Engagement: Questions

Questions Page

The Questions page provides the finest-grained visibility into employees' answers to engagement and satisfaction questions, along with visibility into current and past survey participation rates.

Question and Survey KPIs

The Question drill-down page offers several top-level KPIs with details about the current or most recent survey and visibility into current and past survey participation rates.

Current Survey Period

The Current Survey Period KPI displays the number of days remaining for the current or most recently sent survey (the days remaining until the next survey), the current participation rate, the number of employees having responded, and the percentage of questions completed by those who responded.

• Days Remaining: The number of days until the next survey (per current admin settings.)
• Participation Rate: The percentage of survey recipients who have responded to at least one question for the current survey. A low percentage may indicate that employees may be missing survey e-mails (double check spam filters.) or are feeling some level of survey fatigue. 
• Participants: The number of survey recipients who have responded to at least one question for the current survey. 
• Questions Answered: The percentage of questions from the current survey that, on average, have been answered by survey responders.  A low rate may indicate that survey takers are dropping off without completing much of the survey.  It may indicate a need to shorten the survey by selecting a more frequent survey cadence (with fewer questions.)

Participation Rate

The participation rate KPI describes the percentage of survey recipients who have answered at least one question on all the surveys they received during the selected period.  The small bar chart shows the participation rate for surveys sent over the prior 12 months.

Question Answer Rate

The Questions Answered KPI describes the percentage of questions answered across all surveys responded to by survey recipients during the selected period.  The small bar chart shows the question-answer rate for surveys responded to over the prior 12 months.

Question Table

The questions table displays all available engagement and satisfaction questions and the summarized results for each question based on any selected filters and period.  The number of responses, the average score, and the ratings distribution are shown for each question.

Distribution of Ratings

The ratings stacked bar distribution displays the responses as a percentage of the total responses received.  The stacked bar will only display received responses, so if employees never chose a rating, it will not be shown in the chart.  In the example below, no employees responded with a rating of one for the leadership question.  If the % is too small to display on the stacked bar chart, hovering the stacked bar will show the details.

If there are insufficient responses to a question for the selected filters (fewer than three employees were sent a survey containing the question), the results will not be shown in the table to ensure anonymity. 

Additional Feedback Question Responses

If you are using our end of survey Additional Feedback question, the Questions dashboard is also where you can go to download the answers to that question. To download responses, select the menu icon to the right of the # of Responses column and then select Download CSV. If any responses are available they will be listed in the CSV file.

Download as CSV

The questions table offers an action menu with an option to download as CSV, which will download the currently displayed data, with applied filters, as a CSV file.

The resulting CSV file will contain the following columns:

You can view the CSV in your preferred spreadsheet or BI tool for further analysis or visualization.  

Engagement Custom Questions & Factors

The employee engagement module includes a collection of built-in questions. The answers to those questions contribute to the company's satisfaction and engagement factor scores. In addition to these built-in questions, it is possible to define several custom or company-specific questions and factors to include in your engagement pulse surveys. As with the Engagement Factor and eNPS questions, it is possible to control the cadence of such custom questions on pulse surveys.

Creating a New Custom Question

You can easily create one or more custom questions. For rating-scale-type questions, the question text is a statement that you expect survey takers to rate on a scale of strongly disagree to strongly agree, mapped to a 1.5 rating scale. For Comment Box-type questions, the question text can be used as a prompt for additional feedback that a survey taker can expand upon as an open-ended response. The Question Preview lets you view how your question will appear to survey takers.

Creating a New Custom Factor

While the Engagement module comes with a collection of built-in questions and factors, users also have the flexibility to create their own custom factors. To create a custom factor, navigate to the Custom Factors tab on the Questions & Factor page and click the + Custom Factor button in the top right. 

In the Create a Custom Factor modal, you can name your custom factor and provide a brief description. You can also select whether the factor should be included in your Engagement satisfaction metrics. More information on custom factors can be found here.

Assigning a Custom Question to a Custom Factor

When creating or editing a custom question, you can assign it to a custom factor. This groups the question under that factor in your engagement dashboard and, if the factor is set up to contribute to Overall Satisfaction, allows the question to influence your organization's Overall Satisfaction score. Additional details about factor assignment can be found below:

• A custom question can be assigned to only one custom factor at a time.
• Only rating-scale custom questions contribute to the Overall Satisfaction score. Comment-type questions do not affect scoring even if assigned to a contributing factor.
• Custom questions that are not assigned to any custom factor appear under the "Unassigned" label in the Questions dashboard. (Please note the availability of PerformYard's custom factor functionality is dependent on pricing tier. Organizations who do not have access will continue to see "Custom" as the factor name for their custom questions.)
• You can reassign a custom question to a different factor or remove its factor assignment at any time. Questions can still be edited, enabled/disabled, or deleted regardless of their assignment.

Previewing the Question

You can quickly preview the question in the context of the survey application to ensure it reads as you would like it to when phrased as a rating scale question (or other type of question.)

Turning a Custom Question on or off

It is possible to turn individual custom questions on or off.  The PerformYard surveys will only select enabled custom questions, so disabling a question offers the ability to remove that question as an option for an upcoming survey.  You might leverage this capability to allow specific questions in the first half of the year and later disable them and enable a different set of questions for the year's second half.

Including Custom Questions on Surveys

As with the other types of questions available, you can control how often the custom questions should be included on surveys, and you can also control if all custom questions should be included or if a subset of custom questions should be selected randomly.

Custom Question Survey Cadence

As with Factor and eNPS questions, it is possible to control how often Custom Questions should be included in surveys. By default, custom questions are not included, but you can choose to have them on every survey or to control the frequency to be less often, for example, every other survey. 

Pulse surveys have a fixed number of questions, and the number of questions is based on the survey frequency.  More frequent surveys include fewer questions, while less frequent surveys include more questions.  In the case of custom questions, they are selected randomly from the list of enabled custom questions alongside the built-in questions.  As a result, there is no guarantee that any particular custom question or number of custom questions will be included in any given survey. The Include all custom questions option allows you to force them to be included. 

Including All Custom Questions

The option to "Include all custom questions" bypasses the random selection approach and forces the survey to include all your currently enabled custom questions. Selecting this option means that, at the end of your survey, all of your active custom questions will be asked. Many companies have a few questions they "always want to ask," and this option allows for that scenario.  Remember that this option can potentially result in a large survey if there are many custom questions.

Viewing Results for Custom Questions

The Employee Engagement dashboard's Questions page provides the ability to view the results of specific questions, including custom questions.