We’ve spent some SERIOUS time brainstorming how we do what we do, while drawing on our 25+ years’ of experience (each) – and the result is a comprehensive list of our major “Do’s and Don’ts” when running an employee survey.

So here in all its glory is the first post of the online blog where we’ll be adding a new Pro Tip weekly (or so). … and if you have any ideas or questions on areas we can address let us know, but here’s what we have on the list to address so far:

• Your survey objectives – determining these FIRST
• Survey design by committee and how to avoid it
• Should I make some or all questions “required”?
• Developing a robust communication strategy
• Accessing the survey online? Personalized links, open links, paper …?
• How to test the links and prevent “spamming” of your email invitations
• Preventing “Paralysis by Analysis”
• The effect of Company Culture on your survey questions
• Survey layout – What pages do I need? … and one big survey page vs multiple little ones.
• How many questions  should I have and in what order?

After that well go into:

• Question design: Avoiding double-barrel questions, what scale should I use, how to word your questions …
• Running the Survey: how long should I run the survey, keeping track of response rates, when is enough enough …
• Reporting out: graphs vs tables, when is a group too small, working with comments, protecting, encrypting and distributing your results …
• Using Stats in Your Reporting: how to lie with statistics, confounding variables and “The Ice Cream Story”, random sampling, sample size, when to use measurements of “error” …

… and that’s the list we have so far, but again if you have questions you’d like us to address directly give us a shout. We’d love to chat!

Maureen & Adam