How do I set up a recurring employee survey programme?

A recurring employee survey programme is useful when you want to measure employee feedback repeatedly over time, for example through an annual engagement survey, quarterly pulse surveys, follow-up surveys after action planning, or year-over-year employee survey waves.

This guide explains a common technical setup pattern for employee survey programmes. It should be read together with the guides on recurring Quest programmes, respondent data, Hidden Identity, subgroup reports and quest comparison.

Before you start, decide how the programme should be structured:

• One ongoing Quest
  • use this when you want to add new send-outs to the same Quest and separate periods with time filters. This setup supports timeline-style reporting.
• One Quest per wave
  • use this when each survey wave should have a clean separate dataset. You can copy the previous Quest and compare the different Quests later in Results.
• Pulse or follow-up Quest
  • use this when a shorter survey follows an annual survey and focuses on selected topics or groups.
    

For meaningful comparison over time, keep question wording, answer scales, respondent data fields, languages and Hidden Identity settings as consistent as possible.

Recommended workflow:

1. Plan the employee survey programme
   • Define the cadence, for example annual, quarterly or pulse. Decide which employee groups will be invited, which languages are needed and which reporting levels are required so that you include the corresponding background data either by uploading it or asking for it
2. Prepare employee respondent data
   • Once you know what you later want to identify / filter on then you can prepare fields such as Country, Location, Department, Team, Manager Group, Role, Language or Employment Group. Keep field names and values stable across waves if you want to compare results over time.
3. Set anonymity and reporting thresholds
   • Before publishing, decide whether Hidden Identity or Advanced Hidden Identity is required.
4. Build the survey
   • Create the questionnaire, translations, distribution method, respondent data and availability settings. Test the Quest before launch.
5. Plan distribution for different employee groups
   • Use email invitations where individual email addresses are available. For employees without individual email access, consider QR codes, links, Quest Login via tokens or password-based access where appropriate.
6. Create a reporting master
   • Build a report structure with the chosen KPIs, topic summaries, top/bottom analysis, text analysis, filters and comparisons. Test the report before sharing it.
7. Create subgroup reports
   • Use respondent data and value filters to create subgroup views, for example by country, location, department, team or manager group. Decide whether to create one report per group or use filtered LiveReports.
8. Reuse the reporting structure
   • For later waves or time periods, copy the reporting master and apply the relevant time filter, value filter or Quest comparison. This helps keep manager and subgroup reporting consistent across cycles.
9. Compare results over time
   • If you use one ongoing Quest, compare periods with time filters. If you use one Quest per wave, compare the different Quests in Results. Use consistent questions, scales and respondent data to make comparisons reliable.
10. Review after each wave
    • Check response rate, respondent data quality, threshold issues, report access and whether any question or scale changes affect future comparison.

Important notes

If questions, scales or respondent data fields change between waves, comparisons may still be technically possible, but interpretation can become less reliable.

Timeline graphs work best when responses are collected in one ongoing Quest. If each wave is a separate Quest, results can be still be compared in the LiveReports but may be shown side by side rather than as one continuous timeline.

Related articles:

• How to set up a recurring Quest programme?
• How to compare results across waves, periods or repeated Quests?
• How to prepare respondent data for targeting, routing and reporting?
• How to create subgroup reports using filters and LiveReports?
• How to combine email invitations, QR codes, links and Quest Login in one Quest?
• How to use reminders
• How to use LiveReport
• How to use Filters
• How to create a new Time Filter
• How do I compare different Quests
• How to Create a Continuous Course Evaluation