EOS (Employee Opinon Survey) Only beneficial if done right!

I want to focus mainly on "Pulse Surveys"; these are Employee Opinion Surveys that are done usually annually that focus on a particular area of the company that may need improvement. Example focus areas for this type of Pulse Survey are Employee Development, Organizational Communication Effectiveness, maybe their opinion on a specific department, etc...



This type of survey allows you to truly understand how your employees feel on any given topic. From my experience, they are generally pretty honest when it is an anonymous survey completed through such services as Survey Monkey.

It's important to have questions that allow your employee's to rate your effectiveness, for example... Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree or don’t know. This allows you to gage how passionate they are about their answer. If they have answered neutral for a significant amount of their survey, they are likely not an "engaged employee". Employee Engagement in generally is a topic for another post, but has significance as it relates to Pulse Surveys.


The one key element that I am passionate about, as it relates to this blog post, is if you create action plans based on the results of the survey… ACT ON THEM!!! I have witnessed to many companies previously (not the one I am with currently) just take the results and not do anything with them. If employees state that they feel they do not have the necessary training to be successful in their positions, provide the training. If they do not feel that their supervisor communicates organizational goals and/or changes with them on a regular basis, then put a plan in place to fix it.

Pulse Surveys can give you a wonderful look into what your employee’s want, and help you to truly have an impact on improving your employee engagement, which will in turn lower turnover. Reducing turnover will lower recruitment and training costs as well as allow you to increase bench strength within your organization. It may seem like a basic concept, but if not done well it can be devastating for an organization! Here is some sample Pulse Survey Questions:


1. How many years have you worked for “Company Name”?


a. Less than a year
b. 1-2 years

c. 2-3 years

d. 3-5 years

e. 5+ years



2. Have you ever thought of resigning your position?


a. Yes

b. No



3. How would you rate your relationship with your supervisor?


a. Wonderful

b. Okay

c. Needs Improvement

d. Not great



4. Are you confident in “Company’s Name” senior leadership team’s leadership?


a. Very Confident

b. Confident

c. Not Sure

d. Somewhat Confident

e. Not Confident



5. Do you have a good understanding of “Company’s Name” developmental opportunities?


a. Yes

b. No

These are just a few examples; a good pulse survey should have around 15 or so questions to make the results useful.
There are other types of employee surveys to keep in mind that might also be good tools when trying to identify potential areas for improvement: (www.toolpack.com)

• Tactical Surveys – The tactical survey is designed to answer a specific question, for example: Is this a good policy? Do people understand this process? Is this process working for our customers? Did the change effort get rolled out properly? The tactical survey should be very short and to the point, sent out and collected quickly. Using tactical surveys to follow through on change efforts can help to find where change has and has not gone well, so that the change agents can learn from the best and help the rest.


• Focused omnibus surveys (Strategic Surveys) – Gathering information on a large number of issues is the focused omnibus, or strategic survey. This covers issues related to an organization’s key goals and strategies, so it is considerably larger than a tactical survey, but still relatively focused. These surveys can be used as part of a strategic measurement system, or as a general diagnostic and motivation-for-change tool.


• General omnibus surveys – Less common now are relatively unfocused surveys which cover a large number of topics. While these topics may be directly relevant to the organization, these surveys are generally “off the shelf” and only a few questions are customized. They can also be a good diagnostic tool, but are often too long to be time and cost effective. Respondents may also get careless on a longer survey, and make mistakes or rate many attributes the same way to finish without wasting too much time.

More to come on Employee Engagement!!!