Pulse Surveys: Step-by-Step Guide + Free Templates

Only half of global employees (51% to be exact) admit being engaged.

In fact, Pulse surveys can help you gauge where your employees stand on Maslow’s Employee Engagement Index. (More on this later.)

That can help you tailor compensation, benefits, and policies in a way that supports highest employee happiness and hence- performance.

After all,
Happier employees ➡️ 12-13% higher productivity.

Reserves seat for HR at the business table with People Analytics

I think you’ll agree with me when I say- A lot of HR work goes unrecognized.

Now, Pulse survey helps HRs:

• Measure the outcome of their employee engagement activities
• Translate them in a language that business heads and founders understand.

Easy-to-understand dashboards equipped with descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics will further help HRs link their activities to final company revenue/growth.

Path to Increasing Employee Engagement and Decrease Attrition

The reports are out.
Engaged employees tend to stay with companies longer while advocating your company to others.

Well optimized and routinely analyzed engagement strategies can help companies save USD 56 M in costs. This can only be possible through optimal people pulse surveys.

Instilling Goal Oriented Approach for HR Team

Furthermore, Pulse surveys- or any HR tool/tactic, for that matter- that is equipped with analytics help measure the outcome of the resources and time invested in that particular HR campaign.

It can help HR teams understand if:

• there are existing strategy gaps
• the budget/resources need optimising
• there is need for L & D within the department

Helps Boosts Employer Brand

Here’s the deal.
In this employee’s first market, attracting the top 10% talent is no cake.
68% of Millennials, 54% of Gen-Xers, and 48% of Baby Boomers visit employer social media channels to evaluate the employer’s brand. 45% admit to checking out sites like Glassdoor to read employee reviews.

What’s more-

Tools like employee pulse survey help you measure and communicate the brilliance of your employee engagement strategy. In fact- a solid Pulse survey tool will offer you downloadable dashboards that you can directly share on social/career pages directly.
Now that we’ve covered why pulse surveys are important for you and your org, let’s move on to HOW you can implement it.

Implementing your own pulse survey: A 5-step guide 

Here is a step-by-step guide to crafting your own pulse survey questions.

Identifying your Goal for pulse survey

Adoption of employee engagement and pulse survey has been quite decent.

However, fewer organizations plan out their pulse surveys from start to end. The very first step should be identifying the objective of your pulse survey.

• Is it to understand employee’s sentiment/take on the recent benefit policy you enrolled?
• Is it to gauge the overall employee happiness index of your employees?

Clearing your objective will help you decide which kind of survey you should go for.

Should you go for a…

• Holistic Pulse Survey
  This surveys take into account each and every aspect of employee well-being while measuring employee engagement. They are organization wide and are recommended to be conducted quarterly or annually. They can be coupled with Employee Happiness Index and ENPS test scores.
•  Interim Pulse Survey
  These surveys help evaluate employee outlook on day to day HR operations/activities. They can also be issued in the firm of follow up surveys to recently applied company policies/activities

Either way, a thoughtful and targeted approach towards pulse survey strategy will yield greater benefit and higher ROI.

Selecting Right Target Audience 

Before moving ahead, understand what your audience for the survey should be.

Were few initiatives implemented company-wide?

Then, the entire organization should be a part of the survey.

Is the pulse focusing on gathering feedback on initiatives specific to a business unit or geography?

In that case, only impacted employees may participate.

Setting Right Frequency

This aspect completely depends on your organization’s survey cycle. Usually, when it comes to timing of pulse surveys, here are some best practices to follow:

What frequency works basis of your pulse survey purpose, expected outcome and organization size.

Small number survey can be conducted more frequently (e.g. weekly or quarterly)

Holistic surveys can be conducted once a year or half yearly.

Selecting Pulse Survey Framework and Pulse Survey Questions  

Next up is content:

Essentially, the process of selecting the right pulse survey framework and questions.

Your pulse survey questions a.k.a your content needs to be powerful enough to draw out the most honest and relevant answers from your employees.

Afterall, how will you measure employee happiness without including their take on their:

1. Job Pay and Security
2. Feeling of safety and belongingness in office
3. Their reporting manager and leadership

You can’t afford to have any loose screws.

Afterall, that can manipulate your results, or give you false analysis.

Now that we have this clarity, let’s move on to the ʼmain event’; pule survey templates and examples.

Existing pulse survey questions are failing you

There are a lot of employee pulse and engagement frameworks out in the market.

However, all come with their own limitations and challenges.

Let’s take Deloitte and AON Hewitt Employee Frameworks, for instance.

So, how do we navigate this?

Well, a holistic employee survey framework can help.

Let’s go back to employee behavior fundamentals. Or even Human Behavior.

We’ve tried to devise an employee pulse survey framework based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Have a look for yourself!

Here is a free holistic pulse survey framework, coupled with targeted employee questions. Feel free to tweak it to your requirements. 

No, let’s move on to some actual pulse survey questions. Since this is a holistic framework, it will consider every aspect of employee well-being. You will find questions appropriate to all aforementioned stages of employee hierarchy of needs. 

