Should we use the online survey?

Dear Status:
Change is always scary. Fortunately for you, a number of companies have already taken the plunge and surveyed their staff online. This spring, 25% of all worksites that surveyed used the electronic option.

The administration of Virginia Mason Medical Center (profiled in related article of this issue) was pleased with the results of their well-planned and well-executed use of the online survey process. Virginia Mason staff increased their response rate from 72% to 82% at one site and 93% at another! According to Anne Ward-Ryan, employer transportation representative with King County Metro, just getting a 70% response rate is often difficult in a hospital setting with different shifts and the difficulty of communicating with a varied employee population.

Virginia Mason’s Employee Transportation Coordinator Christina Arner tells me that carefully worded e-mail communication from VMMC leadership followed by mid-week reminders did the trick.

Arner says the benefits of going electronic are many: the ability to capture a higher response rate and thus a truer picture, less time consuming to administer, and a faster turn-around to receive the results. It also is possible to determine who has responded and who has not, and to edit bogus or mistaken responses. A separate training leads ETCs through each step of administering a successful electronic survey.

Times, they be a changin’ and if the bulk of your employees have Internet access, the choice to survey staff online has merit. Just don’t forget to remind them!
HOV