The ultimate guide to collecting employee feedback

The regular collection of employee feedback is key to building a motivated and loyal workforce. It enhances workplace culture, boosts employee satisfaction and strengthens your employer brand.

This guide will help you develop an effective feedback strategy, whether your team consists of 10 or 10,000 members. Explore insights into today’s workforce, examples of employee feedback and resources to get started.

Employee feedback consists of opinions and insights about their job, workplace and overall employee experience. Organisations gather this feedback to:

Many organisations implement structured feedback programmes to address the complex employee experience. Effective feedback management involves setting goals, tracking progress and making timely improvements.

Our April 2024 Workforce Survey revealed that over a third of workers considered quitting recently. “Quiet quitters”, as defined by Gallup, make up about 50% of the U.S. workforce. Here’s what else we’ve learned:

These insights might inspire organisational improvements. However, your employees’ unique experiences are invaluable. Collecting employee feedback allows you to implement tailored changes that significantly enhance retention.

Engaged employees perform better. Empowering them boosts company goals and Gallup’s 2023 report reveals that low engagement levels costs the global economy $8.8 trillion (approx. £7 trillion).

When employees are engaged, the customer experience improves. They invest extra effort into resolving customer issues and are more likely to communicate feedback to colleagues who can help.

Collecting employee feedback is key to attracting and retaining talent. Structured processes for managing feedback improve the entire employee experience.

Employee engagement and satisfaction begin even before your employees join. Regular feedback from job applicants and interview candidates ensures fair treatment for all. By measuring and tracking the candidate experience, you gain insights into your employer brand reputation and identify areas to improve in order to attract top talent.

Gather feedback from new hires to optimise your onboarding and employee training. Enquire about training material effectiveness and onboarding engagement. Ascertain whether they feel supported throughout the process. Utilise interactive online quizzes to reinforce company values, protocols and policies. Quiz scores can provide insights into the success of the onboarding process.

Implement an employee performance management system to foster a culture of feedback and transparency. Encourage managers and employees alike to conduct self-reviews in order to identify growth opportunities. Additionally, track team performance to determine which teams require extra support or new processes.

To effectively gather employee feedback, collaborate with key stakeholders who can assist with collection, analysis and implementation. Start by aligning with leadership and other essential teams. Consider these stakeholders and their roles in your feedback programme.

22% of HR pros say that lack of leadership support is a top challenge in terms of collecting employee feedback. Leadership shapes priorities and workplace culture; without their buy-in, feedback efforts stall. Here’s how to make a strong case for a company-wide programme.

A happy, engaged workforce boosts customer experience and productivity. To secure leadership buy-in, present the ROI of an employee feedback programme:

It’s likely that your organisation has goals in terms of customer or employee retention as well as many other aspects. Find out what these are and then explain how your employee feedback programme can help you achieve these goals. We’ll take you through how to do that in the next chapter.

Share case studies to show how feedback programmes drive real impact. At SurveyMonkey, employee feedback shaped workplace culture and improved manager training, leading to new courses for leaders at all levels. Look for similar examples around you to inspire leadership buy-in.

Start with a pilot programme to test your employee feedback approach before scaling up.

Adjust as needed to refine your process before launching a full programme.

Collecting employee feedback shows that you care and want to improve. Set goals and track KPIs to ensure that your programme is effective. Here are some examples showing how to measure success.

You can collect feedback on any part of the employee experience, including:

For a holistic picture of the employee experience, you can collect employee feedback in different channels and data formats:

Monitor reviews on job sites such as Glassdoor and Indeed and watch social media platforms such X and LinkedIn for employee and candidate feedback. Remain aware of industry-specific sites as well. Don’t get defensive; listen and use feedback to improve.

Employee lifecycle includes every interaction an employee has with your organisation, including the experiences of potential and former employees.

Collect feedback at each stage of the employee lifecycle, from recruiting to offboarding. The insights you gather will help you change your workplace and culture to attract and retain high performers.

Understand candidates’ views to strengthen your employer brand and improve the recruiting process. Send a candidate experience survey to all interviewees, including those who are not hired, to gather feedback on the interview experience.

Onboard new employees quickly, ensuring that they retain key information about policies, the organisation and their role. Here’s how employee feedback can improve onboarding:

Streamline your onboarding process. The more quickly you onboard employees, the sooner they become productive. Use a new hire onboarding survey to understand which aspects of the onboarding process could be improved. Ask questions such as the following:

Improve your training materials. Whether your onboarding and training is in person or remote, you should ascertain whether your presentations and activities are engaging and informative. Send attendees a new hire training quiz to see how well employees retained and understood your onboarding information. Ask questions such as the following:

Set up your new hires for success. Onboarding doesn’t end after the first couple of weeks. Ask for employee feedback at regular intervals. 

Send a 30-day onboarding survey to understand the effectiveness of your initial employee onboarding. Ask questions such as the following:

Next, send a 60-day onboarding survey to check in with your new employee. This will help them feel supported while you’re also checking in on the continued effectiveness of your onboarding. Ask questions such as the following:

Finally, send a 90-day onboarding survey to obtain final employee feedback on their overall onboarding experience. This survey will help you understand how well a new hire has settled into their role and whether they feel empowered, and it will also start a conversation around growth opportunities. Ask questions such as the following:

Are you offering enough growth opportunities? Career advancement is the second most important factor for candidates (44%). Here’s how to use employee feedback to ensure that growth opportunities are available.

