How to Design a Pay Survey Strategy & Instrument
Compensation and benefits are two important topics to employees and their families. Creating a pay survey to get an immediate pulse of how this important topic is perceived by employees can be worthwhile to an organization. To gain the confidence and trust of the target population for the survey, indicate in the opening email or introductory letter the importance of the information to the company. Assure the respondents their information will be held in confidence and the survey can be completed anonymously.
Other People Are Reading
Things You'll Need
- Computer
- Printer
- Excel software
- Word processing software
- Mailing list software (emails)
- Website page for survey
Instructions
-
Survey Questionnaire
-
1
Write out as specifically as possible what you want to learn from the pay survey. Some areas to consider are employees' perceptions, employee attitudes, industry perceptions, benefit package perceptions, employee satisfaction and annual compensation perceptions. Decide what will be done with the results, regardless of the outcome of the survey.
-
2
Decide who is going to receive the survey. Balance investment in time, budget and resources with the needed specificity of results to help determine the sample size. Pay and benefits can be a sensitive topic so be sure you cover a broad spectrum of the target population.
-
-
3
Determine whether you will mail, email or have the target population go to a web page to complete the survey. Email and web page surveys are the least expensive and generally the fastest to get out to the target population.
-
4
Decide on the type of questionnaire and make sure it fits well with your test method. For example, emails are not as good a medium for pictures in a questionnaire as is a web page, but a link on an email to a web page would work.
-
5
Create a brief welcome and introductory description of the survey and the purpose behind it. Encourage the completion of the questionnaire to get a more comprehensive result.
-
6
Choose the types of questions and the format. Multiple choice (ex: five pay range choices), Rating Scales (ex: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor), Agreement Scale (ex: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree), and Text Open End (ex: How can our company improve . . . .?) are the most common. Keep the questions simple and the number of questions to a minimum. The first few questions should be easy to complete to keep the interest of the survey respondent. More difficult questions should be kept to a minimum and inserted toward the end of the questionnaire.
-
7
Before a final decision is made about the questions, perform a test by asking several people not involved with the survey to complete the questionnaire. Ask them to give you immediate feedback. Keep the questions that work and discard the ones that do not. Ask for additional feedback on layout and the survey introduction. Be open to their suggestions.
-
8
Send your final survey version to the target population. Have a follow-up strategy in place if the number of respondents is below expectations.
-
9
Compile the results and determine what will be done with the information.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Surveys can take some time to prepare. The tendency is to write too many questions rather than too few. Error on the side of simplicity. It will increase your response rate and be less taxing to prepare.
Be careful how questions are worded so you avoid creating biased results.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
