10 ways to improve your employee survey response rate

Your employee survey response rate measures the proportion of your employee population that participated in your employee survey. A high response rate gives you the confidence to act on your results, because they are representative of views across your organisation, while a low response rate suggests employees are uncomfortable or unwilling to share their feedback. This may suggest a wider culture challenge you need to tackle.

Below we share the most common reasons for a low survey response rate and 10 steps to increase participation in your next employee engagement survey.

What’s a good employee survey response rate?

A good employee survey response rate is between 70-80%. Anything above 90% is considered exceptional. This is based on People Insight’s all-sector benchmark, however your survey results dashboard will allow you to benchmark your response rate against your own sector to see how you compare.

On the other hand, a survey response rate below 70% suggests a reluctance or resistance among your employees to share their feedback. To improve participation, it is important to understand why your employees are reluctant to complete the survey and then focus on removing these obstacles. This might mean asking managers to discuss concerns with their teams, revamping in your survey communication plan, or encouraging senior leaders to champion the survey and explain why you want everyone to take part.

What is a good response rate?

Survey participation rates can vary by organisation size and sector, and the number of surveys you have run. However, a good rule of thumb is that anything over 70% is good, over 80% is great, and 90% is exceptional.

High response rates are important because they provide you with a robust set of survey results, with crucial insights about your organisation. They also mean you are likely to have enough data to dig into survey responses at a team or demographic level, which is much more relevant to line managers.

Low response rates on the other hand, make it difficult to act on your survey data, because they represent a smaller number of people.

Below are the most common factors that influence survey participation rates. Next, we’ll look at what you can do to improve them.

10 ways to improve your employee survey response rate

1. Pick the right time to launch it.
2. Communicate effectively throughout.
3. Have a great user experience and make it easy to complete.
4. Use incentives or competitions (if right for your organisation).
5. Keep an eye on response rates in real-time.
6. Create time and space for all staff to complete it in ‘work time.’
7. Have leaders, managers and champions help demonstrate how important participation is.
8. Ensure people believe and trust the confidentiality of their responses.
9. Only survey at the rate you can take action.
10. Commit to acting on the results.

1. Pick the right time to launch your survey

One of the main reasons for low participation is simple – and can be just as simple to solve. Often, employees don’t know that your employee engagement survey is going on. It is low profile, poorly communicated, or communicated at a time when staff are on holiday, sick, on training courses or distracted by other scheduled activities.

Before deciding on your launch date, consider what else is going on in and around your business that might lead to low survey participation. Avoid running your survey during school holidays, scheduled events or activities, or the launch of other internal initiatives or programmes. It’s also worth looking at external events. Launching a survey on the same day as a major sporting event, for instance, will make it harder to capture people’s attention.

2. Communicate effectively throughout the survey process

Creating awareness of your employee survey is critical throughout the process to ensure people know what they need to do and by when.

Start by inventing an eye-catching survey brand. Consider creating a logo that incorporates your survey name and elements of your organisation’s identity. Have fun with this. Some of our favourite survey campaigns use a well-placed pun, like Bostik’s “Stick it to us” or Fuller’s “Your Shout.” A lighter tone can cause a buzz amongst employees and give you room to be more creative.

Additionally, use your survey branding across multiple channels to get your message out there. In physical offices you could use posters, launch events or desk drops to announce your survey. To reach remote employees make the most of email, as well as using your intranet and instant messaging tools.

It’s important to reach staff without access to email too. QR codes on letters, emails or printed postcards are a great way to give people instant access to the survey.

Most people will need a few nudges before they take part. Weekly reminder emails with a punchy subject line are a good way to catch people’s attention. In every email, include the following messages so everyone knows how to participate:

• What do I need to do?
• When does the survey close?
• Will people find out what I said?

3. Have a great survey user experience and make it easy to complete

The last thing you want is for people to engage with the idea of taking part, then leave it unfinished because it feels too long or confusing. Overcome this by making it as easy to complete the survey as possible.

Whilst exploring survey partners, look at how intuitive and clear their survey technology is. Given the innovative software available, there’s no excuse for a clunky employee survey platform.

Your survey partner should also advise you on best-practice questionnaire design. We recommend asking 35 questions for an in-depth employee engagement survey, and 10-20 questions for a pulse survey. An in-depth survey takes about 15 minutes to complete.

The survey questions themselves should be short, unambiguous and neutral ,so people are clear on what is being asked. We explore the art of survey question design further in the following article.

Read more: 8 powerful survey questions that drive action.

4. Use incentives or competitions (if right for your organisation)

When used appropriately, a survey incentive can help increase employee survey response rates and raise awareness of your survey.

Sometimes organisations run a prize draw, where people have the chance to win a voucher or gift by taking part in the survey. The logistics of the competition can raise concerns about survey confidentiality and whether responses can be traced back to employees, so we advise approaching it sensitively.

