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How to Design and Launch an Effective Intranet Survey

By implementing a recurring evaluation survey, you can gather comparable data to track changes over time and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your intranet..

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In one of our articles, we emphasized the significance of an intranet evaluation survey for assessing employee satisfaction with your intranet. 

Now, let’s delve deeper into how to design and launch an effective intranet survey to measure employee satisfaction.

By implementing a recurring evaluation survey, you can gather comparable data to track changes over time and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your intranet. This information can then be used to guide the focus of your intranet team's efforts.

Step 1: Designing Your Intranet Satisfaction Survey

Your intranet's purpose should align with your company's mission, vision, values, and strategy. This can help prioritize the survey questions and provide guidance on what factors to measure.



It's essential to understand who your intranet users are, including their demographics such as location, job level, and department. Consider using questions that are short and easy to answer.



Determine whether or not to allow anonymous feedback. Keep in mind that anonymous feedback may miss out on opportunities for follow-up. Make it clear to employees what will be done with their personal information.



Limit the core survey to 4-6 questions with a consistent rating scale. Ask an additional open-ended question to capture specific comments and feedback.


5. Be consistent in the format


Use a consistent rating scale, such as a 5-point or 4-point rating scale, for the main questions. Come up with five answers for each question that fall along a scale from bad to good.

Here is an example survey that prioritizes intranet usage, design, and hierarchy. Customize the questions to align with the priorities of your intranet.

Demographic data:

Question #1: Approximately how often do you use the intranet?

Question #2: How useful is the intranet for finding the information you need to do your job?

Question #3: How useful is the intranet for collaboration within your teams?

Question #4: How helpful is the intranet in building a sense of work community and connection with colleagues?

Question #5: How satisfied are you with the user-friendliness of the intranet and available help (instructions & in-person)?

Step 2: Conducting the Intranet Survey

Notifying Employees

To ensure high participation rates, it is important to notify all employees about the survey via email. This includes announcing the survey at the start, halfway through the survey period, and the day before the survey closes. To increase the likelihood of participation, consider having the survey go out from the CEO or a VP if they are supportive.

Statistical Relevance

To achieve a high level of confidence in the survey results, it is important to have a sufficient number of responses. However, for companies of 10,000 people, a 95% confidence level with a 5% margin of error can be achieved with approximately 380 survey responses. Consider how much confidence is needed to present the results to your boss, intranet steering committee, and the company as a whole

Dr. Peter Chadha, an intranet specialist from Steegle.Com advises

"An effective intranet is crucial for the success of an organization. It helps improve communication and collaboration among employees, streamlines processes, and centralizes important information. Maintaining an intranet that is both meaningful and useful is an ongoing effort that requires constant attention.

 Regular surveys can play a vital role in ensuring that the intranet is meeting the current needs and expectations of employees. By gathering feedback, companies can identify areas for improvement, better understand what employees need, and make necessary changes to keep the intranet relevant and valuable. 

Furthermore, regular surveys serve as a reminder to employees of the importance of the intranet and the role it plays in their work. An intranet is a powerful tool, and regular surveys help ensure that it remains so."

Survey Fatigue

To avoid survey fatigue, it is important to keep the intranet survey short and sweet. Additionally, be sure to communicate that the survey is about a tool employees use daily and that their input will have a tangible impact.

Duration

The survey should be run for a period of one to two weeks, or longer if necessary. The length of time depends on factors such as your company's culture, the number of employees who travel regularly, and how quickly you can reach all employees.

Step 3: Analyzing the Results

Your survey will reveal two sets of data: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data includes all the questions with rating scales and provides measurable data that can be analyzed, presented in graphs and charts, and used to show changes over time. Qualitative data comes from open-ended questions and includes written comments that need to be reviewed for patterns and trends.

Percentage Changes

When analyzing quantitative data and creating visual representations, focus on the percentage change rather than raw numbers. This is important because an increase in the number of employees who check "Several times a day" for how often they use the intranet may simply reflect an increase in the size of the workforce.

Open-ended Comments

The qualitative data provided by open-ended comments provide a narrative that explains changes in quantitative data. They also highlight specific areas of the intranet's navigation that frustrate users and provide actionable feedback. It is important to spend time reviewing these comments to understand their meaning.

Step 4: Reporting the Findings

Different audiences will require different levels of detail in the report. At a minimum, the report should be shared with intranet stakeholders, executives, core intranet team, and average users. It is important to be honest about the findings, even if they are negative. This will increase trust in the overall results.

Step 5: Developing a Satisfactory Program

It is important to use the insights gained from the survey to make changes. While it may not be possible to address every issue, it is important to report honestly on the findings and identify which issues will be addressed.

We recommend conducting the survey every six months to provide a steady stream of data without overwhelming employees. To increase participation, consider coordinating with HR, IT, and Internal Communications to piggyback the survey onto another existing survey.

It is important to note that the survey results are merely interesting after the first implementation. The second time the survey is applied, you will have some results to compare, but it is only after the third application that clear trends start to emerge. To address pain points highlighted in the survey, consider adding relevant questions to future surveys.

Article by Maria Gabrielle