Pulse Surveys vs. Annual Surveys: Which Is a Better Measure of Employee Engagement?

According to Gartner, formal, once-a-year surveys are on their way out. Instead, pulse surveys offer a real-time and accurate view of employee engagement and needs. In this article, we look into:

• A comparison between pulse surveys and annual survey models with a quick look at the pros and cons of each
• Recent trends and insights into employee engagement surveys
• The role of technology in making pulse surveys the new normal
   

Employee engagementOpens a new window is a top concern for HR professionals across the globe. This can be attributed to the fact that engagement is largely intangible and difficult to measure. Organizations often resort to detailed annual employee engagement surveys Opens a new window which ask each worker over 50 questions, requiring over a month to review their feedback and initiate organizational action. Clearly, this approach cannot keep up with changing employee expectations, necessitating alternative survey approaches.

Is it Time to Embrace Frequent Pulse Surveys?

Pulse surveys cut down the interval between feedback collection and implementation from one year to a few weeks or even days. This means that information collected on employee engagementOpens a new window is real-time and absolutely relevant.

However, a 2018 report by Gartner found that a majority of organizations – a staggering 74 percent – still uses formal, large-scale surveys to measure employee engagementOpens a new window . It should be noted that this metric is at a steady decline, down from 89 percent in 2015. Going forward, organizations will increasingly choose smarter alternatives to traditional employee engagement surveys in order to get a more accurate picture of workforce sentiment. By 2020, nearly 80 percent of employers will leave behind the annual survey model.

Pulse surveys will become an attractive alternative, given its numerous advantages in terms of accuracy, comprehensiveness, and time-efficiency.

Learn more: Do Employee Engagement Surveys Truly Work?Opens a new window

The Difference Between Pulse Surveys and Annual Surveys

Pulse surveys aren’t just about frequency; they indicate an organization’s willingness to invest in and respond to its employees’ requirements. HR teams must be careful to ensure that employees are not served high-volume, high-frequency questionnaires without any real-world impact.

“Frequency is a delicate balance. You want to know how to help your employees, but you don’t want to exhaust and overburden them in the process. The key to avoiding this is simple: understand your ability to act on survey results,” says Carley Childress, Founder & CEO of feedback solutions provider MacorvaOpens a new window , Inc.

 “Understand how often you can implement changes, survey at that frequency, and your employees will not tire of the experience,” she recommends.

Learn more: The Secret Behind Engaged EmployeesOpens a new window

Pulse Surveys	Annual Employee Engagement Surveys
Gives you a real-time view of engagement conditions	Gives you dated data that may no longer be relevant
Comprises less than 10 questions, making answering the survey more convenient for employees	Can contain over 50 questions, requiring weeks to aggregate data and over one month to review it
Does not offer historical overviews of engagement data	Useful for generating historical insights and reports
Are bias-free due to immediacy and greater contextualization	Can lead to bias by associating responses with appraisals
Information captured is limited to specific scenarios	Datasets are vast, providing a lot of insights from a single survey cycle
Supports peer-to-peer commentary	Is mostly limited to hierarchical feedback
Offers insights which can be acted upon in the here and now	Offers insights that may take a long time to action and may not produce the desired results

Table 1: The pros and cons of pulse surveys versus annual employee engagement surveys

As you can see, annual employee engagement surveys have their pros, which is why so many organizations (as reported by Gartner) are still holding on to this model. However, you simply cannot deny the many benefits of pulse surveys – and coupled with the ability to rapidly respond to employee sentiment, these can prove impactful for long-term engagement. The answer may thus be a combined model of pulse and annual surveys, giving insights into event-specific issues as well as overarching issues that require an annual appraisal.

Regardless of the survey method you use, Carley reiterates, “Surveying at a higher frequency isn’t going to magically help employees feel more engaged. There has to be meaningful action. With pulse surveys, you can effectively measure engagement every six months, every quarter, every week, or even every day, as long as you have a framework in place for taking in those results and enacting meaningful change when necessary.”

Learn more: Top 3 Employee Engagement Trends for 2019Opens a new window

How Tech is Helping Pulse Surveys Become the New Normal

Among organizations opting out of annual surveys, over half are choosing pulse surveys as their preferred mode of engagement monitoring. This is, in many ways, due to recent advancements in technology, which offers detailed insights and actionable output without compromising on privacy, or transparency. Macorva, for example, stores all the survey information, returning results only after there is enough feedback to ensure anonymity. In addition, pulse surveys can be delivered and answered in the flow of work, via chatbots or simply through emails. As a result, they don’t hamper productivity.

Going forward, pulse surveys will be complemented by other real-time engagement measurement tools such as social media analytics and sentiment analyticsOpens a new window . These tools will offer an even deeper and more accurate picture of engagement conditions, helping HR professionals pinpoint the root cause of disengagement and the best way forward.

“All it requires,” concludes Carley, “is a framework for acting on pulse survey results.”

How is your organization using pulse surveys to gauge employee engagement? Tell us about your experience on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window . We are always listening!