Improve Employee Surveys, Consider Demographic Questions
If you haven't considered the importance of adding demographic questions to your employee survey template, then you're probably using misleading data for your HR solutions. These are even essential if you're conducting the survey on large employee populations, since you can't really break down the responses into useful fragments if you only have bulk responses at your disposal. You do have access to your employees' personal information through your HR database, but these won't be of any use unless you can directly connect these to the individual responses. You have every reason to typify the subgroups in your workforce, especially if your total is population is large enough to accommodate broad-range and anonymous surveys. Response patterns can be described more accurately if you can correlate these to smaller demographics.
Some demographics are easier to determine than others. An employee's age or annual income can be easily extracted from the profile or payroll database. The marital status is somewhat difficult to describe, since this usually changes during the course of an employee's tenure. Single, married, and divorce statuses are inconsistent and must be regularly updated on your employee survey template. Including demographics that significantly relate to your survey will ensure that its interpretation will be accurate. You'll avoid any discretionary issues by omitting the respondents' name fields or moving the demographic questions to the last page of the survey.
Without demographic questions, you can easily conclude that a 10% negative response to inquiries on the quality of corporate health care plans is applicable to your entire employee population. However, if you narrow down the responses through the demographic subgroups, you'll find that one of these groups will offer a definitive response. If majority of the negative perceptions come from younger or married employees, then you're a step further into coming up with a realistic, practical solution.
Some of the safer demographic questions you may include in your employee survey template include age, gender, marital status, corporate department, income bracket, and tenure. You don't need to include all of these demographics in your questionnaire, especially if these will add another page to an already thorough survey. You'll just have to pick the handful that will divide the population into smaller groups which identify the prevailing perceptions or needs of your population. If your employee population is too small that subgroups won't affect the interpretation of the results (a sample with 50 respondents is definitely small), then you should omit these questions altogether.
It's important that you emphasize the confidentiality of the survey, especially if you're asking for very sensitive information. Your employees may not provide honest answers on your employee survey template if they feel that the responses will surely be attributed to them. Corporations don't really function well with anonymity, but they do thrive in confidentiality.
Some demographics are easier to determine than others. An employee's age or annual income can be easily extracted from the profile or payroll database. The marital status is somewhat difficult to describe, since this usually changes during the course of an employee's tenure. Single, married, and divorce statuses are inconsistent and must be regularly updated on your employee survey template. Including demographics that significantly relate to your survey will ensure that its interpretation will be accurate. You'll avoid any discretionary issues by omitting the respondents' name fields or moving the demographic questions to the last page of the survey.
Without demographic questions, you can easily conclude that a 10% negative response to inquiries on the quality of corporate health care plans is applicable to your entire employee population. However, if you narrow down the responses through the demographic subgroups, you'll find that one of these groups will offer a definitive response. If majority of the negative perceptions come from younger or married employees, then you're a step further into coming up with a realistic, practical solution.
Some of the safer demographic questions you may include in your employee survey template include age, gender, marital status, corporate department, income bracket, and tenure. You don't need to include all of these demographics in your questionnaire, especially if these will add another page to an already thorough survey. You'll just have to pick the handful that will divide the population into smaller groups which identify the prevailing perceptions or needs of your population. If your employee population is too small that subgroups won't affect the interpretation of the results (a sample with 50 respondents is definitely small), then you should omit these questions altogether.
It's important that you emphasize the confidentiality of the survey, especially if you're asking for very sensitive information. Your employees may not provide honest answers on your employee survey template if they feel that the responses will surely be attributed to them. Corporations don't really function well with anonymity, but they do thrive in confidentiality.
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If you feel that your employee survey template could still be improved, then you'll have to find a good program that'll offer you the best options, tips, and more. Look for free or paid survey programs; the latter always offers more value.
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