Design Your Listening Program

Once you have defined your overall Employe Experience and Transformation Strategy, you are ready to design the Programs (listening events) that will inform and drive your desired outcomes and impact. Whether you are working with our team of experts or designing on your own, this article walks through the basics to get you started.

This article walks through:

• Define Your Program Goals
• Select Your Program Type
• Select Your Benchmarks
• Design Your Program Content (Item / Question Design)

Define Your Program Goals

Your individual program goals (listening event goals) should correspond to one or more of your company priorities and outcomes to ensure you’re focusing your efforts on driving the results and impact you desire. Start with your company priorities and further define your program goals, outcomes, and KPIs from there. Consider your possible use cases, stakeholder input, and benchmarks.

1. Identify the company priority and outcome you want the program to address.

Note: For more information about defining your business priorities and KPIs, refer to the Define Your Business Priorities & KPIs article. 

2. Define any additional program-specific goals, outcomes, and KPIs.

3. Document these in your Insights and Actions Blueprint.

• Use Cases: How you plan to use the data and what type of listening event is best for collecting the data. 

• Stakeholder Input: Insight into strategic priorities and business challenges, the organizational culture, current initiatives, and potential barriers to success. If you aren’t sure who your stakeholders are, see the article Identify & Align Your Stakeholders for guidance about stakeholder roles.

• Benchmarks: Scoring comparisons within your organization (i.e., year-over-year trend) or with other organizations. Choosing your benchmarks at the beginning of the program design process helps you choose questions that will maximize the effectiveness of benchmark comparisons.

Select Your Program Type

Once you’ve selected your business and talent priorities, you’re ready to select the type of program (listening event) you want to use. When selecting the program type, make sure to consider the priorities, use case, and what type of listening best fits to collect this data.

1. Select the type of program (listening event) you want to use.

• Point in Time
  Collect targeted feedback at a specific point in time (e.g., annual, bi-annual, or quarterly surveys). These programs enable quick insights into specific topics or experiences.
  
  

• Lifecycle
  Capture key employee moments that matter from onboarding to exit. These programs enable you to capture sentiment throughout your employee’s journey.
  
  

• 360 Feedback
  Gather balanced feedback and assessment data to inform leadership development.
  
  

• Crowdsource
  Collect diverse employee insights and enable voting to engage employees in co-creating solutions to improve decision-making and workplace culture.

Select Your Benchmarks

A benchmark is an external reference point for a level-set. It’s intended to provide context for interpreting results. It answers the question, “Is this normal, or an unusually high or low score?” You can also use internal benchmarks to make comparisons between segments within your own data and track trend data.  

Although it might not seem necessary to think about benchmark data when determining survey goals, it is actually an important element to consider as early as possible. Gauging whether the company desires to have a view of how their results compare externally can impact overall survey design.

1. Get familiar with commonly used benchmarks.

2. Select the benchmark comparables that provide the best context.

3. Consider benchmarks that include other organizations in your industry. 

Design Your Program Content (Item / Question Design)

The specific questions your organization needs to ask will vary according to the type of survey (e.g., Annual Engagement, Onboarding, Exit) and your strategy, culture, values, and current circumstances. 

The following steps are described below:

1. Design your program questions.

2. Select your scale.

3. Add open-ended questions.

4. Add demographic questions (if needed).

5. Define the program length and structure.

1. Design Your Program Questions

We recommend using (or beginning with) our Perceptyx Best Practice Core 40. You can use the Core 40 items as a starting point and tailor them as needed based on needs and challenges your company is facing.

• Engagement

  • My work gives me a sense of personal accomplishment.

  • I am proud to work at the company.

  • I intend to stay with this company for at least the next 12 months.

  • I would recommend the company as a great place to work.

• Well-Being

  • I am able to balance my work and personal life.

  • The stress levels at work are manageable.

  • This organization cares about my health and well-being.

  • My workload is reasonable.

• Future Vision

  • Senior management communicates a clear vision for the future.

  • The company is doing what is necessary to compete effectively.

  • I can see a clear link between my work and the company’s objectives.

  • I have confidence in senior management.

• Teamwork

  • Our company’s employees practice open, honest, and direct communication.

  • There is effective cooperation across departments.

  • My team has a climate in which diverse perspectives are valued.

  • People at our company trust and respect each other.

• Empowerment

  • I am encouraged to provide my ideas about improving the company.

  • I believe feedback from this survey will be used to make improvements.

  • Sufficient effort is made to get the opinions and thinking of people who work here.

  • My job makes good use of my skills and abilities.

• Growth and Development

  • There are career opportunities for me at the company.

  • My manager supports my skill and career development.

