Surveys are a great tool that allow you to solicit your employees' sentiments about topics around the workplace. While our Polls component allows you to gauge opinions over a short period, Surveys enable you to establish trends in sentiment over longer periods.
​

We've updated our Surveys component to help you collect data over time, to highlight trends in that data, and to provide you downloads for the results of your Surveys. The component will look very different from what you may have previously been used to!

The biggest changes you'll see with Surveys include the capability to review historical data and trends in your Survey responses. You'll be able to view ratings and comments left on Survey questions, add Action Items to comments to ensure any decided changes are followed through, see percentage breakdowns of each response for each question, and view graph data indicating responses and changes between responses period to period.

We've also made changes to ensure the consistency of your data. Previously, admins were able to change the frequency with which the Surveys were conducted. That meant that results from a monthly frequency could be mixed up with results from another frequency, meaning the data could be easily skewed. We've changed that functionality so admins can no longer change the survey period length. Now, if you create a Survey that repeats each quarter, you won't be able to change it to a Survey that repeats every month or every year. The good news is that we've also introduced the option to import the questions from another Survey in your account as a template when creating a Survey, so you can use a previous Survey's questions in a new survey quick as can be.
​
With those major changes in mind, let's review Surveys.

Before embarking on Survey creation and administration, it's worth reviewing the Settings within the component. To do so, click the Surveys component on your Admin dash and navigate to the Settings tab.

Within the Settings tab, you can control the behaviour of your Surveys as a whole. Choices within this component include:

You can also enable or disable the component as a whole from the Settings tab.
​
If you make any changes to your Settings, be sure to click the Save Settings button in the top right corner to finalize your changes.

To begin creating your Surveys, begin on your Admin dashboard and click the Surveys component. Click the Add Survey button in the top right corner of the page.

You'll be prompted by a pop-up to choose if you'd like to create a Survey from a template, from a pre-existing survey already within your account, or to create a Survey from scratch. Please feel free to review the template options available for easy use! If you'd like to create a Survey from scratch, click the Start from Scratch button.

In the Survey creation screen, give your new Survey a Name in the top field. You can include a Note to your workers for the Survey as well. This could be a description of the purpose of the Survey or a reminder of the timeframe for the Survey.

​
Beneath the Note field, you can begin creating your Survey Questions by clicking the Add Question button. The questions you add in a Survey will be answered using a five star rating system, where 1 star represents Strongly Disagree and 5 stars represents Strongly Agree. Your question should be one of opinion that can be rated using this system. True or False and Yes or No questions are not suitable for a Survey question.
​
If you decided against the use of a template when creating your Survey but have change of heart, you can use the Import/Copy button to include questions in your Survey from templates provided by Workhub or from another Survey in your account.

You can add as many or as few Survey questions as you like. Once your questions have been created, you'll also be able to drag and drop them for any needed reorganization using the six dots on the left end of each question listing.

If you need to make any changes to a question, to hide a question that's included in the Survey, or to remove a question altogether, you can click the menu icon (three dots) on the right end of each question listing. A small list of options will appear for you there.

Once you have your Survey name and questions in place, you need to set your Survey Details. The Survey Details box is on the right side of the Survey creation page.

In the Survey Details, you can control:

The Active/Inactive toggle allows you to control the use of the Survey. If the Survey is set to Inactive, it won't be available to your Workers.

The Recurring Period is how you set how often the Survey is administered to your Workers. The choices are:

Your Workers will be able to add their responses to the Survey once per Recurring Period. All the Recurring Periods follow a calendar year, so the dates for each are fixed. For example, your Monthly period will be from January 1st to 31st, no matter when you create the Survey.

The most important thing about Recurring Periods is that they cannot be changed once you have saved your Survey! They will be unchangeable after a Survey has been created, and that's because changing the Survey period will skew your results. Comparing responses from a monthly period with responses from a year's period isn't a fair or accurate comparison. As such, they cannot be changed.

Because this functionality differs from the previous iteration of Surveys, we have also added the Import/Copy tool to copy the questions from another existing Survey within your Workhub account. If you've created your Survey but need to change the Recurring Period, you can create a new Survey and copy the questions you had created rather than spending the time to recreate those questions.
​
For an in-depth discussion of what the Recurring Period is and how it affects your Survey, please see our complementary Help Article!

The Closing Soon Reminder is how long before the end of your Survey period Workers will be notified of the end of the Survey. This setting is tied to the Recurring Period option, as some options are not available depending on your survey period choice.

