly survey
Add open-ended questions to your employee surveys
Take action on the survey results
Integrate your employee surveys with calendars and communication apps
Use pulse intelligent pulse surveys
There are different generations of employee surveys on the market, and which tool you choose will significantly affect survey participation. With old-school surveys sent out yearly, or old-style pulse surveys repeating the same questions every time, the participation rate is often lower. It also tends to decrease over time.
Why is that? Well, with yearly surveys, the sheer size and scope of the surveys often mean people simply don't complete the survey. It's too time-consuming. And with repetitive pulse surveys, there is the dreaded "survey fatigue" that often sets in after a few rounds.
At Eletive, we recognise these challenges and have built a more modern solution that maximizes employee engagement survey participation. Eletive surveys are driven by advanced survey intelligence, powered by machine learning and adaptive algorithms. This means that employees don't receive the same survey questions every time. Instead, they receive the most relevant ones, based on their answers in the previous survey. This approach comes with numerous benefits, and one of them is that it creates a better employee experience and prevents survey fatigue.
Related reading: How intelligent pulse surveys can improve your people decisions
Send regular pulse surveys rather than one yearly survey
By sending out regular surveys, you give your employees more than one chance per year to participate. Exactly how often you should send surveys depends on several factors, and with Eletive, you can choose the frequency that works for your organization. You can also let different parts of the organization get the surveys at different frequencies.
And contrary to what many believe, sending out surveys often and regularly does not decrease participation. Instead, it often increases it! One reason for this is that if you send out the survey, for example, bi-weekly, it will contain fewer questions. If you use the standard Eletive question battery, sending the employee survey bi-weekly means it contains only four questions each time. That only takes a minute to answer. And when people realize this, most companies start seeing a really good response rate.
Related reading: Real-time pulse surveys vs. annual employee engagement surveys
Add open-ended questions to your employee surveys
Adding open-ended questions to your surveys allows respondents to share their feedback in a more open format. This means it's possible to address issues that are not covered by the questionnaire. Open-ended questions not only increases the participation but also improves the quality of the survey results.
If your organization is large, managing all the data from open-ended questions may seem challenging. But with Eletive, AI will help you process the answers automatically. This is a great way to find out about issues that may otherwise have gone unnoticed for a longer period, leading to more significant problems. Finding out early is the key to a proactive approach, and open-ended questions are an excellent tool for this.
Related reading: The best employee engagement survey questions – what to ask and why
Take action on the survey results
It's important to remember that gathering employee feedback is not the end in itself. What's important is to also turn the insights from the employee survey responses into tangible action. When employees notice that they can help drive positive change by participating in the employee surveys, this improves the survey response rate. And, of course, the opposite is equally true. If employees notice that nothing happens as a result of the feedback they give, they will eventually be less prone to participate in surveys.
The best way to take action is often to include employees in the action planning. This creates a sense of ownership and accountability and sends the message that everyone is responsible for the outcome together.
The Eletive platform makes it easy to connect the survey results to actions and turn them into a to-do list. This also means it's easy to track if the actions being taken are affecting the survey results so that managers and teams can iterate and be agile.
Related reading: Learn more about action plans in the Eletive platform
Integrate your employee survey tool with calendars and communication apps
One very simple way to increase employee survey participation is to make it as convenient and straightforward as possible for employees to respond to the survey. By integrating your survey tool with the calendars and communication apps you use, your employees will get reminded to answer the survey inside the apps where they spend most of their time. So, for example, they'll get a reminder on slack with a link to the survey, and then all it takes is a click to open it and a few more clicks to answer it. No interruption, no need to log in or out of systems, which makes a big difference.