Offer a robust learning and development programme. Professional growth and being offered relevant activities and content is important to employees. Use a professional development survey to ask questions such as:

Make sure employees are satisfied with their career growth. Similarly, you need to be sure that your employees feel they can advance in their careers. You can also send them a career development survey, which asks employees to rate their satisfaction:

Prioritise self-evaluation and growth conversations. You can also use surveys to formalise regular conversations around career growth and job performance. For example, this employee review survey is a self-evaluation focused on growth, impact and goals. When you send this survey to employees, they use feedback to drive an essential conversation with their managers. Questions in this survey include the following:

After investing in recruitment and development, ensure that your employees remain engaged and satisfied by checking in on their fulfilment and happiness levels.

Boost employee engagement. How motivated and invested are your employees? Use a work engagement survey to measure employee morale. Send this survey regularly so you can make targeted improvements to the employee experience and track engagement over time. In this survey, employees respond to statements such as the following:

Avoid employee burnout. In recent years, burnout has become a real issue for many employees. Check in with your employees to see how they’re feeling. Then see what you can do to alleviate some of their stress. Send a work-life balance survey that asks the following questions:

Foster an inclusive work culture. The best way to attract diverse and talented people is to build a workplace culture that prioritises belonging and inclusion. But simply having a diverse workforce isn’t enough. One study found that 60% of workers have witnessed or potentially witnessed microaggressions in the workplace. 

Your company must check in with employees regularly to ensure that they feel supported. When you send employees a belonging and inclusion survey, you’re taking the first step towards identifying and addressing inequities at work. Ask questions such as the following:

Offer competitive benefits and remuneration. Remuneration packages play a significant role in retaining talent in a highly competitive job market. In a recent SurveyMonkey study, 54% of HR pros ranked remuneration and benefits as an area where companies must invest in their employees. Use a remuneration and benefits survey for answers to questions such as the following:

The end of an employee’s time with your company can be as important as the beginning. When an employee leaves your company, it’s essential to find out their reason(s) for doing so. Exit surveys help you build a more attractive and fruitful culture so that current and future employees will stay longer and feel more engaged. Use an exit interview survey that asks questions such as the following:

How likely is it that employees would recommend your organisation as a great workplace? The answer has become the industry standard for measuring employee loyalty. Getting your eNPS, or employee Net Promoter Score, is a quick way to understand employee engagement and employees’ investment in your organisation. Here are some tips and best practices for collecting employee feedback using an eNPS survey:

According to our research, almost half (48%) of HR pros say that DEI has had a significant impact on hiring top candidates. This is even higher at companies where HR plays a leading role (55%). To gauge the inclusiveness of your workplace culture, send DEI surveys to your employees. The employee feedback that receive will help you understand what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement.

When employees are engaged with their work, they’re more fulfilled and more motivated. An engaged employee who feels aligned with your organisation’s goals will not only perform better but also make the workplace culture more meaningful and stay longer. Use these surveys to measure different dimensions of employee engagement:

Benefits or perks may have become even more important in recent years. According to a Forbes report, 40% of employers believe that workers leave their jobs to find employment that offers better benefits. And one in 10 workers say they’d rather take a pay cut to access better benefits. How satisfied are employees with the benefits that your company offers? Use these survey templates to find out.

Sometimes, you need to send employees longer surveys, especially if your organisation only holds formal reviews or assessments once or twice a year. However, more and more companies are using pulse surveys to quickly capture employee feedback and track sentiment outside of regular feedback cycles.

When you send a survey, you’re asking employees to take time away from their daily work to provide thoughtful feedback. Here are some best practices to make people more likely to take your surveys and give you accurate responses.

Many of these employee feedback surveys touch on sensitive topics. Employees and job candidates might hesitate to give candid feedback if they fear it will impact their careers or likelihood of being hired.

To make employees feel more comfortable, let them know that their responses will be anonymous and will only be used in aggregate. You can send anonymous employee surveys by enabling anonymous responses in your survey settings.

Employee feedback can go stale, so collect it regularly to stay ahead of changing sentiments.

So, you have your employee feedback. Now it’s time to categorise what you’ve found into overarching themes and get a better idea of where you stand before you decide how to move forward.

To analyse survey data, focus on raw numbers and percentages of close-ended questions. Use charts to visualise trends such as job satisfaction.

Once you’ve analysed feedback, turn insights into action:

Part of your action plan should be reporting back to employees about what you’ve learned and how you’re addressing their feedback. This shows employees that you value what they have to say and appreciate the time they spent giving you thoughtful feedback.

Your action plan should outline the feedback addressed, who is responsible and the next steps. Even if changes aren’t immediate, communicate them clearly.

Set a clear process for respectful performance reviews. Provide managers with a framework for effective feedback sessions. Please read on for some examples.

Employee feedback is ongoing; regular input drives engagement, growth and business success.

Keep all stakeholders informed by closing the feedback loop.

Hold self-assessments for employees to reflect on their impact and growth.

Maintain a consistent review cycle, adjusting based on feedback.

Send pulse surveys after major changes in order to address issues early.

Revisit programme goals and adjust as priorities evolve.

Regularly re-evaluate and refine your feedback programme.

Ready to grow? Start listening to your employees

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Net Promoter Score and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.