The Closing Soon Reminder options include:

Ensuring you have a Closing Soon Reminder that's suited to the Recurring Period is important. For example, if you have your Recurring Survey Period set to Quarterly, having the Closing Soon Reminder set to 2 months before the end of the period means only one month will have elapsed in the Quarter before your Workers see the reminder.

The choices that are available for each Recurring Period are:

The default Closing Soon Reminder is set to 2 weeks but can be changed for each individual Survey or can be globally changed in the Settings tab for the Surveys component. Unlike the Recurring Period, the Closing Soon Reminder can be changed at any time.

Workers will see a gold Closing Soon message on their Surveys component on the Worker Dash if there are active Surveys that are approaching the end of their Recurring Period.

You can choose how many points Workers will be awarded for completing a Survey. The choices include:

By default, No Points are awarded for completing a Survey, but this setting can be changed for each individual Survey or can be globally changed in the Settings tab for the Surveys component.

The number of required responses affects if admins and Workers will be able to see the results of the Survey. There is a minimum of three responses needed for the results of a Survey to be visible to all users. This minimum is in place to help assure anonymity of respondents. If there were fewer than three responses (just one or two), it would easy for admins and Workers alike to piece together who may have responded and what they may have responded with. With a minimum of three, it's more difficult to pinpoint who may have submitted what response!

The options for Required Responses include:

Responses for a particular survey period will only be visible after the conclusion of the survey period. Responses will not be visible during the survey period to help maintain the anonymity of respondents.

When you are satisfied with the details you have entered, you can click the Save Survey button in the top right corner to finalize the creation of your Survey.

Once you have saved your Survey, you will notice the addition of a Current Survey Period box above your Survey Details. This box provides a visual display of the progress through your Survey's period.

Depending on the Recurring Period that you chose, the dates on either end of that bar will vary. The progress of the coloured line from the Opening Date and the Closing Date will progress will indicate how far through the period the survey currently is. The middle calendar icon in the bar indicates the approaching Closing Soon Reminder option you chose.
​
For the above example, the Recurring Period was set to Quarterly and the Closing Soon Reminder was set for 1 month before the Closing Date. As a result, the middle calendar icon is set for March 1st.

When March 1st comes to pass, the dot and bar will change to gold and a bubble next to the period will appear indicating how many days remain in the current period.

As Workers respond to the Survey, the Response Rate bar will fill to indicate how many of the Workers assigned have submitted their response. To ensure you get responses, you'll need to assign your Survey!

After saving your Survey, you can make changes to it as you like. The only field that you cannot change is the Recurring Period. All other details are changeable!
​
As with any component in Workhub, make sure to finalize any changes you make by clicking the Save button in the top right corner of the page.
​
You'll be prompted with a pop-up box to decide whether the change you've made is a Major update or a Minor update.

For both changes, you will need to enter a Reason in the Reason / Changes field, then you can choose to Save Survey.

​
In the Survey Details box, you'll see the details you've set for your Survey outlined. After having saved it for the first time, you will also see a Created field.
​
​

If you make any changes to your Survey, you will see the appearance of the Last Updated field. It will provide a date of the change, and the small "i" symbol beside that date will open a pop-up with a history log of all the changes made to the Survey! Any change made to the Survey will appear in this pop-up.

The Reason for Change field beneath the Last Updated field will provide the reasoning entered for the most recent change made to the Survey.

After saving your Survey, you will be able to assign your Survey. To do so, click into your desired Survey from the main Survey list and navigate to the Assignments tab along the top of the Survey screen.

In the Assignments screen, you will see all your organization's Positions listed down the left side of the page and different levels of requirement listed along the top of the page.

You can set the Survey Assignment to be:

If you would like to assign the same level of requirement to all your Positions, you can use the Select All/All options at the top of each requirement column.

Once you have set your level of assignment for your desired Positions, click the Save Assignments button in the top right corner of the page.

Once your Survey has been assigned, it's just a matter of waiting for your Workers to submit their responses and the survey period to come to a close to review the responses!

You created your Survey, you assigned it to your Workers, and you waited patiently to review their responses. Finally, the time has come for you to have a look at what your Workers have to say!
​

To review the results of your Survey, start on your Admin dash and open the Surveys component. You will see all your Surveys in the main Survey List.

