Survey Monkey is a great general purpose tool for running surveys and many companies use it to run employee surveys. We've also written a great article on Employee Engagement Surveys best practices that will assist you in designing your survey.
Step 1. Create a free account on Survey Monkey
Just jump to the Survey Monkey Signup Page and create a free basic account.
Step 2. Choose a template or start from scratch
At the top right, click on CREATE SURVEY. You have 3 options:
- Build it for me: This will guide you through the setup process.
- Start from template: This lets you select from a template library. There is actually a decent Employee Engagement template in there so feel free to just use that.
- Start from Scratch: This lets you build up your template from a blank survey. This is great if you know what you're doing and what total control.
Here are the Top 10 recommended questions you can use when starting from scratch:
- I would be happy to promote the company as an employer to my friends and family.
- I like working for my immediate supervisor.
- I understand the company’s plans for future success.
- My job allows me to utilise my strengths every day.
- I am coping with my workload emotionally and physically.
- If I contribute to the company's success I know I will be recognised.
- I see professional growth and career development opportunities for myself in this company.
- My immediate supervisor cares about my development.
- I have the materials and equipment needed to do my work right.
- I foresee myself working here a year from now.
Step 3. Collect Responses
On the basic plan, you can only share a link to the survey. The ideal way to do this would be to send an email to your staff with that link. To do so, on the COLLECT RESPONSES step of the create survey process, click the send surveys your way button and then share a survey link. You will now be given a unique link to this particular survey and a few settings that can be changed for the survey.
Once the link is out, you will already be able to start seeing the results change as employees respond to your survey.
Step 4. Analyse the Data
Survey Monkey provides some neat and simple charts to help you understand the responses. This response data can be shared via a link to the response page which can be sent to other managers or executives. The basic plan does not allow for exporting though so you'd have to upgrade for that.
When putting your slides together, throw in some Engagement Quotes to spice them up.
Shortcomings and Survey Monkey alternatives
The basic plan is quite limited so you'd likely have to upgrade the run an employee survey. The main limitations are the limit of 40 responses per survey and 10 questions for custom templates. The standard monthly plan should be sufficient for a decent company-wide survey.
If you're looking for other free alternatives then check out Google Forms. We wrote an article on How to run an Engagement Survey using Google Forms.
You can also look at the Roslin Engagement Free Plan which will allow unlimited surveys, up to 500 employees and provides access to a question bank. You can sign up for Roslin here.
