As the field of people analytics expands to incorporate data gathered through relational
analytics, organizational network analysis, and other streams, the employee survey
remains a critical tool to support a comprehensive people analytics practice. Passive
monitoring of email traffic, social media connections, proximity data, and other sources of
data can indicate where there are strong and weak connections within organizations, but
like demographic data or organizational hierarchy, these are descriptive statistics that do
not measure the employee experience or how individuals perceive their workplace.
Responses to employee survey questions provide qualitative data representing the
opinions and perceptions of employees throughout the organization. Without this data,
HR can at best describe the workforce; it cannot get at how employees feel about the
company or their work, or the why of employee sentiment regarding the company,
leadership, management, or culture. Most importantly, it is difficult to infer what leaders
can do to improve the business when they are limited to quantitative descriptive
statistics. Strategic surveys that include questions related to culture, engagement, and
the employee experience allow organizations to conduct crucial conversations at scale.
This guide will outline how to use employee survey questions to support a people analytics practice.