​In the list, you will see

Any Surveys that had the minimum number of responses in the the prior survey period will appear in the list with the overall rating displayed in the Prior Period Rating column. The stars will be coloured the average response value will appear to the right of the stars.

If there were responses in the period before the last, the Trend column will contain an arrow indicating a downward, level, or upward trend in the responses.
​
The Prior Period Comments and Action Items will only display the data for the period immediately preceding the currently period, so if there were no comments or Action Items for your most recent period, those fields won't fill. Similarly, you won't see a summary or total of all the comments and Action Items for the Survey Type in those columns.
​
If your Survey didn't reach the minimum number of needed responses in the prior survey period, the Prior Period Rating column will display in grey with a lock in place of the middle star.

To review the results of your prior period for any Survey, click into your desired Survey from the Survey List and navigate to the Results History tab along the top of the screen.

The Results History tab will display the previous periods that the Survey was administered and the results of those periods.

The Survey Period​ column will contain the period from which the results are from. The detail will depend on the Recurring Period chosen when creating the Survey, and will include calendar dates beneath the summary.
​
Like in the main Survey list, any period that had adequate responses (at or above the minimum number of responses set by the admin for the Survey) will display with the stars shown in colour and the average score next to the stars in the Period Rating column. Any period that had insufficient responses (did not meet the minimum number of responses set by the admin for the Survey) will display with the stars greyed out and no number presented.

The Trend column will populate with an arrow indicating the change between the last two periods with valid results. Those periods do not need to be consecutive; the periods could be months or years apart, but the trend arrow will generate based on the comparison between them. You'll be able to see a green upwards arrow, a red downwards arrow, or a grey straight arrow to indicate no change.

The Comments column will let you know how many comments were left in that Survey period.
​
The Response Rate column will show you the percentage of your assigned Workers who submitted a response to the Survey during that period. The display will appear as a purple and gray bar, similar to the compliance bars found elsewhere in Workhub.
​

The Status column will allow you to review the Survey Period status as a whole. Possible statuses in this column include Closed and Low Response.

To review the responses for a particular Survey period, click into that period's listing.
​

When you've clicked into a specific period's results, you'll see an abundance of information!
​

The columns you will see on the Survey Results page include:

Any Comments left by Workers will be shown beneath the question they were made on. Workers and Admins alike can only add comments and reply to comments on the most recent survey period, so comments cannot be added to anything older!
​
Depending on the Setting chosen in the Settings tab for Surveys, you may need to approve comments left by Workers in their responses or in response to previous workers' comments. To approve or hide a comment, scroll down in your Survey Results to the comment itself. Review the comment left and choose either Show or Hide for the comment. If you decide to Show the comment but later would like to hide it, you can use the three dots in the same place as Show and Hide to choose Hide.

In addition to commenting, you can also add Action Items to comments from the most recent survey period. You can only add an Action Item to a comment that's been reviewed (whether your choice is to Show or to Hide), so be sure to review your comments first and then create your Action Items. If you've added an Action item to a comment, you won't be able to Hide that comment.

The View History button will add two boxes beneath the question you've chosen. Those boxes will include the prior period's rating details and a line graph indicating the Trend in the responses.
​

​By default, you will see the Prior Rating Details for the past three valid periods when viewing history. If there are more periods than that with results, the option to view more will appear beneath those three.
​

The Trend graph allows you to control how many periods you would like to see in the graph. The default display will include the last 4 periods, but you can choose to expand the view to include 8 periods or 12 periods! If there was a gap in response periods, don't worry - you'll see a grey dot above the period that had no responses and a grey dotted line will connect that point to the next period.

To review who responded during your chosen prior period, click into the Worker Responses tab along the top of the screen.

In the Worker Responses tab, you'll be able to see all the Workers who were assigned the Survey and the status of those Workers for that particular period. The page will display the Workers' Names, the Location and Division the Worker was listed at, the Priority the Survey was listed as having, and finally each Workers' Status on the Survey.

Possible statuses for the Workers on this page aren't crazy - they can show as Completed or Missed.

​

In the top right corner of the screen, you'll see a Download button. Clicking this button will allow you to download a PDF file of the Worker Responses on the page. You can also use the arrows in the corner next to the Download button to switch between Survey Periods to review and download your results!

As with any element of Workhub, if you have any questions we are happy to help you out. You can contact our Support team by emailing [email protected] or by clicking the orange question mark in the bottom left corner of any Workhub page.

​