Pulse Surveys – explanation, insights, and what actions you need to take

For a long time at Charlie, we thought engagement meant yearly surveys to understand our team – so we ran them, and unfortunately, didn’t get much insights from them. 

As a Product Manager, my role is to develop our features – that includes our engagement one. As part of that development research, I started hearing about pulse survey and suggested it to our Chief of Staff – maybe it would help increase our survey engagement in the long run! 

I kind of took my co-team members as guinea pigs to understand whether it would be worth developing a pulse survey feature for our software, and it worked! Within a year after our Chief of Staff launched the pulse survey tools, the engagement increased by 40%. 

In this guide, I’ll share with you an understand of what pulse surveys are, what insights they can give you, what kind of questions you need to ask and what actions you need to take. 

As a bonus, I’ve also included all of my research on the topic – so you’ll have access to a free guide to understand what pulse surveys tools are available on the market.

What is a pulse survey?

A pulse survey is a quick survey that’s regularly sent to your employees and is designed to take the ‘pulse’ of your business.

With a pulse survey tool, you can even automate the entire survey process and remove most if not all of the manual admin involved in running pulse surveys. 

What is the difference between a pulse survey and a regular survey? 

Pulse survey differ most from traditional employee engagement surveys because of: 

• Frequency – most conventional employee engagement surveys are typically held annually or bi-annually, are longer and more comprehensive. Pulse surveys, by contrast, are shorter and conducted more frequently - often monthly or bi-monthly. 
  
• Length – pulse surveys are more concise and brief, often consisting of about 5-15 questions. They enable you to proactively address issues and capitalise on opportunities at the moment.
• Goal and scope – their frequency gives you access to more timely data, which allows you to act and respond to issues as they arise, rather than after the fact. They're great at quickly measuring the overall mood of an organisation and tracking the impact of more recent changes or short-term initiatives.

Creating a pulse survey: our step-by-step guide

Here’s how we approach pulse surveys at Charlie – hopefully it will help you run your own. 

1. Define your objectives

Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve from the survey: 

• What are you trying to learn or understand? 
  
• Are you trying to measure the level of employee engagement? 
• Or see how your team members feel about a specific initiative or policy? 

Defining your objectives will help ensure that your questions are focused and relevant, and collect relevant data that you can act on.

2. Choose your questions

Next, carefully consider your questions based on the objectives you laid out. These should be clear, concise, and strike a balance between qualitative and quantitative information gathering.

You might include a question like “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company as a place to work?” to measure employee satisfaction, for example.

With pulse surveys, it is also a good idea to ask the same questions at regular intervals to spot any upward or downward trend in your team’s engagement and motivation.

3. Design your survey

Making use of CharlieHR’s employee engagement survey feature helps us take our questions and objectives and turn them into a customisable survey we send to our team. With Charlie, you can choose between a research-backed survey or a customised pulse survey that’s more specific to your company if you’re looking for more specific insights and information.

4. Schedule your survey

Decide when and how often you’d like your pulse survey to be distributed amongst your team.

Sending out your survey at regular intervals will help ensure you’re keeping a finger on your organisation’s pulse. You can also do that with Charlie: the platform lets you select your launch date and frequency of survey delivery, such as sending 1 question per week.

Then with a few clicks, you can schedule and launch your survey as per your defined schedule.

5. Collect and analyse the data, and act on feedback

This is the most important part - acting on the information given to you by the employee pulse survey to make your company a better place to work.

Understand your team’s sentiments, pointing out any recurring patterns or trends taking shape. The intuitive employee engagement dashboard offered by pulse survey tools like CharlieHR helps you track the completion rate and analyse the results, making this process simple.

Then, act on what you learn. Develop action plans to address any areas of concern and double down on any strategies or initiatives that are working. Your team members will appreciate seeing their feedback manifest as tangible changes.

25 Pulse survey questions to ask your team

The employee pulse survey questions you include require careful consideration because of the more targeted and focused nature of the pulse survey. These must be carefully planned and curated to align with your organisation’s concerns, and the exact information they’re seeking.

‍Here are some examples of the questions we ask at Charlie so you can get inspired:

Pulse survey questions for employee engagement

• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your overall engagement with your work?
  
• Do you feel excited about your work?
• Do you feel that your work is valued and contributes to the company’s success?
• Would you recommend our company as a great place to work?
• Are you proud to be part of this company?

Employee wellbeing pulse survey

• How satisfied are you with your work-life balance?
  
• On a scale from 1-10, how happy are you at work?
• Do you feel that you are adequately recognised for your contributions?
• Are your roles and responsibilities clear to you?
• Do you see a clear path for career advancement?

(Check out our article on employee wellbeing surveys for more info).

Team collaboration

• Do you feel that your team collaborates effectively?
  
• Do you feel comfortable sharing your ideas and opinions with your team?
• How effective is the communication within your team?
• Are the team’s goals clear and attainable?
• Do you believe there is trust within your team?

Manager effectiveness

• Does your manager provide you with clear expectations and goals?
  
• Do you receive constructive feedback from your manager?
• Does your manager support your career development?
• Do you feel your manager cares about your well-being?
• How would you rate your manager’s ability to lead the team?

Workplace environment and remote working survey questions

• How comfortable is your physical work environment?
  
• Do you have the tools and resources you need to do your job effectively?
• How would you rate the quality of communication in the company?
• Is there a good work-life balance in our company?
• Do you feel our workplace is a safe and healthy environment?

When creating your engagement survey questions, you should aim for a good balance of quantitative (1-10 scale ratings) and qualitative (open-ended, short-answer) questions.

Point-scale ratings give you numerical data that are easy to analyse, while the more open-ended questions give you nuanced insights and perspectives that are hard to put a figure on. Both are invaluable - and needed - to really understand how your team members feel about your organisation and their jobs.