Another idea is to support a charity of your choice by making a donation for every completed survey. You could ask employees to nominate a charity or, as many of our clients do, plant a tree for every participant through a charity like Eden Reforestation Project.

Recently, the University of Surrey used a tree planting incentive to increase response rates, planting a tree for every survey participant. They incorporated this into their survey comms through the logo and strap-line, to raise awareness of their survey and the positive impact of taking part.

5. Keep an eye on response rates in real-time

Most survey results dashboards will offer a real-time response rate. This allows you to keep an eye on the number of people who have taken part and identify any groups, teams or departments in need of more attention. We recommend a weekly check-in to look at your participation levels, though we know it’s tempting to check it more frequently.

If a group has lower participation rates than expected, you might need to offer their line managers or department leads more support with survey communication and understanding any barriers preventing people from taking part.

Similarly, if you spot a trend for low response rates among field staff or part-time workers you could focus your comms efforts on these groups to address concerns around completing the survey in their own time (more on this below) or the confidentiality of their responses.

6. Create time and space for people to complete it during work

Often people feel they don’t have enough time to respond to an employee survey, as they have other tasks and deadlines that need to be prioritised. This is mostly common amongst those working on production lines who can’t take a break mid-shift, or for non-desk-based employees.

To encourage survey participation from those working on shifts or production lines, encourage line managers to allocate a time slot where employees can complete the survey. Have communal devices like computers, tablets and smartphones available to make this process easy.

In addition, people who are on hourly contracts or do not have access to a computer for their role may not respond well to survey invitations delivered to their home address or personal email. They may also resent being asked to complete the survey in their own time. Instead of asking people to complete surveys at home, invite them to do so during a local meeting with refreshments and a social atmosphere.

7. Have leaders, managers and champions help demonstrate how important participation is

Your survey response rate will also be influenced by the endorsement of senior leaders and line managers. When employee surveys are poorly briefed, without fanfare or visible support from leaders, they are likely to get minimal response. On the other hand, when managers are well-briefed on their role in the survey process, clear on the value of your employee voice strategy, and able to answer questions with confidence, then their teams are more likely to complete the survey.

Similarly, when a senior leader acts as the ‘face’ of your survey and is seen to be enthusiastic about hearing people’s views, employees are given reassurance that their feedback will be listened to and are more inclined to take part.

Survey champions can also help increase survey participation rates. Champions are people from across the business who represent your survey and act as the ‘go to’ person for colleague questions. They can help encourage people to take part, communicate the importance of your survey and answer questions about confidentiality.

8. Ensure people believe and trust the confidentiality of their responses

People can be suspicious that survey responses and comments will be traced back to them, and that they will get into trouble. This can put people off taking part.

To overcome this, reassure people about the confidentiality of your survey and keep repeating this message throughout your survey communications. Working with an external survey provider or employee survey consultant helps with this too, since they will commit to protecting the identity of respondents. They will also maintain minimum reporting thresholds so individuals within smaller teams or groups cannot be identified. This means that even if survey data is filtered by multiple demographics such as age, department and gender, it won’t be possible for a manager or team leader to work out who said what.

People Insight’s video can help you communicate this message to employees and show them where their survey data goes. Take a look here.

9. Only survey at the same rate you can act

Low participation rates can be down to employees being asked to complete too many surveys, in too short a timeframe. While there’s no hard and fast rule for how often you should survey, People Insight recommend that you only ask for feedback as quickly as you can act on it.

We often talk about ‘survey fatigue’ but the truth is that employees don’t get tired of taking surveys, only of nothing changing as a result of their feedback.

A pulse survey is a popular way to check in on how employees are feeling, or to dig into a specific issue. However, running too many of these can make it impossible to act on the feedback and this in turn puts employees off from taking part in future surveys.

It is vital that you survey only at the speed that you can analyse the results, create an action plan and communicate this to employees.

10. Commit to acting on the results

Sometimes staff can become apathetic about the survey process if they haven’t seen change happen in the past. This can make a big difference to survey participation rates, as people won’t take the time to complete the survey if it looks like nothing will be done with their feedback.

The employee survey question ‘I believe action will be taken as a result of this survey’ is a good indicator of how confident people are that your organisation will act on their feedback. Look back at your previous survey results. Low scores for this question mean you should work even harder to make change happen and improve belief in action.

If post-survey action has been slow before, approach it differently this time. Refresh your survey branding, choose a new senior leader to be your survey’s voice and face, and ask line managers to endorse the survey amongst their teams. Book in action planning workshops early to ensure you have everyone you need in one room, and set deadlines for when you’ll share post-survey actions with the wider company.

While improving your employee survey response rate might not happen overnight, clear communication, endorsement from leaders and a commitment to act will encourage employees to complete the survey and share their views.