Survey Participation

Before reviewing your survey scores, it is important to consider the percentage of employees who responded to the survey. The goal of the survey administration is to hear from as many employees as possible. The higher the participation rate, the less room there is for questions about how those who did not respond might have impacted the results.

A healthy level of participation is 60 percent or better. This allows you to have confidence that you have heard from more than not. If your participation is low (e.g., less than 50 percent), you can still review your results. However, you should exercise some caution about placing too much confidence in the representativeness of the results. When participation is low, it might be prudent to conduct some post-survey focus groups to further validate the results - i.e., to discuss the results with employees to determine if the results, despite low participation, still ring true with your employees.