Understanding Employee Survey Response Rates

In every company, the importance of pulse surveys, anonymous feedback, and feedback Fridays is significant. The employee response rate determines your company’s concerns for many reasons. Learn about some of the best ways to avoid that and get a closer look at what is supposed to be a reasonable employee survey response rate.

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Your data should give you confidence that the feedback you've gathered represents your in-office or distributed workforce when you have a reasonable response rate. Companies use the term "authentic response rate," which refers to the real insight you will get from your data that reflects how people feel. That is much greater than focusing solely on the response rate.

Importance of Employee Responses on a Survey 

Low response rates are often caused by how you approach employee feedback. Higher response rates and meaningful data are possible when you create an environment where people feel comfortable providing open and honest feedback. Many strategies boost your response rate, but open communication is the best place to begin.

Share with your team how you plan to drive positive change after the survey as a result of the survey. Promoting employee participation in surveys and your strategy for success is the best way to increase response rates. 

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Boosting Employee Response Rate 

Positive survey responses indicate survey success. You calculate your survey response rate by dividing the number of survey participants by the number of employees you surveyed. The higher the response rate, the more people responded to your survey. If your response rate is low, it may be caused by a variety of factors, including:

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Communication

Technology / Apps used

Confidentiality

Survey fatigue

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To increase survey responses, you need communication, technology, and trust. 

As we mentioned, boosting your employee response rate does not happen overnight. All because there are some steps you must take to achieve that kind of good company culture. There are some elements you have to consider improving within your team to achieve a culture open to feedback. 

Work Transparency 

This is about ensuring everyone is aware of everything happening around the company via email or Slack. For example, let’s say there is a policy change, and when everyone is onboard, you set your team for success only because you show them that everyone within the company is essential, no matter the role. You can share an anonymous survey via Slack and gather their thoughts and opinions on that policy. 

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Implement Anonymous Feedback 

Creating a feedback culture can be challenging, but it has become more accessible thanks to tools like Wrenly. A tool like this offers a lot of benefits for your team. Anonymous feedback is the best method to provide to your team, especially for the groups that weren’t used to giving feedback. Anonymity will help them share their thoughts more freely. 

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Employees avoid sharing their thoughts because of someone else's retaliation within the office. Employees avoid sharing their ideas because of someone else's retaliation within the office. Because of this, they prefer to keep their opinions to themselves to prevent someone's hard feelings. Using Wrenly will help you avoid misunderstandings, which will put your team psychologically in a better place. 

Feedback Fridays 

After we get the idea and benefits of anonymous feedback, you slowly get your team to be a part of regular feedback. As time passes, you will see a significant improvement in your team’s morale and willingness to fill out the surveys. Wrenly has an excellent feature for regular feedback that will help you in the long run. 

Taking action in a short period 

When people understand why they support an initiative or request, they are more likely to keep it. Ensure employees know what they can expect. Describe how employee feedback has led to positive changes and value their feedback. Tie it to your mission and culture. Make sure employees know a high response rate is best for them. 

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It means that more voices will be heard, data will be more accurate, and the meaning of the results will improve. Ultimately, you want your activities to be specific to employee requirements and issues. Employee survey responses are an opportunity for leaders or managers to understand what is happening around the office. Taking action shortly after they receive the survey responses. This will have a positive impact on the team's morale and will boost their confidence and productivity.  

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For businesses to succeed and to improve employee engagement, employee feedback is essential. So to get everyone on the same page, improve communication at every stage and every level. And make sure to take real action in the end.

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Your employees will believe their opinions are valued when you follow through. On the other hand, if you don't, staff members will start to see the survey as pointless and might not participate in future surveys.

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Check out our blog to learn more about feedback topics. 

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