Pulse survey questions examples and free template: Tips for writing pulse survey questions 

Here is an exhaustive list of employee pulse survey questions. You can take inspiration and customize some of them to fit your own needs. 

Hopefully, these questions can cover almost all aspects of employee engagement and satisfaction that you need to measure.

Having said that, there is one extremely important step left: publishing your pulse survey.

Let’s find out the steps associated with it.

Communicating Survey to Employees 

You might think the hard part is done.

You might want to think again.

While strategy is important, it’s equally important to convince employees to take those surveys.

1. Highlight exact reasons why employees should participate- this reinforces employee-centric policies, opens a discussion between employees and managers.
2. Get managers and business unit heads involved- Convey the urgency, importance and possible benefits of these surveys to managers. Suggest managers to encourage their reportees to participate in surveys. Senior leaders should also be involved in the employee pulse strategy phase. Understand limitations and set expectations.
3. Leverage storytelling through social media and company wall.
4. Look out for pulse survey tools that automate employee notifications on their portal and official email.
5. Emphasize the fact that surveys are anonymous

Once the pulse survey is completed, the next step is to draw out analysis from these surveys. In other words, learn how to read and represent your pulse survey report right.

Draw Out Analysis: Pulse Survey Reports 

First things first: Investigate your pulse survey tools’ dashboard.

Understand the trends. For instance,

Are members of one specific team continuously reporting absenteeism and have higher helpdesk queries?

Well, Time to correlate it with their responses on “relationship with manager”, then.

Your report can further go into descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive diagnosis. Further, segment information based on time period, department, business unit location and job titles.

Utilize report that directly shows HR impact (employee engagement) on business outcomes.  (More on this later)

For now, let’s move on to the common challenges and pitfalls of pulse surveys 

Challenges of Pulse Survey: Common Pitfalls

While pulse surveys are considered supremely effective, it’s not without its challenges.

Here’s a deeper dive.

Non structured Pulse Survey Questions

A lot of orgs may copy questions for the pulse surveys from the internet or other forums.

This leads to poor assessment of employee engagement. Mainly because these questions are not structures or well-thought out.

Having a well-structured pulse framework in place can help avoid this pitfall.

Keka’s Employee Pulse Framework, adopted on Maslow’s hierarchy of Employee Needs is one possible source.

Undue Focus on Measurement, Not Insight

HRs may be tempted to unduly focus on measuring pulse results rather than driving insights for better decision-making.

This mistake can end up undermining credibility of survey process and impact the results manipulatively.

Not Analyzing Year by Year Score

It is recommended to keep your pulse survey criteria the same YoY. HRs may be tempted to optimize the pulse survey questions. However, special attention should be paid to implementation.

A long-term data set will help you to draw out more relevant analysis.

Ensure that your Pulse Survey tool helps you to analyze trends across years.

Survey Fatigue

A pulse-heavy strategy can end up burdening your employees, risking your response rate.

Worst case, it might harm productivity too.

Moreover, overwhelming data does not tell a compelling story useful to business leaders.

Using sampling strategy to target survey respondents, spacing out the surveys can help minimize the burden. In addition to that, consider:

1. Specific Blackout periods when no surveys are run. Budget closing time, extended holidays etc.
2. Emphasis on employee confidentiality and anonymous reponses.
3. Setting expectation from survey. For instance- Time to Fill.

Lack of Action and follow up

Often, HRs may conduct pulse survey routinely.

However, they may not pay emphasis on analyzing the trends. Consequently, they are not able to craete follow up actions and campaigns to rectify gaps in employee engagement.

Inconsistent Participation

Participation of a selected-few employees may give you manipulated or false insights.

Choose your target audience right.

Overemphasis on Quantitative Data

Focusing too much on numerical scores can overlook valuable qualitative insights that provide context to the numbers. It can also lead to ommision of some important factors influencing employee well-being.

Best Practices for implementing pulse surveys 

Once you are done with your Pulse Survey strategy, this should be a cakewalk.

Few basic best practices for implementing pulse surveys are:

1. Clear Objectives- Ensure you have a clear goal and accurate target audience before you start crafting or implementing the pulse survey.
2. Relevant and Concise- Pulse survey is supposed to give you a bird’s eye view of employee well-being. Ensure your questions are relevant, holistic and concise.
3. Anonymity- Keep options to disclose answers anonymously so employees have the chance to
4. Cloud Based and mobile friendly- Choose a pulse survey tool that allows you to run pulse surveys remotely and access your data from anywhere and anytime. Ensure your pulse surveys are mobile-friendly to increase employee participation
5. Security Controls- The pulse survey tool should be able to specify role permissions efficiently. For instance- only CHRO and Business Heads have the option to look into descriptive or diagnostic analysis.
6. Intuitive Survey- Your survey needs to have easy to understand UI and seamless navigation, so employees are not dependent on you, and you are not dependent on the IT team for issuing or analyzing surveys.
7. Notification Trigger- Survey communication is one of the most underrated part of pulse survey process. And one of the most difficult to achieve. Your pulse survey tool should be able to help you get more responses through notification trigger to email and employee portal.
8. Easy to Consume Dashboards- Your pulse survey tool needs to equip you with actionable analytics in the form of simple dashboards. These dashboards should further be able to segment data based on job titles, location etc. Plus points if the dashboards have a graph download feature.
9. Interconnectivity with HRMS- Your survey tool should be connected to other modules of your HRMS. Its benefit is twofold:
   A) You have readily available employee data so no migration is required. You have data structured based on department, job title, business head and more.
   B) You can navigate seamlessly through the HRMS for insights/data. For instance:

This will equip you with relevant data which. Leverage strategic decision making. 
Figure out the best course.

