At SurveyMonkey, we believe that understanding your audience is essential. Just as businesses succeed by knowing their customers, resilient organizations grow by truly listening to employees. That’s why we use our own platform to empower our people and drive our business forward.
Our recent total rewards survey, distributed to all global employees, exemplifies our commitment to listening. This isn't just theory—it's how we get the real pulse of our team, ensuring our strategies are grounded in the voices of those who power our success.
We practice what we preach, showcasing the real impact of structured feedback. This initiative underscores key goals for any organization: influencing strategy and programs, informing decision-making, surfacing what matters most, raising awareness, balancing priorities, and driving data-backed action.
Direct employee feedback is one of the most powerful tools we have for shaping programs that are effective, aligned, and truly meaningful. We continuously gather feedback from employees on benefits. In fact, prior feedback helped shape some of our most valued benefits, including fertility and family planning benefits, expanded mental health support, and vendor benefits.
The value of listening to your workforce
Systematically gathering and acting on employee feedback is crucial for building more effective programs. Timing is also crucial. To maximize the impact—especially for open enrollment or the start of renewal season with your provider partners—allow sufficient time to conduct the survey, analyze the results, and implement changes. This approach enables organizations to:
- Identify valued programs: Discover what employees value most—and least. Our recent total rewards survey confirmed that foundational benefits like medical insurance and paid time off (PTO) consistently rank as top priorities, guiding smarter investment decisions.
- Use feedback to build a more impactful strategy: Our survey results also highlighted gaps in employee awareness and understanding of some of our benefits, giving us a clear path to enhance education, resources, and engagement so our offerings are better understood and valued.
Unlocking actionable insights: What a deep dive reveals
A well-designed survey empowers you to explore employee satisfaction beyond surface-level assumptions. Granular feedback enables precise, tailored strategies by:
- Pinpointing dissatisfaction and friction: While core benefits are universally important, surveys pinpoint specific areas of discontent. For example, our internal survey uncovered dissatisfaction with new medical plan components, with qualitative feedback shedding light on the underlying issues.
- Opportunities for continuous improvement: Even highly-rated programs, such as our dental plan, can benefit from continuous employee feedback. We've heard that some providers are either not accepting our insurance or opting out of taking insurance altogether. As a next step, we'll investigate this feedback further to better understand the situation and get a clearer picture of network coverage.
Bridging awareness gaps: Why clear communication is key to employee engagement
Even the best programs fall short if employees aren’t aware of them. Our survey uncovered key awareness gaps, highlighting the importance of clear, timely communication:
- Identifying awareness lags: The survey pinpointed programs with the lowest visibility, including our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and life/accident/disability insurance—indicating where education is most needed.
- Uncovering missed opportunities: A notable 23% of employees discovered a benefit after they could have used it, particularly for fertility/family-building benefits and flexible spending accounts. This "late discovery" signals a clear need for more proactive communication.
- Guiding content development: Employees expressed a desire for clearer, more accessible information, particularly around the EAP, retirement and pension plans, and mental health resources.
Optimizing your communication channels: How to reach employees effectively
Bridging awareness and clarity gaps starts with understanding how employees prefer to receive information. Our survey provided valuable insights into communication preferences, helping us tailor outreach channels more effectively. By asking employees where they currently go for information—and which channels they prefer—we’re able to tailor a multi-channel approach that meets people where they are.
Translating insights into action: Shaping future strategy
The true value of a comprehensive employee survey lies in its ability to guide meaningful future-focused improvements. Grounded in real employee feedback, organizations gain a dynamic roadmap for evolving their programs with purpose by:
- Evolving benefit coverage: Detailed feedback across medical, dental, vision, and mental health benefits provides clear direction for refining coverage. These insights help organizations balance employee preferences with business realities, ensuring programs remain relevant and sustainable.
- Improving benefit accessibility and education: Employees feel they lack a clear understanding of how to effectively use certain benefits. This feedback highlights a significant opportunity to improve accessibility by providing better education and targeted support, empowering the entire workforce to leverage all available resources.
- Investing in growth and support: Many of our employees emphasized a strong desire for a dedicated learning and development budget, signaling a strong appetite for continuous growth. Additional insights—such as an interest in more conferences, certifications, and online learning platforms—underscore the need for a diverse range of educational opportunities to meet individual needs.
Putting our philosophy into practice
Our internal total rewards survey powerfully reflects a SurveyMonkey core belief: systematically listening to your audience—whether customers or employees—is essential to strategic success. By using our powerful platform to shape insights-driven strategies, we demonstrate firsthand the value of structured feedback. This commitment reinforces how listening enables organization to:
- Inform strategic decisions that drive business growth
- Design programs that truly resonate with the people who drive collective success
- Foster a workforce that feels valued, heard, and supported
Ready to get started?
Gather employee feedback to shape your total rewards program.
