From managing inventory and ordering supplies to creating a welcoming atmosphere for customers, running a successful retail business can be a lot to handle. However, one crucial aspect that business owners often overlook is collecting employee feedback.
Conducting employee pulse surveys is one of the most effective ways to prioritize employee satisfaction and understand what employees need to feel fulfilled in their job. 64% of employees consider their job to be a crucial part of their overall happiness and 43% would be willing to leave their job for another that offered better benefits.
In this blog, we will explore why employee pulse surveys are essential for improving employee satisfaction and business success, and steps on how to conduct them.
What are employee pulse surveys?
Employee pulse surveys are a tool used to measure employee satisfaction levels. These surveys are an effective way to understand how employees feel about their job, work environment, and overall happiness.
For example, one common issue that frontline employees face is a lack of career growth. By conducting an employee pulse survey, you can identify this issue and come up with initiatives to improve this area, such as through additional training programs or offering an internal mentorship program.
Why are they important? As a brick-and-mortar business owner, it's essential to prioritize employee satisfaction—a happy employee is more likely to provide excellent customer service, leading to increased customer satisfaction and higher sales.
Additionally, employees who are satisfied with their job are more likely to stay with the company long-term, decreasing turnover rates and fostering a healthy work culture.
What makes an effective employee pulse survey?
Ideally, your employee pulse survey (or the templates you find) should be:
Concise and short: Keep the survey concise and manageable, ideally no more than 15-20 questions. Long surveys may discourage participation and lead to incomplete or rushed responses.
Clear and easy-to-read: use straightforward and easily understandable language in your survey questions. Avoid jargon or complicated terminology that could confuse respondents.
Anonymous and confidential: assure employees that their responses will remain anonymous and confidential. This encourages honest feedback and allows employees to express their opinions freely without fear of reprisal.
Conducted on a regular, frequent basis: conduct pulse surveys regularly to track progress over time and identify trends. Quarterly or bi-annual surveys allow for ongoing monitoring and comparison of results, enabling you to measure the effectiveness of any implemented changes.
Balanced in response options: provide a range of response options, such as Likert scales (e.g., 1-5 rating scales), multiple-choice, and open-ended questions. This allows for both quantitative and qualitative feedback, enabling you to gather a comprehensive understanding of employee sentiment.
Action-oriented: craft questions that elicit actionable feedback. Instead of merely assessing satisfaction levels, ask employees for specific suggestions or recommendations for improvement. This helps to identify actionable steps to address concerns and enhance employee engagement.
How to conduct employee pulse surveys
One easy way to conduct employee pulse surveys effectively is through digital forms. Consider getting a employee pulse survey tool that helps you easily create a survey form, customize questions, and consolidate all answers onto one sheet for analysis.
Once you send out the form, it is good practice to also shoot an automated notification to all employees to complete the survey. Your in-store team should be able to simply pull up their phones and complete the survey within minutes. Store managers should be able to get a notification once their teams have successfully filled out the survey. If any employee forgets to fill it out, they can also automatically receive a reminder notification. This way, you can rest assured that all employees fill out the form for most comprehensive results.
Analyzing employee pulse survey results
After conducting employee pulse surveys, it's essential to analyze the results carefully. Business owners should review the data collected from the surveys and identify areas of the business that need improvement. By taking action on the results of employee pulse surveys, business owners can improve their employees' overall satisfaction and create a more positive work environment.
To do it, we recommend getting a employee pulse survey tool that can help you automatically calculate quantitative number answers to see which areas rate higher or lower. Also, it will be more helpful if the tool can also help visualize results through pie charts and graphs, so you can quickly understand the feedback distribution across various categories, assess strengths, and capture areas for improvement.
Finally, be sure to share the results with your employees and how your business will be taking actionable next steps to improve!
Conclusion
In conclusion, by prioritizing employee satisfaction and running regular employee pulse surveys, owners of brick-and-mortar businesses can improve employee retention and save labor replacement costs greatly. The customers will also benefit from happier frontline teams when your employees feel a sense of belonging.
Wondered how to run the surveys with automation and compose meaningful employee pulse survey questions? Enter your email to receive our free templates for survey questions and distribution today 👇
