Employee wellbeing surveys can be useful before making decisions around budgets and benefits, but these must be designed and used in the right way if they are to drive the most impact, writes Sam Lathey.
In a perfect world, surveys would be a perfect solution. Ask people what they want and get the answers you need, at limited cost, at any time. The reality is that surveys are a useful source of data on where to direct your attention and budget, but they must have guard rails in place to be effective.
Employee wellbeing surveys
Three reasons why your employee wellbeing strategy is not working
The first guard rail is around survey design; good design will ensure the data collected is meaningful. The second is around corroboration; survey conclusions cannot be actioned in isolation, and they require corroboration and context from other data sources.
There are four things that can undermine the conclusions of an employee wellbeing survey:
Stigma. According to our 2023 Dynamics in Financial Wellbeing report, 58% of employees say they would not tell their employer about their money worries. So if your survey asks what is worrying staff most at the moment, with the aim of understanding where to direct your next investment, you may find you are investing your budget in the wrong area. When benefits implementations fail from poor uptake, people often blame the tool, or the communications around the tool, but it may be that the benefits chosen are the wrong ones.
Poor question design. Many surveys focus on asking what people want, rather than what their problems are. Employees don’t typically have a good understanding of the benefits market and what the most appropriate solution is. Human beings tend to default to things they know about and can recall easily, which means well-known and popular benefits will likely be overrepresented with this type of questioning.
Solution-first questioning. Some surveys ask people whether they would make use of a particular benefit or service as a way of sense-checking whether an investment would bear fruit. Most people would rather have access to a service than not, so these types of questions will tend to overrepresent the likelihood of people engaging. Relative choices should be used for this type of question becaus people are forced to make a judgment on what is more important to them.
Employees don’t typically have a good understanding of the benefits market and what the most appropriate solution is.”
Daily fluctuations/not knowing. People are very affected by recency bias, valuing things that have happened more recently to those in the past.This can affect people because of individual events in their lives, or wider macro trends in the news may influence people to answer a certain way. Smoothing out recency bias is one of the reasons organisations have switched to pulse surveys, to ensure they collect a broader selection of responses over time. This approach also recognises that sentiment can change regularly because everyone’s circumstances change regularly.
By implementing the following five areas, you can improve the effectiveness of your employee wellbeing surveys:
-  Good question design. It is important to ask questions that tease out problems. You should also ask similar questions to ensure you’re corroborating any conclusions. Try to avoid leading people in any way, and relative questions are important because they force people to prioritise. This is important when it comes to benefits because many benefits are attractive but you don’t have an unlimited budget, so you need to find the ones with the most potential impact.
- Build psychological safety. Stigma stops employees from admitting areas of concern. You need to build as much safety before and during your surveys as possible, for example by sharing vulnerable stories from senior leaders.
- Measure wellbeing regularly. People’s sentiment changes rapidly because our lives change rapidly. Someone may not be thinking about money, but then their landlord gives them notice to leave and suddenly it is on their mind. Wellbeing is something that needs regular measurement across the year to enable you to pull out trends across your workforce. This can also give you seasonal insight, for example stress about money around Christmas.
- Look at the wider picture. If the Office for National Statistics publishes data saying that more people are struggling financially, it is extremely likely that your workforce will be feeling the same pressure.
- Use other internal data sources. Have you had more requests for salary advances over the last year? Increased sickness absence claims? Alongside your survey, this data can create a more informed environment for decision-making.
Surveys are an incredibly useful tool to drive worthwhile investment in wellbeing initiatives for employees. But, like any data source, it is important to understand their limitations and how you can best use the information they uncover to be confident enough to make the right investment decisions for the benefit of your employees.
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