7 Tips to Raise your Employee Engagement Survey’s Participation Rates

A common question we receive from new or potential survey clients is “How do you get such high participation rates?” For an employee survey, a participation rate of 50% to 60% is considered industry standard for web-based surveys. We typically receive 70% to 80% participation on first time surveys, if not more, and 85% to 95% on repeat surveys. There is always the rare 99% or 100% response rate, but those are achieved by clients that utilize their surveys to their full potential, year after year. Participation rates that high are hard to achieve – but not impossible.

While there is not one clear path to success when it comes to ensuring high levels of participation in your survey, over the 20 years we’ve been conducting surveys, we have identified several key strategies or approaches to encourage most employees to participate. We’ve also discovered, in talking with employees after a survey, why employees opt not to participate. Briefly, employees tell us that they are not motivated to take a survey when:

– They think taking the survey is useless, knowing from previous surveys that nothing will be done with the results. Why bother?

– They fear that they will somehow be identified and perhaps there will be some type of retribution for their candid responses

– It’s hard to take the survey because their direct manager does not support it, they were not given time to take the survey, or the survey was too long/complicated

– They were not aware the survey was being conducted

Having identified the common reasons employees typically don’t take a survey, now it’s time to focus on the positives and identify “best practices” in motivating employees to take your survey.

After conducting almost 300 employee engagement surveys, we have been able to coach our clients to consistently achieve response rates of 85 percent or higher. The following seven recommendations will help you in raising response rates for your Employee Engagement Surveys:

1. Get Senior Management Buy-In: This is perhaps the single most important aspect of ensuring high rates of employee participation. Senior managers must believe in the importance of the upcoming survey and publicly announce their support at every given opportunity to promote the survey. They must also emphasize the importance of the survey to the managers who report to them.
2. Market the Survey: Talk about the importance of the upcoming survey in multiple formats, multiple times. One time in any one format is not going to work as well as communicating the importance of taking the survey in multiple formats. Some examples our clients use include: in email blasts; on their intranet; at all employee meetings; in department meetings; in management team meetings; in a video clip from the CEO; and on posters throughout the organization. (We have even seen posters in elevators, cafeterias and even in restrooms.) Be creative. Get the message out in multiple formats to increase participation rates. Consider using a cross-representative employee team to gain ideas about how to promote the upcoming survey.
3. Discuss Employee Anonymity: Particularly in first time surveys, employees rightfully fear a lack of anonymity. Be sure to talk about how the results will only be shared when grouped with others in their team/department and never individually. If you are utilizing a third party to conduct your survey, this is a plus for anonymity. Communicate this to employees as another step to ensure their anonymity. We also recommend that the written comments not be typed up verbatim, but categorized with other similar responses. This format further ensures that employees’ comments are confidential.
4. Talk Up the Results from Previous Surveys: If your organization has taken an Employee Engagement Survey in the past, review with employees the actions that have been taken based on the results of past surveys. If you have recently completed a survey, we recommend communicating actions and their results on a quarterly basis. If you only communicate actions shortly after the survey has been taken, employees tend to forget what was accomplished since the last survey was taken and will lose hope that their input really does make a difference.
5. Make it Easy to Take the Survey: Schedule the survey when most people have the opportunity to easily take it. Because of this, some organizations do not like to schedule the survey when people are really busy. However, during the organization’s slow or down time, people tend to be away from the organization and/or take time off. And, when people are taking time off, the last thing they want to do is think about the organization and take a survey. While it is a cliché, it is true. Busy people get more things accomplished. Last, remember, there is no perfect time to schedule the survey. However, making it easy to take the survey will always increase your participation rate.
6. Hold Supervisors and Managers Accountable for Participation Rates: Inform leaders in the organization that they are responsible for encouraging their employees to take the survey and providing their employees with the needed time to participate in the survey process. Leaders need to know that the lack of participation is directly, or indirectly, a reflection of their leadership. When employees know their supervisor values their opinions and acts on the results of the survey, people tend to participate.
7. Take Action: Each manager should be held responsible for conducting a formal action plan that includes actions for both the employees and the managers to complete. This action planning process will not work if only the manager has actions to take. Joint accountability is a key to the success of Employee Engagement Surveys.

What we haven’t mentioned above is incentives. Some of our clients use them, but most do not. Incentives are not a requirement for survey participation, but can add some fun to the process and may increase your participation rates. Some organizations have an ice cream party or give some other small incentive to teams/departments that achieve 100% participation. Some have a raffle for those that participate in the survey, giving away some trendy new piece of technology, an evening out on the town, or something else of perceived value. Still, others might offer a donation to a charity the organization supports if overall participation rates reach a set goal.

In general, we have found that incentives only motivate a select portion of employees, not the total population. They usually don’t have the broad effect that companies hope for. They also don’t come even close to having the same impact as the seven tips above. Incentives do have their place: they are most effective when completing customer related surveys. If you are going to embark on the incentives trail, we do suggest making them based on team or department participation, verses individual participation.

It goes without saying that your employees are your most important asset. They are the sum total of your intellectual capital, and your competitive advantage. It only makes sense to maximize your ability to hire and retain the best and brightest by routinely surveying your employees to get a read on their engagement, morale, ideas for improvement, and demonstrate that you care about them and their opinions. If you go to all the trouble of conducting a survey, follow the seven recommended tips to enhance your participation levels. Doing so will help you create an organization where employees love to come to work, and customers love to do business.