From 100s of employee survey tools, here’s how to choose

How do you choose a new phone? You start off with what you’ll use it for. Do you need a long battery life for those non-stop days, or an impressive camera to keep your Instagram fresh, or just something basic that lets you make calls? Then you consider budget, and hey presto – your decision is made!

It’s the same for selecting the right survey software. We’ve answered some of the important questions, to help you make a choice:

There are a lot of online survey tools: what’s the difference? 

Just a quick search for online survey platforms can be overwhelming: there are 100s to choose from! But although they do essentially the same thing – let you send surveys – not all of them are made equal.

• Basic survey builders: on the simplest end of the scale, these are survey tools that ask you to do all the work – writing questions and manually distributing the survey – perhaps with some basic functionality around question types
• Multi-function survey tools: in the middle, you have slightly more advanced tools – allowing you to add ‘logic flows’ and with a wider range of question types, from Likert scale to multiple choice. These aren’t tailored for a specific use, and could be used for things like customer feedback or market research
• Employee feedback tools: offering a more specific purpose, these survey platforms are designed with employee feedback collection in mind. They often include prewritten question sets, benchmarking, and a more sophisticated way to analyse the data

If you’re looking to send an employee survey, the last option is your best bet – as these are platforms specifically built with workplaces in mind, so you’ll get more useful results.

What are the best survey platforms for businesses?

So we’ve narrowed it down to surveying tools designed for employee feedback. But that still gives you a lot of options. To narrow down which are the best survey tools for business, there are three main questions to ask:

1. What will you use it for? 

When you’re looking for a new surveying tool, you’ll have some purpose in mind. Maybe you’re just designing a new listening strategy – or you might have a specific challenge, like raising employee retention rates or understanding how to improve hybrid working in your teams. Whatever the intended purpose, knowing the answer will help you understand what features you really need.

Our platform has 20+ surveys, on all the important workplace topics – but there’s also a full organisational scan, to make it easy to kick off your surveying journey. 

2. What features do you need?

This is where it gets slightly more complicated. But think of it like this: if you have a specific challenge, you need a specific survey. Does the platform you’re considering offer a range of prewritten survey questions, carefully designed to get accurate answers. If you need a tool to back up your listening strategy, does it offer a helpful way to share reports and results with leaders? 

Our platform offers all the features you’d expect, and more – from drag-and-drop reports and customisable dashboards to industry-leading language tech to make analysis easy.

3. What is your budget?

As always, it all comes down to this: what’s your budget? Do you have a budget? When it comes to employee survey providers, some of the bigger names will set you back a fair chunk – which can be hard to get approved if you’re not the decision-maker. For a small business, you need to know you’re investing into the right tool… and that it won’t cost the earth.

Our platform is free for 21 days, giving you an opportunity to prove its worth to whoever owns the budget – and it’s highly affordable afterwards, without compromising on output.

Are there any free survey tools?

There are a number of free survey platforms available, but it’s worth considering that 100% free online survey tools won’t deliver the quality insights you really need. The whole point of surveying your employees is to get constructive feedback that leads to real change. 

You can use the free version of our platform for 21 days, and affordable forever – from just £99 per month. And that means you get expert-written surveys, industry-leading technology, and industry know-how. Much better than your average free survey tool! 

What are employee feedback best practices?

If you’re new to sending employee surveys, it’s hard to get it right. There’s a lot you should bear in mind – here are just a few examples: 

• The length of your surveys
• What questions you ask
• Using demographic data
• How to analyse the results

If it feels overwhelming, don’t worry. You don’t need to know everything: that’s what employee feedback platforms, like ours, are for. We’ve designed every aspect of our survey platform with ‘best practices’ in mind – from short, easy-to-answer surveys, to technology that analyses answers for you. 

How do I build an employee feedback action plan?

The first step is choosing the right employee feedback software. That will make the process easy for you: from which survey to send first, to how to display the results to your leadership team. It really can be easy: why not get a free 21-day trial of our platform, and see for yourself…