A pulse survey is an easy-to-implement survey designed to strategically collect employee opinions about important workplace topics in a time-efficient manner. It’s a way to follow up on key discoveries from an annual engagement survey or receive quick feedback on strategic workplace initiatives.

The main benefit of pulse surveys is that they give you the ability to collect data more frequently than annual engagement surveys. But beyond that, pulse surveys have many benefits that can improve employee, team, and business success. Pulse surveys can help you:

• Increase communication and transparency
• Build trust
• Improve culture
• Collect real-time feedback
• Inform and enable smarter decisions

Creating a pulse survey strategy that fits your organization’s needs involves a few steps before you launch. Here are the five steps we recommend taking:

1. Define Your Purpose: Have a clear picture of what you want to accomplish, so that you choose the right topics, questions, audience, and timeline.
2. Set objectives: Pulse surveys are quick and easy – but if you launch one without a clear purpose, you’ll get results that don’t move your organization forward.
3. Choose the right audience: Depending on the topic, you may want to survey your entire company, or specific segments of your workforce.
4. Establish a frequency: The golden rule of conducting a pulse survey is to only gather feedback as often as you are able to act on it.
5. Create a follow-up plan: Creating a plan and taking action after a pulse survey will help your employees and organization succeed – isn't that what collecting feedback is all about?

Pulse survey questions are intended to collect quick and actionable responses. They should be timely and address a specific need. They can be used to follow up on team, department, and company-wide issues to continue making improvements.

Asking a variety of questions is great for understanding what’s working, what isn’t, and how to adjust to make the most of employees’ time. Here are 45 high-impact pulse survey questions you should be asking employees.

We know that pulse surveys are a simple way to start learning more about your employees – but using the right pulse survey software can make sending pulse surveys a part of your bigger employee engagement strategy. Here are 6 elements to consider when choosing pulse survey software:

• Quick survey builds
• Survey customization
• Real-time access to results
• Manager-friendly
• Responsive tech support
• Helpful ideas in-tool

Whether you’re implementing a long-term strategy or launching a lightweight pulse survey – you need a partner you can rely on. For the last 20+ years, our customers have trusted us to deliver reliable expertise, technology, service and results.

We help you uncover meaning.
We're more than a survey tool. Our research-backed pulse survey templates, personalized analysis and insights, unparalleled benchmarks, and smart AI help you understand the meaning behind your employee pulse data.

We make action easy for everyone.
The real power of your employee pulse surveys is not in the surveys themselves, but in the action you take as a result. We make action easy for everyone — so leaders, HR, managers, and employees can all play their part in driving employee engagement.

We’re a partner you can rely on.
You’re on a journey – and we’re with you every step of the way. You can rely on our dedicated team to provide strategic guidance, ongoing coaching, timely tech support, and safe and secure practices your programs need to be successful.