Popular pulse survey tools in India: Top 5 listed 

Here are the top 5 pulse survey tools in the market, right now: 

Keka Pulse Survey Tool

Keka Pulse Survey tool is the only holistically designed pulse survey software in the market.

It helps you guage employee engagement comprehensively through features like:

1. Ongoing feedback
2. Rich people analytics and pulse survey reports
3. Audience-segmentation
4. Real-time insights
5. Quantitative and Qualitative insights
6. Anonymous feedback
7. Visually appealing and downloadable charts and graphs
8. Integration with HRMS and entire employee database
9. Pulse survey question template library- in-built with the tool.

Thrive Sparrow

Thrive sparrow’s pulse survey tool allows you to access to

• Engagement trends and reports
• Weekly or monthly check ins
• Integrations with related tools

Vantage Circle

Vantage Circle pulse surveys allow you to:

• Pinpoint areas for growth in EX
• Access Real-Time Feedback and Insights
• Track key metrics throughout the employee lifecycle
• Use a cloud solution to hear the voices of remote employees

Empuls

Empuls offer pulse and eNPS surveys that help you to:

• Capture employee voice and measure engagement
• Measure employee loyalty
• Identify employees  with high performance mindset and those at risk
• Understand the correlation between engagement drivers

Qualtrics

Workforce’s pulse surveys give you workforce insights with:

• role-based dashboards, populated in real-time
• frequent touchpoints and optional sampling techniques
• Library of 300+ pulse survey question templates

Hope these lists give you insights into your best pulse survey software options.

Now, let’s move on to a bonus section.

We’ll dive into pulse survey reports, its granularity and a maturity model guide.

Pulse Survey Reports: Maturity Model for HRs

Like we mentioned before-

Pulse survey reports can help you directly show how your employee engagement strategies are impacting the business.

Just like any other people analytics model, pulse survey analytics have a maturity model.

Understanding the 4 Maturity Levels of Pulse Reports

Descriptive Pulse Survey Reports

Predictive analytics involves using historical data to build models that predict future employee engagement levels.

Organizations may use AI or machine learning algorithms to forecast engagement trends based on various factors, such as leadership changes, economic conditions, or specific HR initiatives.

Prescriptive Pulse Survey Reports

This is when organization operate at highest level of sophistication.

Prescriptive analytics uses AI and ML to not only predict future engagement but also recommend steps to optimize for it.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on pulse survey

What is a pulse survey?

A Pulse survey is a set of cyclic question forms (aka survey) that an organization launches to gauge the state of employee engagement is their company.

How are pulse surveys used? / What can pulse surveys measure?

Pulse surveys are used to measure employee satisfaction on the following factors:

• Employee safety needs like Job security, pay standards, work safety, work-life balance and respect.

• Employee psychological needs like diversity, equity and inclusion, collaboration, unbiased and accurate performance reviews, transparency and views on leadership.

• Employee esteem needs such as learning and development, career growth, recognition and sense of challenge

• Self-actualization needs like control of mission, vision and purpose of organization.

How often should pulse surveys be conducted?

A pulse survey must be conducted on a yearly or bi-yearly basis. However, regular employee surveys may be conducted monthly or quarterly.

How long should a pulse survey be?

Pulse survey is supposed to give you a holistic view into employee sentiments. It is important to keep it concise while limiting it to 10-20 questions maximum to avoid survey fatigue.

What types of questions are included in pulse surveys?

Look at detailed pulse survey question examples in our section above.

How do pulse surveys differ from traditional employee surveys?

Length- Pulse surveys are shorter with only 5-20 questions while traditional surveys are longer

Timing- Pulse surveys are conducted yearly or bi-yearly while traditional surveys may be conducted monthly or quarterly.

Purpose- Pulse surveys are designed to give you a target view of employee engagement while traditional surveys may be lengthy and comprehensive, focusing on lots of objectives at once.

Analysis and Insights- Pulse survey questions remain the same YoY as it is a comparative survey. It helps you analyze growth from one time-period to another. However, traditional surveys are not progressive and may be on-time assessments.

 What are the main benefits of using pulse surveys?

The main benefits of using pulse surveys are as follows:

• Comprehensive insights into employee engagement
• Helps identify gaps in employee engagement policies and culture
• Improves employer branding
• Elevates company culture
• Give real-time qualitative and quantitative insights for accurate measurement

For understanding benefits of pulse surveys in detail, head over this section.

How can I ensure anonymity and confidentiality in pulse surveys?

You can include the option to keep answers anonymous while employees are filling in the pulse survey.