Employee Pulse Surveys — Building a Healthy Workplace for the Future

The pandemic we’re in, has changed the course of life. Some of us are still getting used to it, while some others have embraced this transition. If there’s one common thing that has come out of this, it’s the lessons we learnt in empathy and open-mindedness — especially towards the current home-office scenario. For empathy to seep in, understanding employee state of mind is imperative and doing that sans face to face interactions can be a challenge.

Today, employees are thinking about their future more than ever — workplace, job roles, growth and the overall logistics of it. So how does an organisation recognise what’s in their employees’ minds — particularly during what has been called the ‘crisis of a generation’?

With a frequent employee pulse check.

What is Employee Pulse?

In simple terms, employee pulse aims to understand what employees are feeling at the moment and this process relies on getting quick insights with the help of undemanding surveys. Just like regular health check-ups are necessary to avoid possible hurdles later in life, checking up on employees is a good practice to keep an organisation happy and thriving. They are short and simple, yet highly effective and insightful. Moreover, they also ensure a higher response rate from the employees. These surveys come with a lot of benefits — increased employee engagement, encouraging a ‘listening’ culture and hence, promoting open communication. By giving a real-time understanding of what employees are thinking, these employee pulse surveys enable organisations to act on anything that requires their attention not just quickly, but also with efficiency. With a tool this effective at hand, using it to determine what employees pulse on topics related to the post-COVID scenario, can help organisations interpret overall workplace health. After all, there are many factors that will shape employee sentiments in the near future.

Utilising Pulse Surveys to Analyse Employee Perspectives

Many questions come to mind when you think about the office of the future. Given how Covid-19 has caused innumerable work disruptions, surely, employees must think about it too? More than half a year has passed since people accepted remote working as the norm — it’s obvious that going back to the physical workplace like before comes with many concerns.

According to a 2020 research report, 18.8% of the employees said they feel unsafe about returning to the office while more than 20% employees think that their stress levels are higher than normal. This only shows that there’s a lot that organisations have to study in order to maintain good workplace health before sending out a ‘back to work’ circular. The solution lies in keeping a finger on the employee pulse. And frequently, too.

Sending out survey forms regularly proves to employees that the organisation they work for cares about them by giving a platform where they can openly speak their mind. Not only does this help with employee retention but also in building overall goodwill. More importantly, frequent employee pulse surveys create scope for continuous improvement at the workplace because of the fact that it is in real-time. With employee responses being relevant to the current time whenever the pulse survey is rolled-out, organisations can spot warning signs more frequently, and also take remedial action if necessary.

Ask Your Employees

When employees from Singapore [who are parents] were asked if they faced any challenges while working from home, 68% of them said they worked longer than they have in office while only 12% of them said they have no issues with working from home. With the availability of such statistics, organisations are empowered to figure out ways to strike a work-life balance even in the future.

So, ask your employees if they are satisfied with the way things are going. Ask them if they are keen on coming back to office. Would they rather continue working remotely, or from the office space but with more flexibility than before? Do they want to be compensated for commuting? In all of this, there will be differing opinions and they should all be considered in order to foster inclusivity.

Taking a Leaf Out of the Pandemic Life

The pandemic taught us that caring about employees’ mental well-being is not just something reserved for the lockdown. Overall organisational health and happiness depends on a new spectrum of issues, the learnings of which, will help in the long-term. Though being empathetic towards mental issues, family emergencies, or in times of infrastructural glitches at home was not something unheard of, it was the pandemic that compelled workplaces to practice it. Now, there’s this and much more to carry into the post-COVID world. Until then, being prepared to face the emerging reality is primary; and frequent and close tracking of organisational health is the only way to build adaptability and resilience towards the workplace of the future.

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