17 ways to boost your employee engagement survey participation rate

The advantages of running employee surveys may seem obvious to you and your leadership, but what are the benefits for employees? Make sure they understand why taking part in the surveys will help them be happier and more motivated at work.

How will the results be used? Why do you want to create a continuous communication channel with your employees? What changes can your employees hope for? What can they expect for their careers, work methods, their relationships with peers and managers, and well-being at work?

Clearly communicate your expectations regarding everyone's participation in your surveys. Of course, you shouldn't make it mandatory. But if the shared benefits are real, everyone should understand that it's in their interest to share their opinion.

Anonymity gives employees the confidence and freedom to give honest answers… The positive ones as well as the negative ones. And above all, constructive feedback!

In fact, when participants aren't identified, you get the most reliable data on how your people think and feel about your organization's culture. So consider making your survey confidential.

With Amélio surveys, no personal information is requested from the employee, which greatly reinforces the sense of anonymity. Each employee receives a personalized link, which offers an outstanding survey experience and guarantees the quality of the data collected.

Generally speaking, we all seek the approval of our peers. The more employees take action, the more others follow suit. Call on your “employer brand ambassadors” to make the importance of the survey resonate throughout the organization.

Identify employees with natural leadership skills. Ask them to take part in the initiative and to show their peers all its benefits.

Tap into their creativity to encourage their colleagues to participate. For example, you could ask them: “We want to reach an 85% response rate in our team. Can you help us get there?”

This communication channel is an important asset for your organization to encourage a high participation rate in your engagement surveys.

This method has many advantages:

• Enables a simplified survey delivery and experience for employees who don't have access to a computer.
• Frontline employees can respond quickly to the survey without fear of forgetting.
• Employees can answer the survey at any time, even from the comfort of home.

Amélio offers 4 possible methods for sending the survey to help you reach all your employee groups: personalized links sent by email, the universal link (QR code), user codes and SMS.

For example, suggest that the whole organization fill out the survey on a given day of the week at a given time.

If your employees are used to having lunch together, build into your culture the routine of completing the survey before going to lunch on Friday. Do a quick round around 11:45 to remind your team members to complete the survey. Then everyone heads to the cafeteria together.

Make the survey a small “recurring event” before lunch.

An excellent way to encourage employees to respond is to include one of your survey questions in the email invitation. This will spark curiosity and prompt employees to answer it.

Here's another tip put forward by Amélio surveys. Indeed, if the survey administrator doesn't set a personalized invitation message, one of the questions the employee will have to answer is displayed in the invitation email.

As we all know, competition is a powerful intrinsic motivation for reaching goals. You could therefore create a small contest within a team. Why not offer a pizza lunch to the group with the highest quarterly participation rate?

Careful! Don't confuse participation rate with engagement rate. No contest should be based on the highest engagement score, as this risks biasing employees' answers and the very purpose of the initiative.

Create an achievable goal to motivate all your teams to answer the surveys. If your organization reaches the goal, offer ice cream or sushi at the next employee gathering.

It could also be setting up a recognition day, or holding a draw among all the employees who answered the survey.

You could offer them gift cards, massage or spa days. Or a lunch paid for an employee with two colleagues of their choice, a pair of tickets to a special event, or even a lunch with the CEO!

According to a study from the University of California, Riverside, surveys that ask too many identical questions exhaust respondents and produce unreliable data. The research found that people get tired of answering questions that vary only slightly.

As a result, respondents tend to give similar answers as the survey progresses. Inaccurate results can lead to a completely wrong or counterproductive decision.

Fortunately, that doesn't have to be the case.

Amélio surveys let you decide how many questions to ask (for example, 20/month). For each employee, the algorithm selects questions from a bank of more than 120 questions to avoid asking the same question again. The algorithm also ensures the sample of questions is representative of all the 12 engagement factors and 38 sub-factors used by the Amélio model.