How Can You Distribute a Questionnaire?
Distributing questionnaires is all about timeliness, simplicity, and ease of access. For a workplace survey, these things matter even more. It’s often hard to get responses from a variety of employees, particularly if your company has a lot of blue-collar workers without offices or company emails. But keeping a pulse on non-desk employees is just as important, if not more important than in office settings where workers are far more accessible in person.
But how do you even do such a thing? That’s what we hope to help you with through this article. We’re going to discuss employee survey distribution, as well as some survey distribution methods that will make accessing a survey easier for your whole staff. But first, let’s address an arguably more important question…
Why Is Distribution of Questionnaires Important?
Survey distribution matters because how the survey’s delivered will determine who responds, when, and ultimately how useful (or useless) your survey data is. And in the words of 15Five, “sending a poorly-executed survey is worse than not surveying at all.” But what makes a “poorly-executed” questionnaire is not just about the questionnaire itself. It’s also about the way you send it to people.
What are some factors that make or break a survey’s execution? Here’s just a few to consider:
- Surveys that only reach certain people, like those with a company email, aren’t good surveys; they only give partial representation of your workforce.
- If some people get the survey way sooner than others—for example, desk employees before non-desk employees—the late recipients will feel like an afterthought.
- Using survey platforms that are clunky, confusing, or difficult to access ensures that most won’t even bother taking it. This goes double for any employees without access to a work computer.
What Is the Best Way To Send a Questionnaire?
When distributing surveys in the workplace, there are a number of methods companies use: email, physical copies, and in-person interviews are just a few ways. But statistically speaking, the best method is one that does not get used often enough: text messages. While many employers may not think to use text messaging, here are some facts that show why texting works better than even email:
- Reward Gateway reported that 83% of non-desk employees do not have access to a work email, so if you send out a survey through email, you’ll likely only get responses from desk employees.
- Text messages are far more likely to be read than emails. According to Inc. Magazine, as few as 20% of emails are read. On the flipside, 98% of text messages are read.
- Even for office workers, email is often too inundated to see a survey. Templafy reported that the average office worker receives 121 emails daily. Conversely, 99 Firms found that the average person only sends and receives 32 text messages a day—almost four times less.
What Are the Advantages of Questionnaires Through Text?
Using a text-based platform like Yourco for workplace surveys brings a lot of benefits. Here are a few:
- Accessibility | The most important part of surveying is sending out questionnaires in a way that reaches everyone you want to participate. This is where many workplaces drop the ball: they pick methods that favor one group of workers, often unintentionally. For example, some companies distribute surveys via email and miss anybody who doesn’t happen to have access to a computer or company email. Survey distribution platforms like Yourco help with this problem by operating via text, meaning you can send out surveys to any worker who has a phone.
- Simplicity | One of the biggest advantages of questionnaires is you can get a quick, in-the-moment pulse for someone’s thoughts on a topic—for example, how engaged they are at work. But you will only get these kinds of responses if your survey is simple to take. Even having to click more than one link adds a barrier that some may not pass through. Consider using a platform like Yourco, which can text the survey directly to the person’s phone. Even if you send your survey out en masse, each person only sees their responses. For each worker, the conversation looks like a single text conversation between them and their employers. What’s more, Yourco now has built-in poll functionality that you can use to send a poll directly to employees without using any third party survey tools.
- Timing | Since many companies have workers with different shift schedules, those who work at the same time as the leadership team tend to be more informed—and to get information when they are working. Conversely, night shift workers may get updates while they are off the clock because it’s during the “work day” for their counterparts. Surveys are no different in this case, but that’s why Yourco offers the capability to schedule messages. With Yourco, third shift workers will get the survey when they’re on duty—and you don’t have to stay up until 2AM to send it.
Improve Your Survey Process With Yourco
If you’re wondering how to distribute a survey online to your workforce, check out Yourco: a two-way communication platform that operates through text messaging. With Yourco, you’re able to send surveys directly to each employee with a phone, making it easier for them to respond and for you to collect the data. Additionally, every employee has their own individual text conversation within the Yourco platform, which means that even if you send a survey to the entire company, each person will only see their own responses.
On top of being a great survey tool, Yourco offers a variety of other capabilities, including:
Schedule a demo with our team or try it out for free today to see how Yourco makes surveys—and workplaces—flow a whole lot smoother.
