Survey frequency

Background

Survey and question frequency enable you to control how often employees receive surveys, and how the survey distributes the questions. For more information on questions, see Question frequency.

Each standard frequency option corresponds to a specific number of weeks. Example: Monthly frequency is exactly 4 weeks and quarterly frequency is exactly 12 weeks. This ensures that the survey always starts on the same weekday when using an automated cadence.

You can stop or reconfigure the automated cadence when needed. Such changes can impact question distribution in the subsequent round, while the algorithm catches up on the due questions.

When configuring the frequency, the schedule displays the approximate number of questions an employee can expect in their first and subsequent surveys. This estimate doesn't include custom targeting, extreme scores, missed survey rounds, and other factors influencing question distribution.

Manual mode

The manual mode differs from the automated cadence options, as it only launches once on the set date. Surveys on manual mode ask all active questions from the question sets that you enable in the schedule.

Recommendation

We recommend a continuous listening approach, providing multiple benefits:

• Relevance: Continuous listening enables you to discover trends and act on them with greater speed. A regular cadence is also essential for understanding whether your actions are having impact.
• Question sampling: Fewer questions per round lessen survey fatigue.
• Leader engagement: Leaders become more engaged with their dashboard scores when they trust the responses are more reflective of the current reality.
• Higher accuracy: When an employee skips a survey, they receive additional questions in the next round for the algorithm to catch up. A lower frequency could mean an extended time periods before it's possible to get new input from a missed employee.

If you run multiple surveys simultaneously, try to align their survey end dates to consolidate dashboard recalculations.