  • I am satisfied with the training I receive.

  • There is an equal opportunity for people to have a successful career at the company.

• Manager Relationship

  • I am appropriately involved in decisions that affect my work.

  • I am comfortable discussing concerns with my manager.

  • My manager treats employees with respect.

  • My manager cares about me as a person.

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

  • All employees, regardless of their differences, are treated fairly.    

  • At the company, diversity is valued.    

  • I can be my authentic self at work.   

  • I feel like I really belong at our company.

• Resources and Support

  • My team has the resources (personnel/finances) to do a good job.

  • I have the information to do my job well.

  • My work environment enables me to be effective in my role.

  • I have the systems and processes to do my job effectively.

• Performance Management

  • My manager clearly communicates performance expectations.

  • My manager provides useful feedback on my performance.

  • When I do an excellent job, my accomplishments are recognized.

  • People are held accountable for their performance.

If you decide to refine the Core 40 or write your own questions, consider using our ABC Survey Design model: Actionable, Behaviorally Observable, and Clearly Written.

• Actionable
  Make sure this is a goal / question that the organization is willing and able to respond to if the item results are negative.
  
  

• Behaviorally Observable

  • Ensure the questions asks respondents to assess behaviors, rather than intent (which requires speculation and is less objective).

  • Include items that are observable to the survey taker and key to driving the action planning and continuous improvement process.
    
    

• Clearly Written

  • Keep questions/statements as simple as possible.

  • Ensure items address only one variable or issue at a time and use language that is clear to respondents and evaluators.

  • Ensure that item language can be interpreted the same way by different people.

  • Avoid modifiers in statements (e.g., usually, always, or never).

2. Select Your Scale

Select your scale from the following options:

• 5-Point Likert Scale
  Measures the level of agreement to a given statement. It allows responses to be anchored with a clear value associated with it: 1 – Strongly Disagree, 2 – Disagree, 3 – Neither Agree nor Disagree, 4 – Agree, 5 – Strongly Agree.

Note: We recommend using a 5-point agreement scale. Maintaining a consistent scale across your survey creates a simplified experience for participants and allows for easy interpretation of the results. The agreement scale also maximizes comparisons within our benchmark database.

• Other possibilities include dropdown or multi-select options. For example, as a follow-up to an intent to stay response, you might ask “What is the primary reason you would leave the company?” and provide a dropdown list of responses the respondent can choose from. This helps with reporting and also when aligning data across survey types. 

3. Add Open-Ended Questions

While capturing employee perceptions through quantitative data provides valuable insight, it is important to complete the feedback with an opportunity to openly share thoughts. There are a number of ways to incorporate open-ended comments into your survey design, including: 

• As an end to a survey to gain additional feedback 

• As a branched option to gather additional feedback following a scaled item

• As an explainer for a drop-down “other” selection 

Some example questions include:

• What additional feedback and/or suggestions would you like to provide about your experience working at our company?

• What is working well at the company?

• What are your greatest sources of frustration?

• What improvement(s) would you recommend to make the company a better place to work?

Note: Keep in mind that wording can influence your results, and in turn your comment analysis. For example, if you use directionally-worded questions (i.e., what's going well/what needs improvement) questions, you will receive more sentiment in the direction you word your question. So, if you ask a “what needs improvement" question, expect more negative sentiment. 

4. Add Demographic Questions (if needed)

We recommend preloading demographic data to avoid asking demographic questions to keep your content shorter, remove potential bias, and get more accurate information.

If you can’t preload demographic data, we recommend that you:

• Place demographic questions at the end of the survey.

• Collect only needed information.

• Ensure questions are appropriate across all countries and cultures.

• Ensure all response options are mutually exclusive (i.e., items do not overlap).

• Ensure there is a response option for everyone.

5. Define the Program Length and Structure

Your survey length and structure depend upon the type of program you are designing. 

• Point in Time
  We recommend our 40-item best practice survey to extract the most relevant and actionable information while being mindful of attention and respectful of time. Our 20-item best practice survey provides an even more streamlined experience.

• Lifecycle
  We recommend 3 touchpoints (e.g., 30, 90, and 120 days) for Onboarding. Lifecycle surveys tend to be more concise and range from 10-15 questions each.
  
  

• 360 Feedback
  We recommend at least 3 categories of raters: manager, self, and direct reports. Many companies also incorporate peer raters. Often 360 surveys are administered using a cohort approach, which could mean one person taking several different surveys in a short period of time. For this reason, it's important to keep the number of items as streamlined as possible.
  
  

• Crowdsourcing
  We recommend a minimal number of scaled items and one open-ended question for participants to respond to and vote on.